Insta-Famous [Spoken Word]

snowmachine (64)in #story • 7 years ago

I moved to California because I wanted to be an actress. It’s too bad that I’ve got a face with cynical cheekbones and heroin chic died in the 90s. The casting directors say I have villainous eyes, and a smile that people despise, and I can never quite remember my lines. But, I’ve been practicing my enunciation. Susan sells sea shells by the seashore. Susan sells the sea shells by the - Fuck! It’s time to face reality. The talent just isn’t there. I could never play a leading lady in a romantic comedy or a sexy spy in a techno-thriller. I’m too awkward, too weird, too clumsy, too viscous, too murderous, too hyperbolic, too -me-.

So what I needed to do was to get better at playing me. To construct an image of myself that’d be able to play me better than I ever could. -That- was my path to immortality.
I certainly wasn’t going to become famous on the big screen.

So instead, I created an instagram account.

On Instagram, there were no gatekeepers in stiff suits, determining my fate with a tired sideways wave, no open casting calls, no standing in steaming rooms with five hundred other women, thinking - should I go on another juice fast? I think I forgot to wax, biting my nails down into new moons waiting for the phone to ring, maybe -this!- time, my dream will come true. No. Now all I have to do is point my phone at that carefully arranged cheese board at my favorite hipster food joint, click!, use the Gingham filter (The most popular), hashtag it, and publish. Simple.

Now, listen. I said it was simple, I didn’t say it was easy. I didn’t get insta-famous for nothing. Trying to take a shot of your adidas so that the right angle becomes a representation of a new ideology. You think it’s just a picture of some new kicks on shiny white tile? Just another snap of a Starbucks pumpkin spice latte? You’re wrong. That OOTD is the origin point of my eternal soul. I won’t be just another vessel for someone else’s fountainhead. I don’t have to listen to anyone’s ideas about how to move, to breathe, to think. I’m not your funnel for the world, a prop to be positioned upon all the other useless objects in your little palace. I’m an Instagram star. Now the world gets to be funneled through me.

My followers grew quickly. I had enough heart emojis to give Eros a run for his money. But my bows & arrows were slinging sponsored posts from Korean clothing brands. I used to be a poor wannabe but now I’ve got enough paper to line the walls of my apartment. All my money’s filtered in Valencia. Boy photographers want to take me to Paris, to ride on yachts and pose with furs and fluted champagne next to their watermarks. I made it. I’m famous. Hashtag goals - they all want to be me. I’m the bomb now, the sold-out flavor. I’m an instagram influencer, hot like Chanel’s little sister.

Oh, I can see the way you’re all looking at me! Oh, this is just another morality tale about vapid millennials ruining the Internet with their Kylie Jenner obsessions and their vaporwave. You think it’s just as simple as - Hold on - let me take a selfie! Please! I don’t expect to be famous for nothing. I said I wanted to be -me-. My vanity is a voracious art. I’m like a futurewave Frida Kahlo, except I’ve got LEDs in my flower crown and 300,000 likes for my eyebrows. I know all the variations of light that make my hair look like angel shine. Don’t roll your eyes, this is renaissance shit. It’s mythological. Better than biblical. My feed studies the phenomenology of unicorn frapuccinos. If you can’t handle it, my ‘gram might just blind you like the Tabernacle. @ my username three times, and I’ll appear in your DMs like the devil.

But, I have to confess, I can’t lay in bed anymore without imagining what would be the best hashtags for the moment. I’m myself, but I’m watching myself as I think I should be seen. Should I post languid like this? Should I stretch, or curl? Yawn or pout, with just the right part of my lips? My mouth’s starting to ache from trying to maintain a memorable smile. It’s more than a full time job, living life like an inspiration. Angels and influencers and saints don’t get to take breaks!

Okay, something doesn’t feel right. In the pursuit of glory I’ve just lost authenticity. My true artistry has been lost as metrics become my master. My sponsors are feeding me lines and I’m getting lost inbetween the spaces of their product placement. Act now, get a discount on this lipstick. Do I even wear burgundy? Scrolling through my feed. Food, friends, and fancy lingerie? It’s all the fucking same. I have to admit, I’m getting sick of clean lines, pushing my laundry basket out of sight. But I can’t seem to escape it. Even having a messy desk, and leaving pringle crumbs on my pajamas is a statement. Oh, I heard quirky was a good brand! Anti-romanticism is really in this year!

I know that I’m better than all of this.

I’ll tell you what the problem is. It’s you. You people have all constrained my innate talent, my hunger to capture raw experience, devoid of all boundaries. You’ve choked my muse into complacency, crippled my expression with your mediocre expectation. I mean, how many more pictures of Ray Ban sunglasses spread out on bedsheets do you need? How many more kawaii kittens have to be drawn in latte foam? Should I accept that it’s fate, that the most popular pictures are of women in bikinis eating vegetarian sushi on fake dates? Are you just afraid of someone who could be truly great!?

I wander the streets in a daze, phone out in front of me poised like a weapon, no trigger discipline, thumb waiting. For what? A moment of clarity. I’m a walking epiphany. Hashtag roadkill. Hashtag blood on my shoes. Hashtag I brought a knife to see if anything in this world is more than skin deep. You know I hate drama, but we’ve got to practice self care. 10% off on Lush bath bombs if you click the link, but there’s no discount for this ticket to my dark night of the soul. Destination: a no man’s land, a ghost-town. So buckle up and put your money down. You think I’m just another Internet girl photoblogging her breakdown? I bet you can’t tell a Jackson Pollock from a preschooler’s fingerpainting!

Hold on.

There’s a new sensation in my bones coming up from the bottom of my being like a seismic vibration.

I can’t see. I can’t breathe.

Hashtag…. Where am I?

Maybe they’re right. Maybe this is what a breakdown feels like. Yet how can something this monumental be mere mental illness? No. It’s more than that. I can feel it. This isn’t a breakdown, this is a breakthrough! I’m transcending my ordinary perception. This is a revolution, a representation of divine evanescence. I’m snapping pictures to create a new human expression. I’m capturing angles that might as well be transdimensional. The wounds I’ve inflicted open portals to new genres. No hashtag I devise can possibly comprise the magnificence of my genius! Oh, look at the gorgeous way the blood drips onto these autumn leaves.

Hold on. Let me take a selfie.

What do the comments say?

Creepy pictures! R U Okay?

U tryin’ to be edgy now?

LOL! She used to be so pretty, before the scars.

Unfollow me, then! I don’t need your approval! You’ll be sorry that you won’t be a witness to this great new moment in artistic history! You’re all just microscopic specks waiting to be swallowed up in the ocean of the newest fad, whether it’s dad bods, lip fillers, or overalls in plaid! Maybe human consciousness is a gift but I’d throw yours out with the trash! Washed up, uninspired, pathetic, sheep unworthy to even be ash that I burn on the path to the Internet Olympus!

Wait.

My numbers. They’re growing?

It looks like even you people can’t deny something this great!

I need to to take another selfie.

Why is there blood in my teeth? Because I’m going to redefine what it means to be pretty!

Don’t you turn away now! Look at me! Maybe you think I’ve lost it. Your comments suggest that despite your interest you’re on the cusp of disgust and revulsion. Are you afraid of the revelations that I might pry from your mind if you stay too long to stare into mine? Because I get it now. I’m not a freak, or a coward. I’m brilliant and you’re lucky to be caught in the crosshairs of my prodigious dreams, each new scene that I create expanding the seams of aesthetic boundaries! I reveal to your eyes what you’ve tried to hide in half-moments of spontaneous relief, scrolling through Instagram searching for a brief distraction from your unfulfilling lives stuffed with overwhelming disatisfaction. But no matter how many times you swipe through pictures of duck faces and new brides, you’ll never escape the horror of being human, subject to the perversions of chaos and time. Only I recognize the truth you’ve tried to bury inbetween Rolex close-ups and oversaturated lines. You live in perpetual amnesia separated from the source of your final biological destination!

But you don’t have to remember, because I won’t forget. I recognize this game.

I remember your face.

And I know your username, can’t you see?

So listen, if I follow you:

You better fucking follow me.