This story appears in i-D 375, The Beta Issue. Get your copy here.
as told to NICOLAIA RIPS
I know it sounds crazy to say, but I love the age I am. I grew up at a really cool time in history: I came of age as the internet did. When I was a kid in the early 2000s (I’m 37 now), everyone had a family computer. You’d have to go into your mum or dad’s office to use it. It was a dial-up, so you could only be on there if no one was on the phone.
Around my 14th birthday, I joined MySpace. MySpace was super interesting to me. Back then, it was the preferred playground for creatives and bands, breeding an entire scene that would go on to define culture. You could be anyone, and you were allowed to be brave. Being a kid in middle school, and growing up in Texas, the idea that you could talk to someone in Germany because they were online at the same time you are was very exciting. As a young girl, I didn’t fully have my identity formed yet, but I knew I wanted to be creative.
On MySpace, I could be whoever I wanted to be: I started posting my art and thoughts. I started building this fun little world. I was definitely leaning into a sick-Victorian-child aesthetic. I was painting a lot. I would stay up really late, doing photo shoots around my house at 2 a.m. I would stage these photos where I looked kind of dead, as if I were in a movie still or music video. I was really inspired by D’arcy Wretzky of the Smashing Pumpkins (such a babe), Courtney Love, and photographer Francesca Woodman. I was also inspired by antiques, history, old dolls, and things that have been left behind or forgotten. You know how thrift stores have cardboard boxes of old photos? I would collect those. I always thought it was kind of sad that they were left behind by people’s families. But suddenly, it wasn’t so sad if I took them and gave them another home. I would make stories about these photographs of people. I would post photos of myself online, self-portraits that I really liked, that I thought were cool and spooky.
At the time, it felt like you knew every user on MySpace. It was kind of like my safe space to explore. I wasn’t a first-name, last-name user. My username was literally so awful––so innocent but so dreadful… It was @friskypinkkitten. Then, at some point, I came to my senses and switched to @harviekitten. Had to keep the kitten, I guess. I didn’t have to worry about anybody judging me, because nobody knew me. Well, they knew me, but they didn’t know my name or where I was from.
Then I started getting DMs on MySpace being like, “Do you know that people are talking about you on 4chan?” 4chan was an imageboard website created in 2003. It was loosely regulated and mostly anonymous, basically the primordial soup for internet culture. I never personally posted myself on 4chan. They took my photos and they created something. They called me “Creepy Chan” or “QUEEN OF X” (which was their extraterrestrial subreddit). Hey, if someone says I’m the queen of X… I’ll take it. I do remember when I wrote Moot (the creator of 4chan) a letter demanding he take my photos down. I think someone said they wanted to murder me and put me in the freezer. Aside from that… people were mostly cool and nice. I was very fortunate that the 4chan boards, /x/ and /b/, really liked my pictures (for the most part), and I found it endearing. I got lucky. I didn’t mind being recognised as the creepy girl, because I think it’s okay to be unconventional. You don’t have to be for everybody. I loved that other people were able to see me and feel less alone… and it’s good to celebrate that. The world is so cruel sometimes. It’s powerful to find other people you can connect with. I do think it was wild and hilarious when I went on ANTM (America’s Next Top Model), and this obscure internet culture and pop culture slammed into each other. Nothing ever happens until it does.
I didn’t stop using MySpace. In 2011, I got a message from a woman named Nathalie claiming to be a producer of ANTM. She was like, “I really think your vibe is cool. I really like your look. Do you want to come to a closed casting call for ANTM?” Now, people are verified online, but it wasn’t like that; you sort of didn’t know who you were talking to. I was like, “This isn’t real, I’m good.” She talked to me, and then to my mum, and convinced me to come to the casting call.
At the time, I was getting ready to leave for Baton Rouge, where I was starting college at Louisiana State University. For a summer job I worked at a valve and actuator warehouse. It was funny, I would teach all of the guys in the warehouse how to do HTML to make their MySpace profiles look cool. Quickly, I made it past the first round of auditions of ANTM and then the second. It was such a wild opportunity––I had to do it. When the promos finally came out, it was crazy because I had been this mysterious entity online, and those two things came together in a mainstream way. It was such a weird cultural crossover. I am pretty sure they hacked the Tyra website at some point when an ANTM poll was conducted on the favourite contestant. I think I got like 1 million votes.
Currently, I have a 15-month-old, so life looks a little different now (fucking insane and magical). Being a mother is such a fascinating and psychedelic experience. You get to experience life again through a child’s eyes…and what do you mean you can just combine two people to make a new one? Eventually, I want my child to be exposed to amazing information, and people, and art, and music online, but also I want to do it in a safe way. Who knows what the internet is going to look like even in five years. Now, there are so many different social media platforms. Now, you can monetise everything. I know that people want to get a lot of engagement, and a lot of traction on posts. That’s the goal for a lot of people––to get noticed, because everything’s so saturated, getting your work or your face out there. But I would encourage people to try to post authentic things: their authentic self, work they’re proud of. It might not resonate with everyone, but it resonates with the people that matter. I think that’s important––not to lose sight of why you’re doing something. You have everything at your fingertips. As for me? I’ll post on Instagram still, here and there, and Twitter. I’m always doom-scrolling. I’m definitely lurking, always lurking.