by Shawne Steiger
Photo by Lucio Abatemarco
Take a selfie at your sister’s wedding. Pose in your pale green bridesmaid dress, shoes long ago dumped under the table. Snap. In the photo your cheeks are alcohol flushed and your teeth are huge, the camera a little too close. But look who has his arm around you: the groom’s best man—that blond hair, tight shirt, perfect smile.
Post it on your Facebook page. Post it on Instagram.
#Wedding #Cake #Smashed #PartyAllNight #FirstDate?
Monitor the likes, emoticons, shares. Thirty-five shares. No wait, Instagram has you at fifty likes—everybody you know personally on social media.
Then the comments:
“Wait a minute, isn’t that Justin?”
“I saw him out at Rain. He was totally dancing with a dude.”
“Oh yeah, Justin came out in high school. Better find a new date.”
#DatesGoneWrong #Fail
276 Likes 117 Shares.
Delete the post.
“Like” your sister’s Honeymoon in Hawaii post.
“Like” your best high school friend’s Summer in Italy before Cornell post.
Send a clap emoji to your second-best high school friend’s Harvard acceptance post.
Share an article called: “Gap years are Valuable Experience for Recent High School Graduates.”
Share an article called: “Marriages in Early Twenties Often End in Divorce.”
Take a selfie in front of your new house. Make sure the purple front door is featured in the picture. Purple like fairy tales. Purple like happy endings. Careful not to accidentally capture the house with boarded up windows and peeling gray paint on the left side of the house. Keep the “Gray Dismal” just outside the picture frame. Offer a quirky close-lipped smile that says, “Hey it’s all good.” No teeth this time.
#FirstHouse #LivingTheDream #ThankYouGrandpa #Inheritance
20 Likes.
Your parents, your sister, your best friend from college share your post.
Take a selfie on your first stroll around your new neighborhood. You look relaxed in your mirrored sunglasses and bleached hair. You are not quite smiling (You will never open your mouth in a photo again—those teeth). Behind you, a couple—him ripped arms crawling with tattoos, her overlarge glasses and long skirt—have stopped to cuddle their beagle. “First walk in the new hood.”
#MakingFriends #Moving
20 Likes.
Your parents, your sister, your best friend from college share your post.
Take a selfie in your hospital bed after surgery when you are doped on pain meds. You are practically drooling. At least your teeth aren’t visible.
#Ladders #Painting #BrokenLeg
By the time the nurse comes with another injection that will send you off to dreamland, you have two hundred likes and one hundred seventy-five shares. Strangers send hugs and hearts and get better soons. Three different men (all with photos of themselves in military uniforms holding rifles) private message you on Instagram. “Hey Sweetie.” “Hello Dear.” “I like your smile, Honey.” You aren’t stupid. Block them. As you drift away, fantasize that one of them is for real. You will go on a date just before he deploys to Iraq. He will bring you roses. You will send him sexy selfies while he is away.
When a man with nothing but pictures of himself lifting weights friends you, friend him back and send a virtual wave.
Take a selfie back home in front of the purple fairy tale door, no condemned house in the background, crutches under your arms.
#HomeSweetHome
23 Likes. Your parents, your sister, your best friend from college and weightlifting dude share your post. Cyber hugs are sent.
Your mother sends an actual care package with all the snacks you loved when you were seven.
Take a selfie on the ladder, crutches propped against the wall and clearly visible. Half the wall is pale green like your bridesmaid’s dress. Green like hope. Green like springtime. The other half is beige.
“Literally balancing on one leg here. Finishing no matter what.”
In the photo you are grimacing a little from the pain. Don’t mention you were told to keep your leg up. Also don’t mention your painful hobble back to the couch, wall unpainted.
#Determination #Painting
348 Likes. 275 Shares.
Three hundred!
Comments:
“Careful up there.” (10 Likes)
“Should you be doing that?” (5 Likes)
“I want the next picture of you on your back after you fall off that ladder.” (104 Likes)
“Did you finish?” (50 Likes)
“Aren’t you supposed to elevate your leg? Your father said he’d finish for you.” Mute your mother.
Take a selfie of your leg the day the cast comes off. Enlarge the surgery scar. It looks raw, grotesque, dangerous.
#Stitches #Surgery #PaintingFail
213 Likes. 124 Shares.
Comments:
“Uuuugly.”
GIF of drooling man
GIF of Spongebob Squarepants
GIF of howling baby
Take a selfie on a beach blanket with your sister’s friend Eric. He is wearing earbuds and his eyes are closed. You are hunched and frowning on a separate blanket. Don’t upload the selfie you took in his car, both of you laughing with your faces pressed cheek to cheek. Don’t upload the selfie where you stopped for ice cream and shared.
#SecondDate?
106 Likes. 76 Shares.
Comments:
“Dump the guy.”
“You can do better.”
“I’ll show you a good time.”
Block the bots in their military uniforms, clean shaven and ready to give you love or take your money or whatever it is they want from you.
Wave at weightlifting dude.
Take a selfie dressed in your blue sundress with a little bit of frill, rocking that newly layered hair.
#FirstDate #Hair
116 Likes. 5 Shares.
Weightlifting dude likes.
Take a selfie of your black eye. Hone in on the purple ring around the outside, the avocado colored splotches, the red in your sclera.
#DateGoneWrong #Tinder
1026 Likes, 1301 Shares and Retweets across platforms.
Comments:
“Holy moly girl. You’re gonna get yourself killed.” (200 Likes)
“You really need to dump the guy.” (77 Likes)
“That happened to me.” (2 Likes)
“I’ve been in an abusive relationship.” (7 Likes)
“We’re here for you if you need us.”
“We care.”
“We Love you.” (368 Likes)
They love you.
“I’ll show you a better time than that.” Weightlifting dude. Send him a smiling emoji.
“Are you okay? Didn’t you like Eric? Why aren’t you returning my calls?” Mute your sister.
Share an article called “Thirty Shocking Domestic Violence Statistics that Remind us it’s an Epidemic.”
Share an article called “Codependency is a Thing.”
Take a selfie standing a little too close to the edge at the top of Bald Mountain. Make sure the rocks below you are visible.
#BaldMountain #Nature #Hiking
2031 Likes. 50 Shares.
Comments:
“Girl, you’re gonna fall off that edge. Careful.”
“OMG it’s beautiful, but don’t step back.”
“More please.”
“I’ll catch you if you fall.” Weightlifting dude
347 Likes.
108 Shares across platforms.
Send Weightlifting dude a heart emoji.
Take selfies of your nose in a splint, both black eyes and your broken finger before they put the splint on.
#TenthDate #DomesticViolence
3041 Likes. 1702 Shares across platforms.
1500 followers across platforms.
Comments:
“We’re with you”
“Please leave him”
“Are you okay?”
“This is not a good situation.”
“You won’t be able to post if you’re dead.”
“It’s hard to leave. I know, I’ve been there.”
“Unfollowed”: Weightlifting dude.
Post a thank you to all your new followers. Tell them you love them.
Wrap yourself in their likes and shares as if they are warm blankets on a frigid winter night.
Share an article called “Why We Don’t Recommend Couples Therapy for Abusive Relationships.”
#NoMore #MeToo”
Take a selfie on top of your roof on the side without the Gray Dismal. Stand as close to the edge as you dare. Do not look back, do not look back, do not look back.
“I can patch my own roof.”
#RoofRepair #Risky #HomeSweetHome #WhoNeedsMen
3400 Likes. 2826 Shares. 308 new followers.
Comments:
“Did you survive the photo?”
“Great picture”
“Totally worth the photo”
Five follows from guys claiming to be lottery winners
Eight follows from guys claiming to be soldiers
Two follows from actual roofers
Take several selfies with similar views. More on the mountains; holding a gun to your face as if you are contemplating suicide (over 4,000 Likes and Shares across all platforms); riding your bike on the very edge of a mountain road.
#Adrenalin
Unmute your sister so you can like her picture of the baby.
“Like” your best friend’s picture of her law school acceptance letter
“Like” your second-best friend’s picture of her Harvard diploma
Take a daredevil selfie on the train tracks near your house. Make sure the arriving train can be seen in the background.
#FatalSelfies
#Don’tDoThis
Article: “More than 250 people have died taking selfies, study finds.”
You go viral
You make the news
You win the Internet
So does the train engineer who never saw you standing there.
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