I Know You're Here to Spy on Me and Say Something Behind My Back

Because a little homework assignment showed me so at my university, way back when

Without going in details because you don’t have time for a book, my university higher learning experience covered physics, web design, political campaigning, marketing, international economy stuff, public policy, a lot, right? And more like, perception.

What does the world think of someone? Why don’t we test out that theory and how it works by having you the student see how things are? Write something online. Guess who in any of your classs is going to read it. See if your guess is right. Overhear that person talking in the hallway. Observe someone writing about you online about your writing online.

So I did.

I guessed it correctly. Had a blog post with a pen name I used. The female classmate I expected to read the post, itself about a different class I was in with her, she herself a guess as she often without any reason was mean to some people like me out of a classroom of very nice people, did fall for it. She wrote a blog post making fun of me and how she was curious of what I might be like outside of class, without naming me. “Me,” because I never once met her as the real me. Pen name. Remember? You’re talking to a gal whose secret taxi pick up name was then Angie, as in Angelina Jolie. I did not give out my name to people I felt uncomfortable around as a teenager who learned not to.

After that, I observed in my own freelance journalism job seeking age 20+ onwards, my film research, a lot, how people would blurt things out to me they read about my pen names’ characters. In time, me as my real name. A medical professional telling me about Earl grey tea when I never mentioned one word to him about tea. Everyone I ever asked for employment in character as myself. Random people I met for errands. I really never ran my own social media accounts until 2012-2013, sometime around that with some often fluctuating, annoying vision problems I was having soon after graduating. So I’d have other people, not always the most trustworthy in how, for real, one guy logged on at a coffee shop and I was soon hacked until I found out why! Fun. OK.

You become a character online. You never know what to say because humanity lives to go onto someone’s Instagram or blog, your website, your anything, really, for one purpose: making fun of you behind your back. Seeing how “normal” you are. Having a critique of how you are too pretty or not pretty, you look fat, you did your eyebrows wrong with too dark of a brow dye, you care about posting, you don’t care about posting enough, this massive mess of presumptions that primarily women deal with. Creeps make assertions about who you are without knowing anything about you or why you are present somewhere in a public place. You aren’t working on your acting lessons, film research observations, film research interviews, and other life needs material because when you sit someplace observing life at a cafe, you are there from being attracted to that man, based on what he thinks he knows about your pen name online.

You deal with people thinking every decision you make online in character or every lie you tell so older weirdos you meet as a young woman or man, protecting yourself so nobody gets to know the real you, that this is all real and a tornado of their fake impressions of you.

Because you know how many people want to see what you do online, and it’s worse now in 2025 than it was for me in the mid aughts and late 2000’s, you really never know what to say. Like me. Now on Substack. Exhausted, not pretending anymore. I don’t need to. My doors to my soul and career chats are closed off. You need to be invited into my Wonderland.

I don’t know what to say or write because any platform can be me talking about the values of giving back to charity and volunteering, and people will all be like, “See? She is exactly who we thought she would be. Stupid bimbo! Arrogant kind of smart. Ugly. Too pretty. Fat! Too skinny.” I don’t do social media. Substack it is. Fine. What do I do now? What do I say here? How often? When? What “writing voice” do I have? What did you come here seeking: finding out if I’m “normal?” If I’m “cool?” If I’m “serious” about my career?

Are you here to support me on this journal, or are you another person who came here, like that young woman, to make fun of me behind my back? Have we grown since 2007? Is social media, is the web, used for good anymore, for knowledge?

I got an A+ on that extra credit assignment. Please be the person who makes that change: showing in 2025, my homework would have proven incorrect. Because you use the web for the greater good.

You have social media, you become a caricature. Great for film research, never a plus for existing as a normal human being. You don’t have social media, you make a statement without saying anything. Everything is seeing what isn’t there. Women can never do the right thing with having an online presence or a lack thereof.

What do I do now? I don’t know.