on virality, the internet, and women
a few thoughts on going viral, the internet in general, and being a woman amongst all these things.
this post is best read while listening to childish gambino’s smash hit “because the internet.” i’m sorry, i don’t make the rules.
so i recently went viral on the internet.
i’ve existed on the internet for the better part of the last two point five decades. i’ve made geocities websites, customized the everloving shit out of my myspace, wrote all my ~ feelings ~ on xanga and livejournal, got facebook the SECOND i got my .edu email (shout out to the OGs), ditched my blackberry for an iphone JUST so i could have instagram, ran a lifestyle blog for longer than i’m willing to admit, am extremely funny on twitter still, and recently got into tiktok. i just like being on the internet. i have social anxiety that can make it hard for me to be myself in person, so the internet has always been a place i can turn to just…be me. but in all this time, i’ve really never been noticed for my internet presence. until this last year.
last spring, i tweeted a thought that had been living rent-free in my brain for a long time, lucked out that one of my followers runs an extremely popular account, they retweeted it and well…it went viral. even the meme instagram accounts picked it up.
tbh i’m still confused
but the virality of this tweet didn’t do much to me personally. i just muted all my notifications on twitter because frankly my phone felt like it might explode from all the notifications. but nothing about this experience prepared me for what happened when my tiktok went viral.
@alxandriasays The end is gonna throw you for a loop tbh #elfitup #fyp #foryoupage #toddlersoftiktok #toddlertok #toddlermom ♬ original sound - alxandriasays
now, context: june bolts up in bed every morning when i go into her room. people think it’s the funniest (weirdest?) thing, but every single morning when i open the door she POPS up. she tends to wake up before we go in, but just hasn’t figured out that she can get out of bed on her own. and if any of you tell her she can, there will be blood. i literally had 20 followers when i posted this, and all of them knew me (and june) personally. so it was just kind of shocking to wake up a few days after posting this video to almost 100k views and hundreds of comments. and while most of the comments were also finding this funny, cute and silly, there were many commenters who went on the attack.
people took issue with quite a few things in this compilation. they hated the sound the door makes and that i turn the light on when i walk in. the first point, i literally can’t control. my house is 100 years old, and all my doors are original. i like them! the end. the latter point is fair.it would absolutely suck to be woken up like that. except she is already awake. even when i explained that though, people still wanted to complain. whatever.
the most vitriol came in response to my voice. i walk in and say “hi” or “good morning.” i don’t baby talk her (never have), and i talk to her like…well…any other person. from this, people said the following: i’m aggressive, i’m performing a raid on her, i clearly hate her and i shouldn’t be a mother (to name a few). more than a few people told me to “be kinder” to her, which just felt like some man trying to tell me to smile.
there’s a level of comfort society has for letting women, especially mothers, know how much they suck. that we’re never good enough, that we can do better, that clearly they’re doing better than you. and it was (is) on full display in the comments of my video. the good news: i know that i’m the best mom for my kids. these comments certainly bummed me out, but i could laugh most of them off (and block the meanest ones tbh). but if i didn’t have this confidence? YIKES.
the concept of a keyboard warrior isn’t new. they’ve been around forever, emboldened by the anonymity of the internet to type things they’d never say to your face. and when you think about it like that, they’re on the internet for the exact same reason as me (just taken to a cruel extreme). the freedom it allows is intoxifying. however, targeting mothers, many of whom are still in the throws of hormones and postrpartum and not sleeping? it’s just…mean.
the judgment mothers face is overwhelming almost all the time. the slightest perceived misstep, and you’re a monster. even down to the way we delivered our children (the remarks about “natural” birth still trigger me, frankly), everything is up for the publics’ commentary. mary catherine starr recently had a comic of hers go viral that really hit the nail on the head for me (and then read her interview on cup of jo because it’s spot on).
none of this is going to make me leave the internet. for better or for worse, you’re all stuck with me. i’m sorry you’re stuck with my bad jokes on twitter for a while longer. but with that in mind, i’m not really sure what we do about this, though. how do we change this innate comfort we have with shitting on mothers for simply existing? i don’t know, but maybe go and tell some of your mom friends they’re doing a great job. because i know they don’t hear it enough.