Have you ever wondered what goes into being an Internet celebrity? What it's really like to play a character whose sole identity rests on online self-promotion? What it's like to be a girl who grows up on the Internet fancying herself an artisté? Well a real-time Snapchat short film that's been circulating this week online pretty much puts it all under a microscope for you and the results aren't exactly pretty.
An exploration of Internet voyeurism, exploitation and self-reflexivity in the age of virtual identity projection, it's a strange, disjointed and disturbing tale of cheez whiz, detergent pods and tongue-snipping. Cast via instagram and directed via FaceTime (if that's not Peak Internet, then we don't know what it is) it stars Tumblr sensation Internet Girl, aka Bella McFadden. Playboy dubbed it"The Weirdest Snapchat Story of All Time,"Oyster said it "Will Make You Question the World" and even our March cover star Marilyn Manson wasn't quite sure what to make of it -- needless to say if the King of Creep doesn't get it, you probably won't either.
I have no idea why, but I know I like it. http://t.co/8aU8age8z2
-- Marilyn Manson (@marilynmanson) July 18, 2015Read our Q&A below.
The whole entire point of this project was a social experiment, I wanted it to be like going to the depths of hell, getting footage and uploading it online and watching everyone react. I wouldn't say this is underground culture, mostly because anyone 13+ has Tumblr and is [subscribing to] the same homogenized sources. We're all constantly victims of shocking clickbait, like "Dude, did you see that Vine of that girl sucking a dildo attached to a Sponge Bob plushy?" or "Oh my god, that video of a caterpillar crawling on your face is so aesthetic." It's such a common trend right now on social media -- for the "internet art world" to do things that what maybe a mainstream audience would seem as "creepy" or "disturbing." Like it's very cool [for a 15-year-old] to caption "Choke me daddy under the morning sun" under a picture of ferns on Instagram and then think of it as creative. Why are people so obsessed with attracting negative, fetishistic attention? I can't understand it. I asked my therapist, and she said it's just narcissism. Ariel Pink watched it and said "This is fucked" and I go "Why? Is it because it's so real?" then he said, "No, because it's so fake. That's what is disturbing."
In terms of the exploitative aspects of this film -- how do you think that might relate to what some girls are doing online today?
In terms of the exploitative aspects of this film -- how do you think that might relate to what some girls are doing online today?
You always hear these horror stories about these young girls at Terry Richardson shoots, or being pressured to sexualize themselves for the "male gaze," that kind of "Please, just do it. It's just for the art, it's creative, trust me" mentality.
How did you come up with the storyline? Is "Mudditchgirl91" based on any actual internet stars?
There is an up-and-coming actress in LA named Lauren Alice Avery. She's mostly known from Vine and Instagram, but she always posts pictures of her in a mud ditch -- in like a fetishistic way. From how much she talks about mud and mud ditches, it seemed like a sexual fetish. Like if a mud ditch could come to life in the form of a boy one morning, she would probably run away with it. I started wondering about what she or some of these Tumblr stars would do at home. Maybe, squeeze detergent pods on herself with a cut-off shirt and rub cheez whiz on her knees to Hoobastank? Do I definitely think that someone like Lauren would get off on disturbing people on Playboy's website and see an aesthetic to that? 100%.
Why did you decide on working with Internet Girl?
I sat on Instagram for like 10 hours [casting], talking to like 100 girls, and then [Internet Girl] messaged me at 3 in the morning. [So I told her] "Ok, you are not going to tell people that you are apart of a real-time short film. There will be no context. You are going to actually say this is who you are, through your Snapchat presence," which she was down for. And when she posted on all her social networks to add Mudditchgirl91 on Snapchat, people genuinely thought it was her. [As we started to shoot the footage via Snapchat], her family was blowing up her phone in
between shoots saying they wanting to check her into a mental hospital. Her boyfriend stopped talking to her. That's why I decided to upload the behind the scenes of her being at her most vulnerable points, in between scenes where I was talking to her/directing her on FaceTime. You can really hear what is going through her head through the sound of her voice.