We Live in a Culture of Fame-Mongering

I miss a time before the internet, when people’s private lives were private and we didn’t sell ourselves to the highest bidder.

Photo by Warren on Unsplash

We were eighteen and nineteen wearing clothes out of J. Crew catalogs, sporting baseball caps and complaining about campus cafeterias. All this money spent and pasta was the only food worth eating. We sipped our Snapples, wore our flannels, blasted our grunge because this was the era of our discontent before eras were a thing. We called out to our friends from open windows, called them on the phone, and wrote long letters during the summer. But deep down we were still wide-eyed and gleaming. We had verve, we had moxie, we were shimmying in our seats from all the possibility.

We were freshman in college and removed from the watchful eyes of our parents. We drank 151 out of fishbowls, we danced our bars, we had IDs that swore we were 21 when we barely had the right to vote. But we followed the pack going out on Thursday nights for the fifty cent drafts and five-dollar drink-ups. We blacked out, we threw up, we rolled around on dorm room floors.

Having just turned 18, rape wasn’t real to me until my best friend told me, albeit casually, that her boyfriend wouldn’t stop. Wouldn’t let go even after she shouted no, and I didn’t understand it because no meant hell no — it actually was that black and white to me until everyone, everywhere made in grey.

One weekend, I yelled at her boyfriend in public. Called him a rapist for the things he’d done, for the way he made my friend feel. Guilty, confused because he felt entitled to what she could and could not give. And everyone stared at me like I was the monster. And everyone hushed me because why are you making such a big deal? Why are you kicking up a fuss? Because everyone knew your boyfriend couldn’t be a rapist. Rapists were scary men in alleyways. Rapists were seedy men you didn’t know not the preppy boys with designer frames from good families.

Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s discovering late in life that I have autism and I tend to sometimes not a read a room. Often, I blurt things. Often I make people feel uncomfortable with the things I say and how I say them. Because I’ve never been rewarded for calling…