Maybe Unfollow
Maybe Unfollow
"As it turns out, you can’t call the police for someone becoming an it-girl."
You’d think someone would have wanted to tell the story of Ana by now. Then again, you’d also think by now she would have addressed the fact that before she was @ana, she was Ana.
This is a story about my friend Ana, who many of you follow. I’ve seen you like her posts and tag your friends in her comment section and re-post her quirky outfits. To be clear, I don’t judge any of you for that, If I didn’t know her, I would too. Her wardrobe walks a fine line between kooky and chic. I’ve started to see fashion magazines try to emulate her style in their spring campaigns already. Her captions are insightful, smart, and hysterical. She’s easy to take in. She’s easier to like. But the third wall isn’t actually broken, and it’s taken me a lot of consideration but I want to tell you how her account started.
Ana and I went to high school together. We were part of a group of five girls who thought we’d be close forever until we went to college and realized that we’d only know each other forever. We both ended up in New York after graduating — me as a copywriter, she as a fact checker at the women’s magazine you all read. Where most of our friends posted on social media to prove our existence through photos of jalapeño margaritas, minute career accomplishments, and carefully arranged bodega flowers, Ana chose not to share anything. She had blank accounts, and said she didn’t use them much, but it’s impossible to really know how anyone spends their phone battery between charges.
Last summer our friend Sara invited us all to her family’s beach house on Long Island for her 25th birthday. It’s always reassuring how after an hour of small talk packed in a car on the Long Island Expressway, our friends are able to revert from professional personalities back to our high school foundations of humor and silliness. Ana was excited to take some unpaid vacation days from her job which embraced summer Fridays… but also embraced the drama of the news cycle months before the election.
The weekend was a blur of hard seltzer and sandy beds and borrowed phone chargers and loud parties with boys who were mutual friends of mutual friends and makeup remover wipes and egg sandwiches from the deli that we ordered from while barefoot and dehydrated. Sara got a birthday kiss from a guy whose house we ended up at in Pines. Ana spent the whole night talking to one of his friends and became glued to her phone the rest of the weekend. I had a boyfriend who I was fighting with on and off during the weekend because of drunk texts and missed calls.
We decided to leave early Monday morning when the sun was just starting to come up. When we woke up hungover and sunburnt, Ana was already crouching next to an outlet in the bedroom over the glow of her phone being charged in the wall. As we were sleepily packing up the car in Sara’s parent’s driveway, a truck pulled up. “You girls sure you don’t want to stay here and enjoy this sunrise every morning?” the guy Ana had been texting since Friday asked us, as he pointed to the beach through his passenger seat window.
Ana laughed and went to throw her bag in our car, but instead tossed it in the bed of his truck. She told us she actually was going to stay on Long Island, and would not be returning to the city. We thought she was joking because she had spent so much time over the weekend spiraling over looming work emails and getting back to the office, but then she started to get into his car and we realized she was serious. She told us she’d call us later that day, and to get back safely. Ana was the bookish, safe, reliable one of our friend group and because of this we deemed most of her decisions “smart”. So when you start to wonder why we didn’t try to pull her out of this guys car or call her parents, there’s your answer.
They drove off and we got into our car and tried to puzzle together when exactly Ana had made a real connection with this guy. It wasn’t on the car ride out to the beach house, because she was very actively managing the AUX cord and trying to figure out the difference between Sara and Lucie’s marketing jobs. It wasn’t on the first day we were at the beach, because she was reading under the umbrella or jumping in and out of the ocean the whole time. Which means it must’ve been during one of the parties we went to.
By the time we were driving through the tunnel into the city, it was almost 9AM, and Sara told us all to check our phones — Ana posted her first photo to social media fifteen minutes earlier. She was sitting in front of the sunrise on the beach, in the guy’s oversized college hoodie, holding the iced coffee we had all bought together this morning and wearing big sunglasses. The caption was “Good vibes, high tides.”
I wrote in our group chat congratulating Ana on entering the world of social media, ten years late. “Looks like someone is a changed woman!” Sara followed up with. Ana didn’t answer. We figured she went back to bed or was on the phone with her boss.
That night after unpacking and showering, I called her. She didn’t answer. I went to DM her, and saw that she had acquired 1,000 new followers over the course of the day. I messaged her “CALL ME when you see this!!!”, but before leaving the app I looked at who had been commenting on her post. People from high school, her coworkers, and a bunch of random accounts who I had never heard of leaving 😍’s and 💯’s and 💞’s . I wrote in the group text asking for Ana to call us and update us on her new digital stardom. No answer.
I called Sara and Lucie and neither of them had spoken to Ana since this morning when we left. We started to get nervous and texted Ana’s sister, who said what she said her whole life “Ana’s smart, she’ll be fine. Sounds kinda fun??”
Later that night when I was scrolling on my phone while brushing my teeth, I saw that Ana had posted again. This time she was sitting in an oversized knit sweater in front of a fireplace, laying sideways behind a laptop, glass of wine tilted towards the camera. Seashells and wood panels and large black and white photo canvases signified “new money beach house”. The caption read “Work-life balance 🍷.” She pouted confidently towards the camera, which was unfamiliar. She looked smoother than I’d ever seen her. The comments were disabled.
We kept texting Ana asking why she would post a photo but not answer our texts. “Liiikkee should we call the cops?” Sara wrote. Forty minutes later we received the following text:
Guys!!!! I’m so sorry, I didn’t have service out here on the beach. I’ve been with Ray all day, I’m SAFE! Did you guys get back to the city OK? Also I think one of you took my phone charger, I am using Ray’s rn. My sister just texted me freaking out, did you guys call her? I’m coming back later this week, Ray is going to drive me back to my apartment on Wednesday and then we should all get dinner. It’s so weird to see all the randos who messaged me after I posted those photos today. This is kinda fun…. lol
The following days were foundational to the @ana you all know and follow today. She posted every few hours: checkered bikinis, striped bucket hats, rainbow nails. All of her captions started to be accompanied by environmental and political activism. “Having a nice vacation on the beach? Well those dunes won’t be there in 5 years because of erosion.”" “WTF??” our friends would text each other, confused by the righteousness, who didn’t know shit about the environment as far as we knew.
She posted piles of garbage, with statistics around plastics and BPA’s, tagging wildlife foundations, ocean conservationists, and the luxury beauty brand behind her red pedicure. Our friends created a new group chat, where we made guesses about this new Ana (@ana) who had been created over night. “Are we supposed to be supporting this?” Lucie asked. Sara noted that many of her coworkers at the women’s magazine posted like this regularly, and perhaps it was an attempt to fit in. A French magazine included one of her posts in a story about fashion activists to follow. Bravo stars and DJ’s started to share her posts with captions like, “Maybe we should all be more like @ana” and “This is what having a platform is all about. Use your voice!”
It should come as no surprise that someone can formulate an online persona with a few taps at a screen. We knew it was possible, we’d watched Caroline Calloway, and Lil Miquela, and overnight celebrity-led campaigns take over our feeds. But you never think it’s going to happen to the quiet fact checker at your favorite magazine, and you especially don’t think it’s going to happen to your social media-averse friend.
Friday came, but Ana didn’t. She told us she quit her job that morning, and that she was going to stay with Ray on Long Island. Our friends were conversing more than they had since high school. Our texts swung between being happy for our introverted friend on her sudden hot girl virality, and genuine concern over the lack of responsiveness and clarity on the situation.
We asked if we could go out east that next weekend for a final farewell to summer, and to meet Ray. She said she had an influencer dinner that weekend. “Wait.. Ray’s an influencer?” I asked. “no lol I am” Ana replied. She’d amassed 20K followers since we’d left the beach house.
We asked how her family felt, and she said they were proud of her. Her mom passed away when we were in middle school, and her dad had always been a bit hands off. We’d been discussing the entire situation with her sister who was in LA and thought it was very impressive that type-A Ana was on her explore pages.
“An… we’re a little confused about what’s going on, this all seems very sudden and we want to hear about your new man. Can we FaceTime tonight?” Ana stopped answering. Over the next few weeks, her photos kept pouring onto our feeds. The lighting became more balanced. The captions became friendlier. The activism became louder. The outfits, kookier and better fitted.
As it turns out, you can’t call the police for someone becoming an it-girl. Especially if they’re alive and well-followed. After weeks of no responses, I tried DMing some of the mutual friends — none of them knew who Ray was. I tried calling her dad, he was hard to reach at best, and impossible to reach at worst. Ana’s sister was trying to become an influencer in Santa Monica with far more difficulty than Ana had. But because of this, it was difficult to bring her to the same level of scrutiny and concern as we were all at.
We haven’t had a real conversation with Ana since September. Her dad and sister say they speak to her weekly, and that she’s thrilled about her new advice column at the women’s magazine. She never posts photos of Ray, but happily talks to her camera about their morning routines and secrets to building boundaries while living together (sponsored by therapy startup). Our group text of 5 remains dark, aside from an occasional throwback photo that pops up on our social media accounts or a birthday text. Ana never answers.
I think it’s very endearing that my friends are trying to piece together my story of becoming @ana. I hope they find their answers, I can’t help them with that. Here’s the thing: I don’t want to be an influencer. I liked my privacy. My job. My friends. My small family.
I didn’t want to stay on Long Island.
I didn’t want to smile for photos.
I don’t want to lie to my dad and my sister.
I didn’t want a stranger to become my boyfriend.
I didn’t want the world to know my face. I don’t know shit about the environment.
But then I met Ray at a party, and he coerced me into staying with him. The truth is, he’s holding me hostage. He stages the shoots. He writes the captions. And he’s behind the camera, with his creepy and forceful smile, and the single phone charger in the house.
THE END
IT’S EMILY NOW. I’ve been writing that short story in my head for a long time now and I just wanted to get it down on paper. I’ve been writing a lot of horror fiction about social media and startup founders and tiny apartments and dinner party guests. Not sure what I’ll do with all the stories yet, but stay tuned. And send me your favorite horror stories!
I loved this!