“Help, I Posted My Nudes On Reddit”: Life Advice From A Very Real Doctor
Welcome back to advice land! This week, the theme is: the internet. Maybe you love it, maybe you hate it, but get this: it’s where you live.
Welcome to Ask Someone Smarter Than You, Junkee’s practical advice column for clever people who need mental, spiritual, career, sex, and dating advice from someone insanely qualified in reading books.
Welcome back to advice land! This week, the theme is: the internet. Maybe you love it, maybe you hate it, but get this: it’s where you live. You’re on the internet right now.
I’m Emma. I’m a very real doctor. And I’m here to help YOU.
What happens online has a very real emotional and psychological impact on how we live our lives – it’s where we get our news, socialise, work, and procure food and clothes – it’s real life, baby!
I’ve written about the convergence of the internet and IRL before and how it has changed our understanding of community, social etiquette and self-representation. It’s something I care a lot about.
Today’s questions are all about what to do when online becomes IRL. We’ve got nudes, memes, and a little thing called ‘electronic mail’! We got it all!
Join me as I preach my life philosophy: ONLINE IS IRL. Peace out!
Help, I Posted My Nudes On Reddit
Dear Doc,
I posted my nudes on Reddit and got recognised on the street. Do I need to do anything? I like posting nudes but I don’t want to be murdered. Thanks.
Love — Screwed Nude
Yuh oh.
My advice is to keep doing what makes you feel good but never at the risk of your own safety. Unfortunately the world is fucked up and there are entitled assholes out there who will read an online image as an IRL invitation.
This is like a version of doxxing where something that started online has manifest in the real world, putting you (potentially) in real harm’s way. To fix this, or at least to stop yourself from being recognised again, there’s a few simple security things we should ALL know and ALL do ALL the time.
- Deleting something doesn’t delete it from the internet. Duh. BUT. It does remove one avenue of people finding that image. If the post with the recognisable nude is still up, I recommend deleting it. It might not help, but it sure doesn’t hurt to try.
- Don’t post public nudes that are easily identifiable if you don’t want to be identified. Another duh. Cover up anything distinctive like birthmarks and tattoos with a strategic hand or item (an elegantly draped sheet or towel, a cloud of vape vapour, a minions bandaid, etc), or position yourself in a way that obscures them.
- Don’t rely on in-app editing to de-identify those nudes. This one is less duh. Some apps (ie. Twitter) do not embed things like stickers or text into the image itself and so anyone with a little tech know-how can get at the original image underneath. That angel emoji covering that prominent tattoo? That can be removed. Upload your pics with the safety edits already on them, don’t edit them in the app.
Post nudes. Do what you want. But be careful. Ok. Thanks. I love you. Bye.
Which Social Media Is Best?
Dear Doc,
My bf only uses Instagram. I only use Twitter. Whenever he shows me a meme I’ve either already seen it, OR, if I haven’t seen it, I feel like I’ve been living under a rock! I can’t win! What should I do?!
From — Meme Queen
Meme culture is a merry-go-round that never stops.
The scenery is incessantly, mesmerisingly changing. A mutation here, a viral outbreak there, an intertextual divergence everywhere. What ding dang fun!
This constant meme merry-go-round runs at different speeds on different social media platforms. Sometimes too fast, sometimes too slow. I’ve seen the best minds of my generation irony-poisoned by the nauseating speed of Twitter. I’ve seen Facebook dabblers move so slowly in the meme ecosystem that they are literally still in 2012.
You and your bf are moving at different meme speeds, yes, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that you are approaching the consumption and sharing of memes as a kind of meme-literacy competition.
Memes are an inherently collaborative medium. They are about co-creating, and changing, and discovering. Memes are dependent on learning and sharing! Sure, the hyper-prevalence of memes is a dangerously pacifying distraction from the endless devastating woes of the world.
But memes are ALSO a community forming device. They are a way of relating to one another. You can’t meme in a vacuum. And everyone can’t always move at the same speed.
My advice for you are your bf is to do nothing.
Keep sharing, even if it’s painful or you have to say “seen that already” a million times. Acknowledge that you can’t ‘win’ at meme culture because it’s not a competition. It doesn’t matter how fast you go. There’s no finish line. It’s a flat circle. A merry-go-round. You participate, or you don’t. Just have fun!
I’m Scared Of Emails
Dear Doc,
My biggest fears/triggers are failure and rejection, and despite that I’ve set myself a massive goal for the first time in my life.
Every single day I check my email compulsively for either opportunities or rejections. I’m scared that if I fail it will trigger me sliding back into comfortable depression and feelings of worthlessness.
I’m trying not to think about it but also I have to think about it to work towards it! Do u have any advice?
Love — Wail Mail
Ah, Schrodinger’s inbox. Yes. I am familiar.
Many days I would like to burn my inbox in a raging digital inferno, erasing everything I have ever sent or received. I hate email. It is devoid of everything good about writing. It’s formal, it’s rigid, it’s disconnected from immediacy and intimacy. Death to email.
Your problem, however, predates emails, and the internet, and computers altogether.
Feeling caught between aspiration and rejection is incredibly human. There are ancient poems written about this feeling. Hell, there are contemporary poems about this feeling!
That terrible feeling of wanting and waiting for a good or bad outcome go hand in hand and I don’t think (sorry) that it can be solved. Waiting is kind of the foundation of wanting things, of having goals and aspirations. Goals don’t exist without waiting because they are by definition yet to be achieved.
So, with this in mind, my advice for the horror that is Schrodinger’s inbox is kind of a bandaid.
Configure you inbox so that you get a notification ONLY when you receive an email from the particular address that is causing your distress. Then, check your inbox as few times as possible a day. Easier said than done, but knowing that the news will come to YOU rather than you having to go and find it in email hell will hopefully bring you some peace of mind in this stressful time of waiting.
Technology is infinitely configurable either in-app or through third party plug-ins. If something digital is stressing you out, you can change that! The ancient adage “there’s an app for that” has never been more true.
Your internet life is your REAL LIFE. And you should feel in charge and in control of that experience.
Need advice? The Practical Advice Store will be open again soon! In the meantime, you can get in touch with the proprietor, Emma, on Twitter @ed_jenko and ask for practical advice!