The kids are all ask
In which the Internet makes us a little braver (and sometimes, meaner).
MANILA, Philippines - Ask.fm is a curious thing that runs on curiosity. Put up a profile within this dark niche on the Internet and anyone can send you questions, under a username or anonymously. I set mine up a few months ago, on the heels of a few other friends. I claim I did so out of boredom, but as I linked it on my Twitter account and sat back in apprehension, I recognized the same old need that welds my hand to my smartphone at all hours of the day: the near-desperate need to connect, if only through a screen. Anyone, I thought, hitting refresh, ask me anything.
Since then I’ve received nearly 2,000 mostly anonymous queries, including the unpublished ones that are either too rude or too revealing. In addition to a battery of “How do I...†questions on everything from makeup to making out, I’ve received compliments, threats, insults about my hopes and dreams, gossipy blind items, and a suicidal cry for help that I ended up addressing over e-mail. I’ve also made friends. Some remain solely on my Ask, continuing mundane back-and-forth conversations, recognizable by names I assign them or that they choose for themselves. Others cross over to the real world, their actual human bodies coming up to mine at events to introduce themselves. “I follow your Ask.fm,†is the new “I read your blog,†and rightfully so. A thorough read of my Profile, under the assumption that the people sending in questions are around my age group, is a not-so-random sampling of the Millennial’s general concerns.
Many questions are personal, some inquisitive, some invasive. “What color lipstick are you wearing in that selfie?†is common. Variations on “What’s your job like?†is also on there. The constant “Where will you be tonight?†is creepy. When my relationship status on Facebook changed to confirm my boyfriend’s existence, I received no less than 15 questions about his past and mine, whether we deserved each other, and what could be done to convince me otherwise. All anonymous, of course.
Malice abounds when you don’t have to be responsible for what you say. Some delete their accounts because of anonymous hate. One of them is a beauty maven, and even as she was writing incredibly helpful posts on skin care, she was receiving jaw-dropping insults. Other contacts keep their accounts active, fielding almost-daily abuse that ranges from subtle, to lewd, to downright racist.
“You’re pretty for a brown girl,†is one I’ve decided to publish.
Most questions I receive, however, are innocent. Most are curious, surprisingly, about the world, or at least the world according to Wikipedia. “What are you reading now and what do you think about it?†is something I often get, and my weekly answers have quickly replaced my dream of a book blog. “What do you think of this?†is the prelude to hefty issues: existentialism, bullying, sexism, and Deleuze & Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus. While it’s comforting to know we aren’t all navel-gazing, that we are still so hungry to learn, it’s also disconcerting that we are willing to accept a stranger’s opinion in place of advice, to readily nod our collective heads at someone’s possibly uninformed breakdown of social issues. If anything, the anonymity of Ask.fm reminds you of the responsibility of a name.
“I’m not Millennial enough to be a part of Ask.fm,†a friend tweeted. “It’s the idea of hiding nothing and concealing everything at the same time,†she said when pressed for detail. I look over my answers and wonder if any of them have ever really helped anybody, or if they were all meant to help me.
We Millennials are accused of narcissism. It’s easy to chalk up Ask.fm as yet another exercise in who can shout the loudest or sing the sweetest, but I believe our collective self-image is much more complex than that. “How do I improve my self-esteem,†people ask. “How to gather the resolve to venture into the great unknowable,†wrote another. “I hate my face,†said, I presume, someone else entirely.
After a while, the Asks are no longer mere questions; they’re messages that just happen to end with question marks.
“How do I become friends with you?†we write to each other. “If I ran into you in person, can I say hello? May I take a picture with you?†we write to each other. “How do I tell her that I love her?†we beg.
We write back to the nameless, we cross our fingers and hope we got our own message across. We are all equally lost, as lost as the generations before us, but we’ve found new ways to navigate toward each other.
I don’t have a degree in anything other than literature. I can’t prescribe medicine. I’ve destroyed relationships and friendships beyond repair. Yet I keep answering questions simply because it’s fascinating to know what people want to know. I don’t know who you are, and who am I to tell you what to do, but I’m listening.
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