Reality Bytes

In the late ’90s, I spent several miserable weeks digging myself out from under high school rumors that I had made a sex tape (!) for my 15-year-old boyfriend. It was an awful, lonely experience that seemed to drag on endlessly. I remember thinking, at just 16 years old: Will my life ever be different from this? Will this crap follow me forever?

At the time, I wouldn’t have believed you if you’d told me that the terrible winter of my sophomore year would fade almost entirely from my memory. That it would retreat so thoroughly from my brain that, 25 years later, I would struggle to remember the details. But that’s what happened. I forgot—really, really forgot—about the whole thing.

Looking back, the ordeal was equal parts preposterous and predictable. Preposterous because I was a known goody-two-shoes, a real inspiration-for-Jesus Camp-level teen scold who, both to my credit and my detriment, actually walked the True Love Waits walk (in Jncos and neon-yellow Adidas shell-toes). But that’s probably what made it so predictable too: I was a juicy target for a group of mean-girls-before-Mean Girls who knew exactly how to hit me where it hurt the most.

My long-buried memories of that experience resurfaced when, last month, I read about what Forbes called the “largest-known instance of deepfake pornography made of minors in the United States.” Prosecutors allege that, in 2023, two teenage boys ripped photos from the social media accounts of 60 (!) of their girl peers and used them to produce hundreds of “AI”-altered pornographic videos and images. When I read that the boys reportedly shared the deepfakes with classmates on Discord and “other texting apps,” it hit me hard. I suddenly remembered the moment my phone rang in my bedroom, two giggling dudes on the line asking if I’d make a video for them too. Hanging up only for the phone to ring again as more of my peers were looped into the gossip grapevine.

Become a Paid Subscriber to Read This Post