Probably everyone has an internet persona, to a certain extent. Because of online disinhibition, we feel free to construct ourselves differently than we would offline—for better or worse. We construct our “self” in real life, too, but it seems more intentional online. You can formulate a persona and delete or add things to change your image. You can create a new account and distance yourself from the old one and rebrand entirely, the way corporations do. It may be a bit harder now, since the internet is a lot less anonymous than it used to be and people bring receipts, but it’s still possible.
There’s still a lot of research to be done on how the internet affects our psychology. A lot of articles say the internet—or more specifically, the social internet—is making us more anxious, though that could be a chicken-and-egg situation.[1]
One would think that being able to be whoever we want, to construct a perfect version of ourselves that we can be proud of, on the internet would make us feel good.
The jury’s out on that.
Snotgirl by Bryan Lee O’Malley and Leslie Hung is about a fashion blogger with anxiety and some major allergies. The comic opens with a page depicting both.
Lottie Person is hard to like. She’s mean and rude and jealous and doesn’t have anything nice to say about anyone around her. She is largely unsympathetic—except for the fact that her anxiety is very relatable.
Lottie has constructed an online persona that is perfect and stylish and “fresh.” “The illusion is seamless!” she says.
Except her boyfriend broke up with her, “my friends are all horrible people,” and she has really terrible allergies.
Lottie is constantly worried about her image, and she obsesses over how people might see her. She tends to spiral into anxious, paranoid inner monologues, and quite a few times she is shown in her dark bedroom, obsessing over her online image, snot and tears running down her face.
We are shown Lottie at her worst most of the time, and she almost always looks wide-eyed and anxious—except in the photos she poses in for her blog or when she makes an entrance. She calls the more put-together version of herself “reality” or the “real Lottie,” but she even acknowledges that she’s a fake. She is aware that she’s creating a persona, and she constantly tries to hide the parts of herself that she’s ashamed of. She is a deeply insecure and unhappy person, and maintaining the illusion is draining.
The art itself reflects the disparity between Lottie’s projected image and the truth. There are layers of masks in the book. Leslie Hung’s art and the coloring are bright and fun, even though it’s depicting a rather dark story about anxiety and possibly murder.
Murder? Yes, possibly!
The story takes a turn when Lottie’s new friend appears to die right before her eyes. Lottie calls it a murder and accuses herself of killing her friend, but it’s not clear that that is what happened at all. When the back cover said “she may or may not have killed somebody,” I expected a certain level of mystery, but it is very unclear what actually happened. We witnessed the “murder” through Lottie’s eyes… but did it really happen? What is going on?
Lottie comes off as an unreliable narrator, and we can’t be sure that what we’re shown is actually happening. Is her anxiety clouding her judgment of the scene? Is she just paranoid, or is Charlene really out to get her? Who is Caroline really? Is she some sort of revenant?[2]
At this point, it’s hard to tell where the story is going and with the lack of clues, I feel only half-intrigued. I want to know what happens, but I’m not sure I liked the first volume enough to continue reading.
The meta commentary on social media users and bloggers is the most interesting part of this comic. Recent studies about online interactions and the way we build audiences remind me of Scott Westerfeld’s dystopian novel Extras, which is about a young girl living in a future Japan with a “reputation economy,” and which seems to have predicted social media fame the way Fahrenheit 451 predicted earbuds and portable music players. Snotgirl doesn’t seem to be predicting anything, but it’s definitely grappling with internet fame and the anxieties that come along with it. If anything, I’m interested in seeing what more Snotgirl has to say about that.
Snotgirl: Green Hair Don’t Care (Volume 1) was published in 2017. Here is Bryan Lee O’Malley’s website and here is Leslie Hung’s website. Snotgirl Volume 1 is available for purchase and Volume 2 will be available on May 29. Support your local bookstore if you can, or visit your local library!
[^1] Even though, as John Green says, “Which came first, the chicken or the egg that the chicken clearly came from?”
[^2] My initial theory. As far as I can tell, it still holds.
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