Suppose, you’ve woken up on a lightly raining, overcast Tuesday. Your bed is cold, almost frozen. You hear the chatter from downstairs; it’s 7: 46 am. Now what are you going to do first to distract from the less-than-optimal position you’re in? You have to be in your first period in an hour, but your uncomfortableness can simply wait for a minute while you check your phone. Texts? Snapchats? What about Instagram? You hesitate, before clicking on the bright pink gradient of Instagram’s logo.
You open the app to see a cute flick of someone’s outing from the night before, a couple ads for stuff you honestly would buy but won’t, and a throwback post from your second cousin’s wedding from 8 months ago (that you didn’t go to—let’s be clear). Okay, so nothing much there, what about Instagram stories? Those are way more interesting, displaying temporary posts only from the last 24 hours.
As you slowly tap through, getting all the deets on upcoming plans, pictures, polls, or one of those ‘A picture I just like for no reason’ things. Those are getting old, wow. Then come a few of your classmates’ stories, before one pops up plugging a new RHS account to go follow. Let’s click, what kind of new account could have possibly been made overnight?
@rhs_stalktilyoudrop.
“Huh,” you say under your breath. It’s a stalking account; kids are being photographed and followed around, catching their every move. The intimate details of their phones are revealed to the public, with posts ranging from the embarrassing things they do at school, to snaps of students’ outings with their friends.
You end up in a loophole, just scrolling through the compilation of random kids who have gotten 5-6 picture spotlights that reveal all sorts of private things that no one is trying to see or know. But it’s fine, right? Just because the account posted the front of the kid’s house and where their dentist is doesn’t mean it’s weird. I mean, you’re not supposed to be a snitch, right? You’ll just leave that to someone else. Someone will take care of it.
You spend about five more minutes scrolling through each post, weirded out more and more as you go, seeing the odd comment or two of someone being just as confused as you are. But the account somehow hasn’t been discovered enough for anyone to care or say anything.
By now, it’s way past time for you to get up and try to get to your first period class. You spend the morning thinking about how many Instagram accounts your school has, trying to remember and list every one you can think of. @roosevelt_sleepers, @rhs_bestfits, @rhs_affirmations, @rhs_bestbathroom…the list goes on. T-minus six minutes until you have to go start your car, because there’s sleet on your sunshield. You sit down to take three and a half bites of some stale, four-month old plain cheerios, now worried about your impending parking job and the potential for it to be featured on @rhs_terribleparking.
Suddenly, your phone buzzes, lighting up with the notification that there’s been a new post from @rhs_stalktilyoudrop. You click, expecting a continued series of pictures depicting some kid walking into their favorite Chinese-takeout spot, but no.
Your eyes widen and your vision tunnels as you stare at a picture of the backside of your house, where you can see into your bedroom window. There’s you, dancing to an old 2010’s Katy Perry song in the glow of pink disco lights, captured in a photo taken last Sunday night.
And so you do the natural thing, hitting ‘create new account’ and slowly typing out a new username:
@rhs_notifiseeyoufirst.
This was war.
