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#[1]The Awl » I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything
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I Am An Object Of Internet Ridicule, Ask Me Anything

by The Awl September 18, 2013

by C. D. Hermelin
oh hi

I moved to New York City, and I needed to make money. I wasn’t having
luck getting a job. It’s a common tale.

My solution was to grab my typewriter that I bought at a yard sale for
10 dollars and bring it to a park. I’d write stories for people, on the
spot — I wouldn’t set a price. People could pay me whatever they
wanted. I knew that I had the gift of writing creatively, very quickly,
and my anachronistic typewriter (and explanatory sign) would be enough
to catch the eye of passersby. Someone might want something specific;
they might just want a story straight from my imagination. I was
prepared for either situation.

I started at Washington Square Park. My cousin joined, which was
particularly nice, since it started raining and he held an umbrella
over my head. Barely anyone stopped, but there was a grand piano player
and dancers to contend with. So I tried the 5th and 59th street
entrance to Central Park, and was lost among the Statues of Liberty,
the bubble guys, the magicians, the stand-up comic, the free hugs guy,
the jugglers. At the Hans Christian Andersen memorial statue, I was
writing post-card size stories for grade schoolers, mostly in the vein
of Pokémon and Disney. I didn’t make a lot of money — only enough money
to grab a slice of pizza on the way home.

When I set up at the High Line, I had lines of people asking for
stories. At seven to 10 minutes per a story, I had to tell people to
leave and come back. It surprised me when they would do just that. I
never had writer’s block, although sometimes I would stare off into
space for the right word, and people watching would say, “Look! He’s
thinking!” Writing is usually a lonely, solitary act. On the High Line
with my typewriter, all the joy of creating narrative was infused with
a performer’s high — people held their one-page flash fictions and read
them and laughed and repeated lines and translated into their own
languages, right in front of me. Perhaps other writers would have their
nerves wracked by instant feedback on rough drafts, but all I could do
was smile.

Each time I went, I’d walk home, my typewriter case full of singles, my
fingers ink-stained. Lots of people were worried about copycats — what
if I saw someone “stealing” my idea? I tried to soothe them. If every
subway guitarist had fights about who came up with the idea to play an
acoustic cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” the underground would be a
violent place. More violent than it already is. Others, perhaps drawn
by the sounds of the typewriter, would stop and just talk to me, watch
me compose a story for someone else. Then they’d shake their head and
tell me that the idea and the execution were “genius.”

Of course, the Internet could be counted on to take me down a peg.

I woke up one day not long after I started “Roving Typist” to a flurry
of emails, Facebook posts, text messages and missed calls. A picture of
me typewriting had made it to the front page of Reddit. For those who
don’t know, being on the front page of Reddit is hallowed ground — the
notoriety of being on the front page can launch careers, start dance
crazes, inspire Hollywood. In other words, ending up on the front page
of Reddit meant a decent chunk of the million-plus people who log on
daily saw my picture.

Posted under the headline [7]“Spotted on the Highline” was me.
RUH ROH

It’s a pretty good picture, I thought. Although my shoes are beat up
and missing their laces, my hands are frozen in a bizarre position, and
that day was too hot for clothes that photograph well, I look deep in
thought. Unfortunately, the two cute girls I was writing a story for
are cropped out.

And so was my sign.

My sign said: “One-of-a-kind, unique Stories While You Wait. Sliding
Scale — Donate What You Can!”

Without the sign, without the context, I definitely look like someone
who is a bit insane. That’s how I thought of it, before I clicked to
look at the hundreds of replies; I figured people were probably
wondering why I would bring my typewriter to a park. And when I started
reading the comments, I saw most people had already decided that I
would bring my typewriter to the park because I’m a “fucking hipster.”
Someone with the user handle “S2011” summed up the thoughts of the hive
mind in 7 words: “Get the fuck out of my city.”

Illmatic707 chimed in: I have never wanted to fist fight someone so
badly in my entire life.

Leoatneca replied: Bet 90% of his high school did to. It’s because of
these guys that bullying is so hard to stop.
typingview

There were hundreds more. A few people were my staunch defenders,
asking the more trenchant commenters why they cared so much. Others
started to wax nostalgic about their own typewriters. But the
overwhelming negativity towards me, and the “hipster scum” I
represented, was enough to make me get up from my computer, my heart
racing, my hands shaking with adrenaline.

As a member of the first generation to freely and gladly share my
pictures, videos and thoughts online, I’d always — until now,
anyway — adopted a “What’s the worst that could happen?” attitude,
mixed with an “Everyone else is doing it!” mentality towards my online
presence. Many of the best things in my life couldn’t have happened
without sharing these pieces of myself online — meeting favorite
authors at bars thanks to Twitter, getting another chance at a lost
crush thanks to Facebook. And yet, I still felt thrown when I was
presented with an image of myself that I couldn’t control. Yes, I know
that I am pretty much always being watched (especially at a beautiful
tourist attraction in New York City, doing something partly designed to
attract attention) but that didn’t prepare for me for the reality of
seeing myself taken out of context.

I did worry, when I started typewriting, that my stories would make it
online somehow, and they would be ripped to shreds by literary,
high-minded commenters. In this unrealistic dream world, I was going to
defend their quick composition, their status as literary souvenirs of
the city, the difficulty in writing a story while the person who is
paying you looks over your shoulder, and another two or three people
ask you questions while kids are asking if they can “just press
one key.”

Of course I sat back down. Of course I read every single comment. I did
not ready myself mentally for a barrage of hipster-hating Internet
commenters critiquing me for everything: my pale skin, my outfit, my
hair, my typing style, my glasses. An entire sub-thread was devoted to
whether or not I had shaved legs. It was not the first time I had been
labeled a “hipster.” I often wear tight jeans, big plastic-frame
glasses, shirts bought at thrift stores. I listen to Vampire Weekend,
understand and laugh at the references in “Portlandia.” I own and
listen to vintage vinyl. The label never bothered me on its own. But
with each successive violent response to the picture of me, I realized
that hipsters weren’t considered a comically benign undercurrent of
society. Instead, it seemed like Redditors saw hipsters and their ilk
as a disease, and I was up on display as an example of depraved
behavior.

The most positive comments were the ones where I was compared to famous
people — ”Doctor Who”’s David Tennant was one, the heart-of-gold porn
star James Deen was another. I took the bait, eventually, and commented
myself. I [8]explained that it was me, that I was not just bringing my
typewriter to the High Line for the hell of it — it’s pretty heavy, for
one, and for two, I don’t really like writing outside. I explained that
I was writing stories for people. In my explanation of my cause, it
became just that — a “cause.” I knew, from the smiles on people’s faces
when they saw me out typing, that I was out in the world as a positive,
day-brightening entity. Bashing me was like hating on an ice
cream truck.

Luckily, people agreed with me. After I posted, the message board
thread’s climate changed immediately. Not unlike real life, people were
complimentary and kind. Many people deleted their mean comments — one
person was so embarrassed for threatening to smash my typewriter that
he apologized to me, and then went through and started trying to make
other haters apologize.

My favorite exchange was between “I_thrive_on_apathy” and “dlins”:

i_thrive_on_apathy: What the fuck is he going to do with that typed
page? Scan it?

Dlins: you do realize things have value even if they’re not
digitized, right?

i_thrive_on_apathy: Huh?

The reaction, then, had nothing to do with hipsters. It was a hatred of
people that need to stand out for standing-out’s sake. That realization
was at once positive and negative — people didn’t hate me because I was
a hipster, they hated me because I looked like I was nakedly desperate
for attention, and had gone about that attention-grabbing by glomming
on to marginalized trends.

It only took about 12 hours from when I saw the thread and commented
for people to stop commenting almost completely. The post quickly
disappeared from the front page. To tell the truth, I was disappointed.
I thought something might come of it — a real job, maybe. What better
proof is there for me to show that I have that go-getter’s attitude?
Instead, my moment of Internet notoriety disappeared.

I thought.

Reddit’s community has never seen an image they couldn’t write all over
using white Impact font and re-post, and only a few days afterwards,
someone had appropriated the picture of me and wrote, [9]“You’re not a
real hipster until you’ve taken a typewriter to the park” in giant
white letters in the unused space above and below my body. Another
torrent of meanness followed on that thread, although many Redditors
with good memories came to my defense.

Now that the meme was created, with content ready-made, it was taken
from Reddit and re-posted all over the Internet. It was “pinned” over
30,000 times on Pinterest, the folks at 9gag [10]shared it on their
various personal Facebook pages nearly 9,000 times. I was awarded the
[11]“Look at Me!” award for October 2012 from “diehipster dot com.”
Well-meaning friends took screenshots of Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter
anytime they saw the picture posted or mentioned. I had gone from
Reddit curiosity to “Internet meme.” My ex-girlfriend texted to ask if
I was okay. My parents finally saw it. My dad didn’t know why I had
dressed “funny.” My mom was understandably worried for me, flashing
back to the times I was bullied in high school. I knew it made her feel
powerless, just like it used to feel when I came home early from school
because someone threatened to pull a knife on me. Now, it was dozens of
someones — faceless and impossible to control.

At lunch with a friend who was trying to get her web series off the
ground, she asked me how I was dealing. “Okay,” I said, “I think it
would bother me more if people weren’t so complimentary in real life.”
Thinking about her own troubles in creating something viral, she
remarked, “It’s too bad you can’t figure out a way to exploit this
somehow.” Other than sometimes posting my Twitter handle on pages where
I saw the picture, I couldn’t do much. Part of me wanted to ignore it
all, dismiss it like a pop-up blocker dismisses fake contest
possibilities. Still, for every hateful comment online, there was a
real person who picked up a short story and promised to buy a novel,
if/when I wrote one.

But the vain part of me wanted to make sure the entire world knew that
I wasn’t asking for attention because of some base urge to be noticed
and photographed. Instead, I wanted people to know that I was nice,
approachable, and able to write pretty good short stories really
quickly. And that my wardrobe was more a function of my budget than
hipster assimilation.

Even after that deluge, nothing happened — the Internet has both a long
memory and the attention of a goldfish. I had been cast aside for a far
cuter hipster puppy. I knew that the Internet is also a content
recycling machine, but that each time the picture showed up now was
more like the last couple kernels of popcorn popping after the
microwave is turned off.

I was surprised when my ex-girlfriend called me to talk about the meme.
“Would you mind if I wrote an article about this for xoJane?” The
website she referred to had a series of essays they dubbed “It Happened
To Me” that they sprinkled in amongst feminist-leaning news and
features. “I want to talk about how all of this makes me feel. You, all
over the Internet, right after you dumped me.”

We had only been broken up for about a month and a half after having
been together for two years. I knew that she was still hurting, and I
still felt — still feel — guilty for hurting her. I thought that
perhaps it was going to be good to excise some demons.

I asked how much they paid (very little) and if she would let me read a
draft before she sent it to her editor. She said yes. I was surprised
to realize that people in my life were being affected by this
negligible level of Internet celebrity. In the meantime, I had started
a real person job at a leasing office, and my MFA program in creative
writing at the New School. I didn’t have time to go out and type. Some
people in the program recognized me from the Internet. Once or twice,
someone stopped and asked if I was “that typewriter guy.” I felt secure
in the knowledge that whatever my ex wrote, I would be fine.

Even though she didn’t end up showing it to me before it was published,
her article — [12]“It Happened to Me: I Got Dumped By A Meme” — wasn’t
mean-spirited. In fact, it was sweet — she barely talked about our time
together, and when she did, it was fond. The article instead focused on
the fact that even though she had unfriended and blocked me on every
social media outlet she could find, I was still around, posted to her
Facebook page, dragged through the mud on forums. She ended the piece:

“I hope this meme fades as quickly as it appeared. For my sake, and for
The Ex, I hope that the Internet’s hive mind soon finds another hipster
target to jab. Finally, I hope that my next boyfriend is Amish, because
it seems way easier to avoid those guys online.”

Unfortunately, her article ended up casting me in the same light that
the picture did — she never explained that I was busking with my
typewriter, and the comments section blew up all over again. Because I
had broken up with her, the army of xoJane commenters were especially
nasty. JaneJaneJane wrote, “He looks like a dong and there are 1,000
more jagbags like him that you’d have to weed through in NYC before you
find a cool, real-deal fella. Not to make light of your heartbreak, but
consider yourself lucky. Seriously. What an assdweller.”

The top-rated comment, by someone who called themselves “Rutabaga,”
went, “Sounds like you dodged a bullet to me. My first thought seeing
that picture is that he looks absolutely insufferable.” My ex
accidentally posted my personal Twitter, which has links to my website,
writing and LinkedIn account. All were fodder for ridicule. She called
to apologize, and I ranted back to her, mad that she hadn’t sent me the
article so I could have at least been painted in a completely true
light. Again, I went down into the comment rabbit hole, but the climate
didn’t change like before. My intended typewriter mission didn’t matter
to this crew — what mattered was I broke the author’s heart. I wasn’t
going to change minds, so I closed the tab, and I tried not to think
about it.

The day after the first, un-memeified picture was posted to Reddit, I
went out with my typewriter, very nervous. I tweeted on my
[13]“@rovingtypist” Twitter account that Redditors should stop by, say
hello, talk about the post if they wanted. Someone responded
immediately, told me that I should watch out for bullies — the message
itself was more creepy than he probably meant it to be. I was nervous
for nothing; a few Redditors came out, took pictures with me, grabbed a
story. I was mostly finished for the evening when Carla showed
up — Carla was the Brazilian tourist who took the picture of me and put
it up onto Reddit. She was sweet and apologetic for the outpouring of
hate, as bewildered by it as I was. She took a story as well, although
I can’t remember what it was about. I messaged her when I first saw the
picture posted with the meme text, letting her know that her picture
had been appropriated. “I’m not concerned about it,” she said.

Hers was the position to take, and one I should have adopted earlier.

For all the hateful words that were lobbed at me, it barely ever
bubbled over from the world of online forums and websites. I received
zero angry emails, only a few mean tweets. My Facebook was never broken
into and vandalized — my typewriter remains unsmashed, no one has ever
threatened violence towards me in real life. Instead, there are these
pockets of the web that are small and ignorable, filled with hate for a
picture of me, for this idea of a hipster — for the audacity of
bringing a typewriter to a park.

A few months later, when Christy Wampole wrote [14]an essay for the New
York Times bemoaning hipsters and their devotion to irony, I couldn’t
help but feel empathy for all those tossed onto the web as pitiful
avatars of hipsterdom. Wampole had inadvertently joined the ranks of
Internet commenters who make vast, sweeping judgments based on careless
observation. It was a strange experience to watch the Internet’s
vitriol encapsulated as a call to action — a call for dismissal,
really — from the New York Times. When I hear someone labeled as a
“hipster,” I make sure to have the opposite response. I take a second
look. What Wampole, and a whirlwind of Internet commenters don’t
understand is, usually, the hipster label is a compliment, a devotion
to a self-evident truth.

Originally, it felt silly labeling my venture a “cause” while I
defended myself to an anonymous horde — but now it feels anything but.
The experience of being labeled and then cast aside made me realize
that what many people call “hipsterism” or, what they perceive as a
slavish devotion to irony, are often in fact just forms of extreme,
radical sincerity. I think of Brooklyn-based “hipster” brand Mast
Brothers Chocolate, which uses an old-fashioned schooner to retrieve
their cacao beans, because the energy is cleaner, because they think
that’s how it should be done. I think of the legions of Etsy-type
handmade artist shops, of people who couldn’t make money in their
profession, so found a way to make money with their art.

While I hung up my typewriter keys and stationery for the winter
(typing inside is fairly loud — how did they focus on anything back in
the 60s?), this summer I’ve started going back out once a week. People
are as complimentary and delighted as ever. No one has mentioned the
meme to me yet, although it still lives its own life; BuzzFeed used it
a few months ago in [15]a series of pictures that promised to make you
“black out with rage.” I try not to click when I see that someone,
somewhere, has found it again. I prefer to let these little cesspools
of cyberspace fester and then stagnate, forgotten as they should be,
secure in the knowledge that I am doing something that matters to me.

C.D. Hermelin is a 26-year-old writer living in Brooklyn. He is
[16]on Twitter.
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