April 4th was my mother’s birthday. My husband and I decided to take her out to dinner in a cozy restaurant with a gorgeous view of the Mediterranean sea. The restaurant was packed. It’s currently Ramadan, a holy month in Islamic faith, and everyone was out for Iftar that evening, breaking their fast, including my mom.
The dinner was a buffet style feast, and at some point I found myself alone at the table taking in the view but also wondering what the hell took my family so long to come back, so I turned around to look for them. To my surprise, there was a phone in my face. Not mine. Not one of my family members’. It was a stranger’s phone, shoved in my face. This woman was filming a video of the view with the back of my non-consensual head as the center. The director of this video was unapologetic and didn’t even flinch at my turning around, she simply continued her recording as she slowly walked away. I was dumbfounded.
Two days later, after a nice run by the beach, my husband and I spotted a group of people doing some sort of workout and getting ready to go into the water. With my recent love for cold plunges, we decided to inquire about the activity. After talking to the coach who explained to us what Aqua Walking is (a cardio based workout to get the blood pumping and then go into the water up to the waistline to continue said workout), we were asked to pose for pictures. At this point, we showed interest in possibly joining the team but never fully committed. We froze and reluctantly posed for the photos that would later be posted on the team’s Facebook page.
Walking back home, I felt anxious about the encounter and texted the coach who gave me his number to politely ask him to not post our photos. (Would you look at that boundary work?) However, I know, to this day, that my and my husband’s photos exist in this alternate universe. Somebody’s phone.
Needless to tell you that I was excited about joining the Aqua Walking team up until that moment.
Both of these events unsettled me to my core. I didn’t like them, I still don’t. I felt stripped of my agency as a human being who didn’t consent to being in the woman’s sea view video and deeply disturbed as I posed for a photo for a stranger. I realize that I might have given my reluctant consent to the coach’s bizarre request, but it seemed impolite at the moment. Just like it seemed impolite to refuse my first boyfriend’s kiss after months of dating even though I wasn’t ready. I assume you get what I’m saying.
Megan Garber wrote about this phenomenon in The Atlantic. In the terrific article titled “We’re Already Living in the Metaverse”, Megan recounts moments from the internet, specifically TikTok, when we ceased being individuals and transformed into unwilling characters in someone else’s story. She describes people’s constant need for entertainment being of greater importance than other people’s consent. “The people on our screens look like characters, so we begin to treat them like characters.” she writes.
As someone who’s anxiety-ridden more than half the time, the idea of existing in somebody else’s realm terrifies me. Hell, I’m trying to exist peacefully in mine.
I refuse to exist in someone else’s world, or the Metaverse, if you will. The idea invokes an immense sense of violation. No one will know from just looking at me that I have an anxiety disorder, and no one will know that filming a video or snapping a photo of me might be detrimental to my mental health, but they shouldn’t have to know in order to respect the space I occupy as a human being on this earth who doesn’t want to exist in another world unknowingly. They shouldn’t have to know about my mental health issues in order to not dehumanize me.
I always find myself randomly bombarded by this thought, and every time that it rears its ugly head, I am terrified - anxious. There’s always that possibility that I’m in someone’s video or photo in public. The feeling of having no agency over my body, my existence and my place in the world makes me enraged, but also terribly sad. The voyeurism behind it feels disturbingly perverted.
Warren Susman wrote. “Every American was to become a performing self.” Or Tunisian, in this case. And while I fully support whoever chooses this path for themselves, and I frankly don’t care, it’s just not for me, and you can’t force me to exist anywhere other than in the space that I choose to inhabit. Besides the many other reasons behind my choice to erase my presence in the realm of most social media, choosing to tangibly exist in this world of the here and now was a big one. How is it fair that you force me to still appear in a vast universe I left a long time ago?
Megan Garber writes “In a functioning society, ‘I’m a real person’ goes without saying. In ours, it is a desperate plea.” But I don’t want to plead or appeal to you the why, I expect you to be decent and respect my agency.
After all these years of research and findings about the relation between consent and mental health, have we learned nothing? Have we learned nothing about privacy? When do we stop existing purely for people’s entertainment, and start existing solely to be? When will we learn that decency trumps views and likes?