Spinning My Hamster Wheels
Last weekend I went to a holiday party with a few friends. We had a $30 dollar limit for a white elephant gift exchange, and Mark and I decided to push the limits. We came with a hamster.
As fervent animal lovers, we knew this was a risk. Albeit, it was a calculated one. In our group of six, at least one was mourning the departure of her roommate’s cat. If she wasn’t willing to house our rodent, my 10-year-old cousins were on deck for the best Christmas gift ever.
Might I add that hamsters are a low maintenance pet. They are a 2 year commitment at most, provided they don’t escape and die in your walls.
Not that I’m speaking from experience.
None of our contingency plans ended up being necessary. When our friend Alex opened his gift, he immediately assumed the role of pet parent. The group set up his cage while he researched common treats and advanced care.
I’m told the hamster is settling into his new life nicely.
Multiplying Like Rabbits
While the evening was pure joy, the next morning took a turn. I made and posted a video to TikTok. In it, you see us purchase, gift, and coo over the hamster. In my eyes it was wholesome.
The internet had a different opinion.
Within hours the video had 20,000 views, more than 600 likes, and a slew of comments calling me an animal abuser. One user, in particular, felt the need to say “Boomers should know better.”
The speed of reaction sent me down an anxiety spiral. At first, I tried to explain myself, replying to comments about how happy the hamster is now and that he was never in any danger. I said “thank you” to the so-called hamster experts explaining that we needed to get him a bigger wheel or 40-gallon tank. As if a $300 aquarium is a worthy investment for a $14 dollar potato with fur.
A few minutes later I’d be laughing at the pure insanity of it all. Alice Cooper used to bite the heads off bats on stage. Why is this gift hamster the PETA problem of the month?
Ultimately, the stress forced me to change my privacy settings and disable comments. I had nightmare visions of being highlighted on morning show segments for animal cruelty or irresponsible gift giving. At my worst moments, I reevaluated what we had done. Maybe I was in the wrong and just couldn’t see it. The anti-vax equivalent of hamster care.
Guilt became my strongest reaction
It takes a surprisingly little amount of harsh comments to make me feel fragile and drained. This wasn’t how I pictured my content getting attention. I wouldn’t spend all these hours writing if I just wanted internet notoriety. There are, evidently, quicker ways to get famous.
Eventually, my panic took an unfortunate, though expected turn. Why do I post to TikTok in the first place? Clearly, I’m not built for critique, and becoming an influencer isn’t my end goal. If I want to be a writer, couldn’t I just do it in silence?
The Rat Race
At the same time, I feel immense pressure to put myself out there. People don’t get book deals without a history of success.
In our digital world, everyone has the potential to turn their hobbies into a career. There’s endless possibility to be a travel blogger, amateur chef, or armchair stylist. All that opportunity quickly becomes a mindset that everyone SHOULD be doing something to set themselves apart.
Factor in economic unrest, inflation, global warming, constant career changes, and an abundance of over-educated job applicants, and the pressure is clear. If you aren’t standing out, you’re falling behind.
Women in particular feel the need to “have it all.” We have unbelievable amounts of pressure to be the independent career woman AND mom with a tiny waist, perky butt, successful side hustle, designer bag, clean house, and a hot husband. Every scroll through Instagram is a reminder of something you don’t have.
With so many voices vying for attention, the expectation is that you have a personal brand locked and loaded practically from the womb. This pressure to define who I am online is part of why I started the blog in the first place. Having a portfolio of work behind me felt like the first of many steps on the path to “author.”
Hey, that’s how Carrie Bradshaw got her book deal – don’t blame me for dreaming.
Melissa Leong talks about her experience self-publishing. It’s not enough to write the book, you gotta hustle to get it out there: I had carved a place for myself out of nothing. That is the real battle of an indie author.
So this is the model. Outside of work hours, I slog along to build my brand, finesse my style, and learn as I go. I’m feeding my inner workaholic and forcing myself to learn tools like TikTok to build a readership, one that might follow me through a shaky debut or genre change.
With all that time focused on creating my place online, it’s sometimes impossible to remember why I started. The writing gets trumped by the website building, social media panning, and gifs. It’s easy to get wrapped up in the results instead of the enjoyment. Where there is work, perfectionism is never far behind.
When a misstep yields online harassment, it all becomes too much. The existential dread begs me to ask, “what is it all for?”
A 2015 article by Ann Friedman perfectly encapsulates the stress of maintaining your image:
A personal brand… is “something that you actively have to manage online, offline, in your organization, in your industry, and on social media.” Which means there are dozens of opportunities every day to question whether you’re doing it right. Is this crop top on-brand for a networking happy hour? Is this joke tweet-worthy or something I should merely text to a friend? Is this stupid assignment I accepted in order to make rent detracting from my reputation too much? Life is not always on-brand. In the best-case scenario, a brand keeps you focused in a world of unlimited options. In reality, though, it’s yet another source of professional pressure.
The other marker of a personal brand is that the work is never done. Brands are ever-evolving, and no one wants to stay stagnant. There are no breaks in “being yourself.”
Maybe that’s why it stings so much when something doesn’t land – everything we post is overanalyzed to begin with. This shit takes effort, and I thought “spontaneous hamster-gifter” fit my online persona.
Is that a brand mistake, or do the masses just not like me?
Cancelling Sunset
I am not the first person to receive scrutiny online. My instance is hardly mentionable. Cancel culture is running rampant, and clickbait is trapping the news cycle almost as much as its readers.
A recent victim, Ben Affleck, is being ripped apart for allegedly saying his problem drinking was caused by his marriage to Jennifer Garner. In reality, she has supported him through most of his lows. The sound bite came from a much longer, much more nuanced conversation he had with Howard Stern.
But long and nuanced doesn’t hook viewers. Slander does.
We only post slivers of our lives on social media, and our characters are judged based on those fragments. My entire TikTok profile is filled with videos of my pet rabbit, Bruce. Our “Saturday Snack Time” is my favourite kind of content to post.
Apparently I’m also an animal abuser. One wrong snapshot, and suddenly the rest of who I am and what I do online doesn’t matter.
Cancel culture doesn’t account for personal growth or grey area. We cast aside those who we think have wronged us, but do we ever deal with the underlying problem?
Psychology Today has likened mass cancelling to symptoms of PTSD. When we suppress the problem (cancel), we quickly forget it ever existed. We’re pushing down those bad feelings and refusing to look at issues head-on. Instead, we begin hunting for the next hamster-sadist to bully on the internet.
For example, how much are we talking about changes we can make to protect young gay men in Hollywood vs. how much we’re trying to remove Kevin Spacey from our screens?
We so desperately want the world to be better that we’ve started eliminating anything distressing with organized action. Our avoidance is costing us progress, and not only societally. Our ability to process, understand, and cope is undermined by the speed at which we banish the guilty.
Cancel culture is only getting more intense. Gen Z has taken to it like a vocation. In a study on workplace bullying, 19% of Zoomers polled said that they have attempted or succeeded at cancelling someone.
What a strange point of pride.
Smash That Like Button
Besides making me feel awful, I wonder what end goal my harassers had in mind. Did they want me to send the hamster back to PetSmart? Did they want me to become one of them?
It seems more like they wanted to let me know I was worthless and move on. Get that 40-gallon tank for your hamster, or don’t bother showing your face here…. Thank you, next.
I’m not sure how kindly they would have taken to dialogue with differing opinions.
With comments no longer rushing in, I partially feel like I overreacted. Approximately a tenth of the people who liked my video commented that I was evil. A few users even came to my defense. With a PR lens, it wasn’t that bad.
Still felt like shit though.
As far as TikTok users go, sometimes I do feel like a boomer. I can’t imagine what this experience would have been like as a teenager. I’ve cried over this a few times, and my brain is, supposedly, fully formed.
The pressure to exist online and the rigidity of how we exile those that make mistakes is a deadly combo. It’s like playing Squid Game with your reputation - the rues are always changing, the advantages are short-lived, and the stress is almost unbearable.
When it comes to my writing, I have one phrase that I say before posting each week’s blog: don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
Now though, I’m not sure that I feel so lenient. I’m still waiting for PETA to knock down my door, and it’s only a matter of time before I mess up again.
At least the hamster is happy - I guess that’s what matters the most.
