Fakebook (11 page)

A week after I'd pulled the photo of Amish Kate, I met with Elizabeth at the mega-deli on the corner of Madison Park. Her office was around the corner from mine, so on the rare occasion that we shared a slow day, we always made an effort to grab lunch.

I was still reeling and had spent the week rereading the boring FarmVille posts I'd put up to defuse my Photoshop photo bomb. At least they felt safe. There was no momentum to Fakebook anymore. My thoughts were scattered and my heart wasn't in it. I was scared to make another wrong move, and for the first time since I'd started, I wasn't getting any reaction—there were posts with no likes and no comments.

Fakebook lived on voyeurism, and disinterest was the worst end of this project. As Oscar Wilde once said, “If there is anything more annoying in the world than having people talk about you, it is certainly having no one talk about you.”

Elizabeth grabbed a container of lettuce and handed it to the guy working the salad station, ordering the usual—beets, cranberry-raisins, walnuts, goat cheese, and balsamic.

It was too healthy for me and the funk I was in, so I grabbed a tray and wandered around. Sushi, pizza, Korean barbecue, tacos, wraps…all of it looked pretty good.

“Pretty good” is a low standard in a town where the “very good” version of anything is just a few blocks away, but variety is what made the Manhattan food courts an easy compromise. Besides, the cafeteria setting was appropriate for lunch with a school friend.

The art school bond is a special one. You spend thousands of hours together working on projects, exchanging ideas, helping each other figure them out. You live with each other's frustrations, triumphs, and failures, as you try, as Van Gogh put it, “to break through that iron wall between what I feel and what I express.”

It was over one of these lunches that I'd first told Elizabeth about Fakebook, back when it was still just an idea. She'd loved it and promised to help, and of course she had. Her comments brought a balance to the testosterone-driven ballbusting from Ted and Steve—something I thought would be especially important after the introduction of Amish Kate. If only I'd gotten the chance.

“Dave…” she said, drawing my name out in her endearing, girlish way. “That Photoshop was really bad.”

“I know…” I looked down at the unwieldy piece of barbecue chicken I'd settled on.

“I mean, even the resolutions didn't match. You should always scale things down to the lowest quality image.”

“Yeah, I don't know what I was thinking.” I scooped up a forkful of runny sweet potatoes. They were pretty good. “The really scary thing is I loved it when I made it. I thought it was really funny. It was late—and I think I was just blinded by the joy I get out of doing ridiculous things. I know what you're saying, though. I could have been much more careful. Turns out I can blow it even with a girl I made up.”

Elizabeth was looking back at me with her involuntary compassion.

“Well, maybe the margin of error is over. If you really want to keep doing this, you need to take it seriously. You need to set a shot list and give yourself a library of photos you can use with all sorts of different light settings. Be professional about it.”

“This thing is really…” I tried to get out. “It's sort of a knot of a thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well…it's hard to explain. There are all these threads, and each one I feel a different way about. Part of it is funny, part of it is twisted, part of it is mean or interesting or silly. Like…I feel guilty when people take it seriously. I feel excited and thrilled when people really believe it. I feel empowered when I create a new post and someone goes for it—when I've made something that makes their version of the world a little stranger. It's a crazy feeling.

“But then I feel powerless when I can't control their reactions. This version of myself I created as a joke is more important to people than the real me ever was. It's insane to become jealous of yourself. It's this strange feeling of rejection. At the same time, now that people are turning on him, I feel betrayed. It doesn't make any sense.

“And every time I sit down to write a new Fakebook post or make a new image,” I continued, “I just feel crippled. I tug on any one of those threads, and the whole thing becomes more knotted.”

“Maybe,” Elizabeth said, “you just need to not think so much about it. If it's torturing you, I think you need to either stop doing it or stop worrying about the things that are making it difficult.” She paused. “But I think you should keep doing it.”

She sat there, collecting her thoughts. “It just feels…”

“Yeah…”

We shared an unspoken understanding. We'd spent hours and hours of studio time together. Fakebook, for all its frustrations and headaches, was unique. We both knew the value of a truly original idea. We both knew how rare those ideas were—and how delicate.

After work, I kicked off my shoes, plugged in my laptop, and sat on my unmade bed.

Another true-to-form post. I continued to limp away slowly from anything suspicious. Everything I did on my wall now reeked of caution. I felt like Fakebook was this beautiful but thorny flower I'd discovered but didn't understand. I'd spent the last month trying to protect it by locking it away, but I was just killing it, and I would have kept on killing it if I hadn't clicked onto Matt Riggio's profile.

Trivia night at Houlihans?

That
guy has the audacity to call
my
posts boring?

I couldn't believe it. He didn't even know I was making this up, but he was giving me feedback. It was crazy.

Fake Dave was clearly on the cusp of—or in the middle of—a complete mental breakdown. Didn't these people have the decency to let him unravel in his own way? Or maybe they just couldn't see it. They were too busy projecting—dumping the weight of their fantasies on Fake Dave's shoulders.

And in that knot, out of all the different threads, the chord that was struck was an angry one. At that moment, there was no difference between Fake Dave and Real Dave. After all, they thought he was me. I felt like Maximus in the Colosseum, bellowing out, “
Are
you
not
entertained?
” Because while they may not have known they were an audience, they sure as hell were acting like one.

I was new to the feeling—unprepared for it. At that moment, I resented their rejection.

And realizing how preposterous a feeling that was…made me want to keep Fakebook alive. Yes, it was a messy, horrible knot. But every single thread surprised me. The fact that some of the surprises were terrible and some of the surprises were thrilling only strengthened my belief that this giant, flawed, morally suspect thing had a point—as elusive as that point seemed. I was scared that I'd never discover what it was.

Desperation and pride kicked in. I wasn't going to act like Fakebook was a failure. I was going to push this forward, sputtering engine and all. If I crashed Fakebook into the ground, at least it would be with my hand on the throttle, not the brakes.

For a moment, I'd found my steel. Ted wanted rebellion; Matt wanted nobility. They both wanted a role model. So I gave my audience what they wanted.