Well. In addition to this season bringing the 10th anniversary of the iPhone and the 16th anniversary of September 11th, it appears we’re also experiencing the 10th anniversary of Chris Crocker’s “Leave Britney Alone” video.
It’s not something I had marked on my calendar, but it does remind me that it’s been ten whole years since Dan Savage suggested I go meet this interesting guy who’d gone viral from his grandma’s basement. This was a few months before the “Leave Britney Alone” video appeared, and back during a bygone era when going viral from your grandma’s basement was a new kind of phenomenon—an “Escape from Real Bitch Island,” as I saw it.
To get to Chris, whose real last name and location I had to promise not to disclose, I boarded a nonstop flight to a former Confederate state, then climbed aboard a tiny propeller-powered plane, which took me to a small regional airport. Next came a drive in a rental car to a hotel sandwiched between two rural highways.
The following morning, Chris was sitting in my passenger seat. He was wearing low-rise jeans, a pinstriped velvet blazer, and a white hoodie.
When I wrote “Escape from Real Bitch Island,” I thought it was pretty amazing that one persecuted, misfit kid could use the Internet to send up “entertaining distress signals” from a Southern town that was hostile toward him, and then perhaps parlay his online persona into a reality show that would eventually be his ticket out.
Ten years later, a guy with a reality show and a strong social media persona is President of the United States.
As they say, technology is a double-edged sword.
The lessons Chris takes from “Leave Britney Alone” after ten years: Don’t get too riled up about the awful things people say about you online, “let the haters kick fucking rocks,” and never forget that the things you put online last forever.
(Unless, of course, you’re a Russian agent putting up fake event posts designed to stoke anti-immigrant sentiment during a US presidential election. In that case, apparently, the stuff you put online gets minimized and deleted by Facebook.)
