As a teenager, I kind of went viral – and the most amazing thing about it is that it had absolutely no impact on my life. It was the summer holidays in 2006, and my friends Jessie, Emma, and I decided to film ourselves singing along to our favorite song. We were overheated and hyperactive, jumping up and down and headbanging, stretching our arms to the sky as we confessed to our mamas that we’d “just killed a maaaaaan” before asking Scaramouche if he’d do the fandango.
Later, I added a couple of captions to the video suggesting we were drunk, even though I was 14 and the closest I’d ever come to being buzzed was the pure placebo effect of holding a glass bottle of J2O. Then – for reasons I can no longer remember – I uploaded the video to YouTube a month later, on September 19, 2006, under the title “Bohemian Crap-sody.”
The comments trickled in at first, then came the flood. “There is a special place for girls like you in hell,” one man wrote. “I now understand why people become serial killers,” another offered. A much more direct message – my personal favorite death threat – simply said: “They must die!” The video ended up with 48,526 views. And sure, okay, I might have stretched the definition of “viral” a bit there, but it’s worth remembering that in May 2006, the most-subscribed YouTube channel didn’t even have 3,000 followers. And more than 100 pages of hate comments will never not feel like a lot.
You’d think this experience might have left a scar, but I didn’t even mention it in my teenage diary. Five years later, in 2011, an almost-14-year-old named Rebecca Black posted her debut music video, “Friday,” and went painfully viral – the song became the most disliked YouTube video that year. Black had to drop out of school because of intense bullying, and the police even got involved after she received death threats. In the years that followed, the same thing happened to many other teenage girls. One 17-year-old from California, Lauren Willey, also couldn’t return to school after going viral, and later developed an eating disorder that she partly blames on the hate comments.
Social media changed a lot between my video and these ones, but it has transformed even more since then – so much so that the UK government wants to ban under-16s from the platforms. People have always hated teenage girls, of course, and death threats have never been new. But once upon a time, the internet was a place you visited, a place you could leave. No one at school saw my video, and no one could easily screenshot it, download it, or send it to each other’s phones, which meant I had the power to erase every last trace. Today, the internet is all around us, all the time, and many of us feel trapped. It’s no wonder that a Yahoo/YouGov poll found this April that more than half of Gen Z adults “have avoided expressing themselves freely online for fear of coming across as cringe.”
As a debut children’s author, I’ve spent much of the last few years reconnecting with my younger self. Rereading my teen diaries and rewatching my sort-of-viral video has made me think about how teenage life has changed since I was a teen. When I was young, I was cringe – and I was free. My experiences with “Bohemian Crap-sody” reveal a lot about how children’s dreams and limits have shifted, and how today’s internet can hold them back. But other traces of my younger self online also tell a more complicated story – about the mistakes young people make, and the conflict between being forced to remember and desperately trying to forget.
I don’t know why we filmed our video. I do know that we’d been out playing in the local river, and we’d eaten a truly ridiculous amount of fizzy strawberry laces. Maybe it was just for fun.The sheer novelty of being able to record anything that inspired us was incredible—the webcam might as well have been the printing press for how much it changed our lives. So we set ourselves up in front of the computer in my family’s mint-green dining room and sang Bohemian Rhapsody—at one point so passionately that I hit my head on the ceiling light.
Back then, a funny feature of YouTube let you reply to videos with another video, linking them together. I set our video as a response to the real Bohemian Rhapsody, so everyone who played the music video would see our version right underneath it (that’s how we got so many views). Watching it now, I can see that I kept shushing my friends or checking the door was shut, clearly embarrassed that my parents or siblings might hear. It’s funny to think my fear of being seen didn’t extend to the entire internet.
Since I switched the video from public to private many times over the years, the comments are all gone now—but I can still read them through my old inbox, because YouTube used to email you every time someone commented (and from 2008 on, the comment text was included in the email). Digging through my teen inbox like this makes me feel a bit like an archaeologist, searching for memories.
Shortly after Christmas in 2007, my friend Emma emailed to say she’d been reading the comments on the video and “they’re mean.” My reply was casual, full of the unstoppable ego of youth. “There are, like, five nice ones, though,” I wrote before a smiley face emoji, adding, “And a few people just wanna assault us, s’all good.” Only I didn’t use the word “assault,” and neither did the commenters—there were numerous rape threats.
The reason we angered so many men to the point of threatening us is simply because they were dumb. I titled our video “Bohemian Crap-sody” to show that our singing was terrible—our cover was seriously lacking in pitch, harmony, and hitting a single note correctly. But the commenters took the name as an insult to the song—they thought we were personally attacking Freddie Mercury, and told us he was “shaking his head in shame in his grave.” While the threats, slurs, and words like “sluts” and “slags” under the video aren’t funny at all, looking back at some comments now makes me laugh until I cry. “U look like the aunts from james and the giant peach,” one person wrote. “Please respectably kill yourselves” still really intrigues me. And I love the brilliantly written: “Each of you are despicably ugly in your own special way.”
I have no real explanation for why this didn’t bother me at the time, except maybe that it felt new, that any attention seemed like good attention at that age, and—as I said—it had zero impact on my real life. I must have known the video was a bit embarrassing before posting it, otherwise why would I have tried to seem cool by pretending we were drunk? But I wasn’t embarrassed enough to hide it away for good until I turned 18. Maybe I thought people on the internet were a strange part of society, rather than, as it is now, literally everyone. Or maybe it’s because the horror stories hadn’t happened yet, so I didn’t even realize what could happen when people online got angry. And perhaps I held onto the occasional voice of reason arguing that we were just kids having fun, or as one commenter put it: “THEY ARE A POOR CHILDRENS.”
Or, it could be that the truth is more terrible and less logical, as it often is.I wasn’t just a victim—I was also a perpetrator. How can I possibly explain that, two months after posting my own video, I left a hate comment on a video of a much younger, more vulnerable girl?
She was small, angelic, and singing about her brother—a soldier who was at war. Her video was going viral, the kind that gets written up in local newspapers. I remember sitting at the computer with my friend, giddily egging each other on. I want to tell you that we thought our comment would get lost among thousands of others, that the little girl would never read it, that we were actually smart and disgusted by a parent exploiting their child for musical military propaganda. But really, we just thought we were funny, and we loved how easy it was to do something bad. The exact words of that comment are burned into my brain, and they pop into my head whenever I see that friend again: “Shut up, your brother’s dead.”
When I see my younger cousins delete all their Instagram pictures and start over, I feel both sad and relieved for them at the same time.
Maybe I remember this so clearly because I worried it would come back to haunt me. It’s almost pointless for me to write this—it’s such a defining fact of our time—but the things people have posted online have often destroyed their lives. Even telling you this story now, directly, in sentences designed to have the most impact and not hide what I did, worries me. I’m taking something that was gone from the internet and making sure it lives there forever, on a newspaper’s website no less. But at least that’s my choice. I’m worried about today’s teens and how their digital histories will affect their lives. Of course, I don’t think they should be free to be as cruel as I was without consequences, but I do worry that their mistakes now seem permanently carved in stone.
People my age often say they’re grateful that the social media sites we used as teens have died, taking our Myspace pouts and blingy Bebo selfies with them. Meanwhile, older people seem happy they didn’t have to grow up on the internet at all. But I believe something more complicated and less logical: like most people, I’ve somehow convinced myself I was young at exactly the right time. Growing up when the internet existed but wasn’t our whole world was fun and freeing—for good (it let us play with different identities) and for bad (sometimes that identity was “internet troll”). When I see my younger cousins delete all their Instagram pictures and start over, I feel both sad and relieved for them. And yet, there’s so much I wish I could delete that’s now out of my control.
Until a few years ago, a forum still had comments I made about my eating disorder as a teenager in 2008 (the website has since thankfully been deleted). I rediscovered it as a young journalist writing an article about “chew and spitting disorder”—when I searched that relatively underdiscussed topic, my own old comments came up. On the thread, other anorexia sufferers and I talked about chewing and spitting out food to avoid calories. I complained that “towards the end of the day I get so hungry I pig out on cereal.” When I gained a few pounds, I wrote: “OMG. how do i lose this weight?” Then I came back a few months later, having gained more: “im such a huge hideous beast i want to die.”
It was hard as a 17-year-old girl getting thousands and thousands of people commenting on your looks.
View image in fullscreen: Lauren Willey (on the left) and her friend Drew, both aged 17, around the time ‘Hot Problems’ was made. Photograph: courtesy of Lauren Willey
My eating disorder wasn’t remotely related to “Hot Problems.””Bohemian Crap-sody” — and in the end, I came out of my “viral” video mostly unscathed. The same can’t be said for everyone. When she was 17, Lauren Willey, from California, made a satirical music video with her friend called Hot Problems. It had cheeky, over-the-top lyrics like: “Hot girls we have problems too, we’re just like you, except we’re hot.” The video was uploaded in 2012 and went viral almost immediately; it now has nearly 3 million views. Commenters assumed the girls weren’t in on the joke and called them tone-deaf (in both senses of the word). Willey’s teachers saw her as a distraction, which is why she wasn’t allowed back to school. The video followed her to college, where she developed an eating disorder.
“It was hard as a 17-year-old girl getting thousands and thousands of people commenting on your looks,” says Willey, now a 31-year-old publicist. “People got off on hating on 17-year-old girls; I think it’s really sad.” Still, some of the attention was exciting and fun — Willey was invited onto breakfast TV and had meetings with reality TV producers — and she says she doesn’t regret the video because it’s a good reflection of her humor and personality. Even so, it had an unexpected, lasting impact on her life. “I did feel less like a person and more like a piece of pop culture,” she says. Over the years, she dealt with stalking, judgmental coworkers, and to top it all off, she never made any money from the song. “There are people I don’t stand a chance with who already hate me. Sometimes people are so mean to me, and then I’m like, ‘Ohhh, OK, it’s because they know who I am.'”
I worry that limiting teenagers from expressing themselves online means limiting them entirely.
Today, Willey avoids posting too much on the internet and advises young people to protect themselves online. But, like me, she finds it complicated because she also hopes they keep expressing themselves. “I hope it doesn’t discourage people from being themselves and being silly, because that’s kind of the spice of life,” Willey says. “If we’re all afraid to be ourselves, to be lighthearted, and to make people laugh, then we’re not going to have joy.”
Now that the line between “real life” and “the internet” is completely blurred, I worry that limiting teenagers from expressing themselves online means limiting them entirely. It’s no mystery why teens today look scared to dance in footage from concerts, clubs, and Coachella (sorry you had to deal with that, Madonna). I still miss the time when the internet was something we could turn on and off.
How lucky I was that I could press the power button on the computer and leave the comments on “Bohemian Crap-sody” behind — and how equally lucky I am now that I can pull up those comments and laugh about them until I cry. “Just one word fock you” is a favorite, for reasons I don’t need to explain.
I’m especially amused by the person who wrote “Please, die soon!” and then added “(sorry bad English)” — apologizing for the language barrier but not for wishing us dead. Even the kind comments are funny, like the person who thought there are only two options for teenagers. “It’s just a bunch of happy-go-lucky kids having fun and enjoying themselves,” they wrote. “It is better than going around street corners mugging people.” And you know what? It was!
Some names have been changed. Amelia Tait’s debut novel, Lily Tripp: Diary of an Accidental Time Traveller, is published by Starboard (£8.99). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs based on the reflection about cringey teenage posts and the dangers of being young online today
BeginnerLevel Questions
1 What exactly is the point of looking back at your old teenage posts
Its a mix of cringe and relief You see how much youve grown realize how awkward you were and feel grateful that your worst moments arent permanently searchable online
2 Why does the author feel lucky not to be young online today
Because todays teens leave a permanent digital footprint Every mistake bad haircut or angry rant is recorded forever on TikTok Instagram or YouTube and can follow them into adulthood
3 Whats the biggest difference between being a teen online 10 years ago and now
Back then embarrassing posts were often hidden on private blogs or forgotten on old forums Now algorithms push content to everyone and screenshots can go viral instantly
4 Is it normal to be embarrassed by your old online posts
Absolutely Its a sign of personal growth If youre not embarrassed by your teenage self you probably havent changed much
5 Can deleting old posts really make them go away
Not always Screenshots cached pages and reposts can survive even after you delete the original Thats why the author feels lucky their mistakes are mostly forgotten
IntermediateLevel Questions
6 What specific dangers do teens face today that the author didnt
Things like
Digital permanence One cringey TikTok can be screenrecorded and shared for years
AI deepfakes Bullies can create fake embarrassing videos
Cancel culture A single old post can ruin college or job chances
Algorithmic amplification Mistakes get pushed to millions not just a few friends
7 How does social media make teenage mistakes worse now
It turns private cringe into public performance A bad joke in a group chat can be screenshot and shared schoolwide A silly dance can be memed and mocked globally
8 Whats the best way to handle finding an old embarrassing post of your own
First laugh at yourself Then if its still online and harmful delete it or make it private If its not hurting anyone leave it
