Speaker 1: Hi. Before this episode begins. I just want to make
Speaker 1: sure that you know this series gets into some things
Speaker 1: that might be triggering for some listeners, specifically suicide and depression.
Speaker 1: If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts,
Speaker 1: please seek assistance from a mental health professional, or visit
Speaker 1: the National Institute of Mental Health website at n I
Speaker 1: m H dot ni H dot g o V for resources.
Speaker 1: If you're currently in crisis, you can call one hundred
Speaker 1: to seven three talk two, or text the word hello
Speaker 1: to one seven for one to speak to someone right away.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening. Britney Spears's music video for her two
Speaker 1: thousand nine single if You Seek Amy tells a story
Speaker 1: that's familiar to followers of her career. It starts in
Speaker 1: a dark bedroom littered with lingerie, booze, and half naked models.
Speaker 1: It's the more ing after a rager, and Brittany is
Speaker 1: at the center Messcarus Mudge, the epitome of sex appeal
Speaker 1: bad Brittany, but after a lot of gyrating and er ography,
Speaker 1: she abandons her boustier for a pink polo shirt and
Speaker 1: white skirt cardigan over her shoulders. She steps out the
Speaker 1: front door into a perfectly manicured lawn where she's joined
Speaker 1: by a country club husband and two kids. A swarm
Speaker 1: of photographers rushes to them. This is good Brittany, Star Brittany,
Speaker 1: the archetype of the All American dream. This tension has
Speaker 1: been a cornerstone of Brittany's career and the story she
Speaker 1: tells with her music. It's a story that goes all
Speaker 1: the way back to Baby One More Time, the good
Speaker 1: girl gone bad, the image of perfection shattered, the sexy
Speaker 1: and liberating in between. But watching the if You Seek
Speaker 1: Amy video, now I see another story too. Inside the house,
Speaker 1: with its shuttered windows and shadows, is a private space,
Speaker 1: somewhere Brittany can be her uninhibited self to name and
Speaker 1: explore her darker truths in the company of trusted others,
Speaker 1: before she steps out into the world and faces the
Speaker 1: public with its prying eyes and camera flashes, though she
Speaker 1: has to transform to put up an image of perfection.
Speaker 1: A few months after If You Seek Amy was released
Speaker 1: as a single. As it climbed the pop radio charts,
Speaker 1: Alex and I became friends. I have vivid memories of
Speaker 1: us blasting it in his bedroom or driving down the
Speaker 1: highways of Chicago windows down, the two of us going
Speaker 1: wild as it boomed from the car speakers. In the
Speaker 1: song itself, which is just one massive double entendre, Brittany
Speaker 1: goes on a metaphorical search for a woman named Amy.
Speaker 1: I can't get her off my brain, she sings. The
Speaker 1: frenetic energy of the video and the song remind me
Speaker 1: of my own search for Alice, the anonymous figure Alex
Speaker 1: befriended in Brittany fan forums. I don't know how long
Speaker 1: they talked or when they last did, but I do
Speaker 1: know that he was still thinking about her in his
Speaker 1: final days, enough to include audio files of them talking
Speaker 1: in his otherwise short farewell email. How do you call?
Speaker 1: Do you have like a like an happer road for?
Speaker 1: I'm Chris Stedmand and this is unread episode three. If
Speaker 1: you seek Alice? Tell them that all the little let's
Speaker 1: still see I get Jesus. Yes, Can you teach me
Speaker 1: how to be an investigative journalist in like the next
Speaker 1: thirty minutes? That'd be super helpful. Yes, I can. In
Speaker 1: that it's a job. That's not a job. I mean,
Speaker 1: all you have to do is be good at looking
Speaker 1: for things? Okay here, I mean, anybody who lives on
Speaker 1: the internet right now. It's probably decent at searching for stuff.
Speaker 1: You can do it. That's my friend Carrie. We've known
Speaker 1: each other for almost a decade. We met as speakers
Speaker 1: at a skeptics convention, a gathering of people who share
Speaker 1: interests like scientific skepticism, atheism, agnosticism, and just generally questioning things.
Speaker 1: I was smoking in the hotel lobby. It was Las Vegas,
Speaker 1: and I was a little ship back then. When Carrie
Speaker 1: and I started talking, she told me smoking was bad,
Speaker 1: So I signed my pack of Parliament lights for her
Speaker 1: and wrote don't smoke on it. She still has that
Speaker 1: pack on display in her apartment. Carry is an investigative journalist,
Speaker 1: an excellent one. She co hosts the podcast Oh No,
Speaker 1: Ross and Carry, and holds a mask 's degree in
Speaker 1: journalism from the University of Southern California. Do you have
Speaker 1: a spoke Yo account? I don't. Okay, I do, and
Speaker 1: it can be pretty good for reverse looking up phone
Speaker 1: numbers and emails. Logging onto Spokyo is literally the most
Speaker 1: beginners thing you can do when looking for a person.
Speaker 1: So the fact that I haven't even done that should
Speaker 1: tell you where I'm starting. Fortunately, Carrie is no beginner.
Speaker 1: Carry was also one of the first people I reached
Speaker 1: out to in the moments after getting Alex's email. She
Speaker 1: helped me process it and then we snapped into action,
Speaker 1: hoping there was still a window. First, she helped me
Speaker 1: connect with the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline so that I
Speaker 1: could arrange a wellness check at the most recent address
Speaker 1: I had for Alex. As I was on the phone
Speaker 1: with them, Carrie was digging away as she does, eventually
Speaker 1: finding what we thought was his sister's phone number but
Speaker 1: turned out to be his mom's. That was a hard call.
Speaker 1: I'm reaching out to Carry again because finding Alice feels impossible,
Speaker 1: and I don't know anyone who's found the unfindable more
Speaker 1: often than she has. But to understand why this search
Speaker 1: feels like such a shot in the dark in the
Speaker 1: first place, you have to understand Alice's world. When I start,
Speaker 1: she's nothing but a fragmented voice that sounds like Brittney's
Speaker 1: and a trail of Internet accounts that seem to no
Speaker 1: longer exist. What I'm saying is to understand how to
Speaker 1: find Alice, you have to understand the space from which
Speaker 1: she emerged. The strange, ephemeral online world of a Brittney stand.
Speaker 1: If you've spent even a little time on social media,
Speaker 1: you've almost certainly bumped into a stand. The term stand
Speaker 1: often gets traced back to the Eminem song of the
Speaker 1: same name about a diabolically obsessed fan. Today, it's used
Speaker 1: to refer to an artist's most fervent devotes, people whose
Speaker 1: very identities orient around their love of a star. You
Speaker 1: can find them in the replies to every tweet about
Speaker 1: a celebrity, especially a pop star, and probably half of
Speaker 1: unrelated tweets too. Stream good Days Here they write in
Speaker 1: all caps below every Scissor tweet with links to the
Speaker 1: song on each streaming platform, Lana out sold. They reply
Speaker 1: to a tweet about climate change or the death of
Speaker 1: Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Stands are all over the Internet most
Speaker 1: of the time. That's how they find one another and
Speaker 1: where they do their good work. They also congregate in
Speaker 1: more private spaces online enclaves of their own making, typically forums.
Speaker 1: They're known for being zealous in both their adoration for
Speaker 1: and defensiveness of their chosen artist. Perhaps the most notable
Speaker 1: example can be found in the Barbs or Nicki Minaj
Speaker 1: fans who I will never say an ill word about,
Speaker 1: both because I think her album Queen didn't get the
Speaker 1: love it deserved and because I'd like to know peace.
Speaker 1: The barbs also exemplify something central to the stand phenomenon.
Speaker 1: Stand groups begin with a shared love for an artist,
Speaker 1: but they become much more than a fan club. These
Speaker 1: groups develop characteristics, language norms all their own. Barbs aren't
Speaker 1: just nicky fans. Being a barb is a lifestyle. That's
Speaker 1: because online stand groups are, at their core communities, places
Speaker 1: where people find a sense of identity and language for
Speaker 1: their experiences, where they cultivate a feeling of purpose and
Speaker 1: coherence that helps them make sense of their world, almost
Speaker 1: like a religion. It's no surprise, then, that these communities
Speaker 1: often include more marginalized members of society. Queer people in particular.
Speaker 1: Stands build their own digital universes to inhabit refugees built
Speaker 1: for and buy them. But these groups aren't bubbles. They
Speaker 1: shape the culture around them too. The discourse surrounding Brittany
Speaker 1: is a perfect example of this influence. Empathy toward her,
Speaker 1: once relegated to STAND spaces, now dominates the conversation. This
Speaker 1: is true more indirectly too. The Britney references of today
Speaker 1: are more playful than cruel, often framing her as a
Speaker 1: stand in for all of us instead of a punch line.
Speaker 1: Whether it's a screenshot of an early career interview where
Speaker 1: Britney says everyone's been doing emails, or a gift of
Speaker 1: her turning around in the middle of a concert as
Speaker 1: if she just noticed something. Hundreds of moments from Britney's
Speaker 1: career have become well loved memes. Beyond these little flashes,
Speaker 1: a broader period of her life now serves as a
Speaker 1: meme too. If Britney Spears survived two thousand seven, I
Speaker 1: can survive today is a mantra for the times. But
Speaker 1: the Britney memes of today are not just a result
Speaker 1: of people mining the past. Her current Instagram output inspires
Speaker 1: them too. People recreate videos of her doing fashion shows
Speaker 1: down the hallway of her home, or post videos of
Speaker 1: her twirling and making silly faces in front of the
Speaker 1: camera with captions like what my ns A agent sees
Speaker 1: through my webcam and don't even get me started it on.
Speaker 1: All the memes that were born when she casually mentioned
Speaker 1: accidentally burning down her own gym in an Instagram video.
Speaker 1: So many of these memes emerge in Britney stand spaces
Speaker 1: and eventually shape our view of the world too. Yet,
Speaker 1: even as stands define our online experience, there's so much
Speaker 1: more going on in their communities than meets the eye.
Speaker 1: It's in this wonderland that I hope to find Alice.
Speaker 1: But first I have to go down the rabbit hole. Fortunately,
Speaker 1: I know just the rabbit. I don't know. How are
Speaker 1: you a bottom? Like a child? I like like imajority things.
Speaker 1: It's like when you watch a performance on television. You
Speaker 1: just want to believe it's all real, even though it's not.
Speaker 1: But I don't care. I don't want to know. I
Speaker 1: want to have a fantasy. That's do it again. I
Speaker 1: went to him to understand the culture of Brittany stand
Speaker 1: hum a bit more and the relationships forged in it.
Speaker 1: He starts by explaining why he got involved in the
Speaker 1: first place. I'm twenty three years old. I just it
Speaker 1: out of my first and only straight relationship. Um, I'm
Speaker 1: done with college and I'm back with my parents over
Speaker 1: eating and I go online like that's my life, you know,
Speaker 1: purely online, And you know, since I don't have much
Speaker 1: hobbies in my life. One of them is Britney Spears.
Speaker 1: I go and um, I had no idea that there's
Speaker 1: a whole side dedicated to Britney Spears, which makes sense,
Speaker 1: you know, like I'm from Greatia. For his first few
Speaker 1: months on this Britney fan forum, he mostly just read
Speaker 1: threads and kept up on Brittany news. Eventually he decided
Speaker 1: to dive in, and he quickly found it was the
Speaker 1: perfect outlet for his particular sense of humor. As soon
Speaker 1: as he started ship posting, Do I found his match
Speaker 1: in another poster who went by the name Ambient Hollow.
Speaker 1: That was Alex. He was morbid, he was fun. He
Speaker 1: made fun of breaking, but not like you know, he
Speaker 1: was comedian like that. And at one point we just
Speaker 1: started talking and we went from the side, you know,
Speaker 1: two emails. Once they moved their conversations off the forum,
Speaker 1: things turned more serious. Do I opened up to Alex
Speaker 1: about his life. He's the first person that I came
Speaker 1: out to as homosexual, which my son shuttled to some
Speaker 1: people because I held like mustache and everything. But um, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I was late bloomer for a lot of things,
Speaker 1: and I certainly wasn't so it was like this person
Speaker 1: that I could talk to for ours and Alex opened
Speaker 1: up to do about his He's the first person that
Speaker 1: I actually ever heard that was dealing with depression, and
Speaker 1: I remember reading about it because I really wanted to
Speaker 1: be like a good friend, even though like he's on
Speaker 1: another continent. They would get lost in conversation, swept up
Speaker 1: in the magic of finding a space where they could
Speaker 1: beat themselves. Seriously. I would stay up lad until five
Speaker 1: a m. In the morning because his time, and we
Speaker 1: will just talk forever, and we would, you know, create
Speaker 1: dis content on the forum. When they did, they weren't
Speaker 1: just sharing a love of Brittany, but also building a
Speaker 1: new world, their world together. I never met a person
Speaker 1: in my environment that loves Britney Spears. So when I realized,
Speaker 1: you know, he loves Brittany just as much as I do,
Speaker 1: and we can just take that love and build, you know,
Speaker 1: imaginary topics, it was such a high stand. Communities are
Speaker 1: little ecosystems, small universes, places that are not only built
Speaker 1: around a star, but where new stars rise. Do It
Speaker 1: and Alex, who both felt disempowered in other parts of
Speaker 1: their lives, became celebrities in their own little corner of
Speaker 1: the Brittany stand Um. You know, I don't want to
Speaker 1: be this braggy guy, but we were really famous there.
Speaker 1: Like I remember one time we got suspended and we
Speaker 1: had people signing petitions to bring us back. It was fun.
Speaker 1: It was really great prodoite of my life, even though
Speaker 1: I was just by myself in the room, but like
Speaker 1: it was my body. One thing they bonded over was
Speaker 1: lovingly teasing Brittany. That could get them in trouble. On
Speaker 1: the forums, fans could be extremely defensive of her, and
Speaker 1: for good reason, but sometimes they get mad at Alex
Speaker 1: and do it even when they weren't making fun of her. Seriously,
Speaker 1: like people discuss mental health and who better to discuss that,
Speaker 1: you know, the NUS and people will report that because
Speaker 1: they thought we are making fun of her. To be fair, though,
Speaker 1: do it and Alex would make fun of her too.
Speaker 1: They're not some anomaly though. This is a thing in
Speaker 1: stand culture, something that from the outside might not make sense. Yes,
Speaker 1: Brittany Stands will destroy you if you say a single
Speaker 1: bad word about her, But on the forums they call home,
Speaker 1: you will also find a sea of memes teasing Brittany
Speaker 1: in fact, there's an entire genre of meme popular among
Speaker 1: her stands based on a single unflattering photo of her,
Speaker 1: who they've named need. Even if you're not familiar with
Speaker 1: it by name, you've probably seen the photo. It's the
Speaker 1: one where Brittany is sitting in her booth and kind
Speaker 1: of like looking really over it and like, well, just
Speaker 1: look it up for yourself anyway. Tabloids might initially popularize
Speaker 1: images like this, but stands are the reason they're seared
Speaker 1: into a corner of your brain if you spend any
Speaker 1: time online. For many stands, the teasing is just another
Speaker 1: way of expressing love. I don't know how you are
Speaker 1: with your family, but like I never really said my
Speaker 1: sister like I love you or anything nice. You know,
Speaker 1: when you love somebody like that, you just poke fun
Speaker 1: of it and all people will understand. This is also
Speaker 1: a very queer thing. Here's former MTV b J Dave
Speaker 1: Holmes again, who I reached out to for help understanding
Speaker 1: Britney's connection to her queer fans in the early twenty
Speaker 1: one century. Right, queer people are coming out earlier. The
Speaker 1: Internet makes it easy for you to find your tribe
Speaker 1: at and also there is we have to acknowledge that
Speaker 1: there is a queer gaze. You know, there is a
Speaker 1: There is a gay man's way of loving, particularly a
Speaker 1: diva that is part adoration and is also part making fun.
Speaker 1: The love comes with with a crack with a devastating comment.
Speaker 1: While once kept to more marginal spaces, stand culture and
Speaker 1: queer culture at large has helped poort this phenomenon to
Speaker 1: the mainstream. Today, we playfully drag those we love most,
Speaker 1: our favorite celebrities, but also one another, while protecting each
Speaker 1: other's humanity when a real attack comes. The demand to
Speaker 1: honor Britney's dignity first gained major notice with Chris Crocker's
Speaker 1: iconic leave Brittany Alone rallying cry. Her song is called
Speaker 1: give me More for a reason, because all you people
Speaker 1: want is more and more and more and more and
Speaker 1: more alone. Crocker may have been roundly mocked at the time,
Speaker 1: but that cry is actually what got me to start
Speaker 1: paying attention to her humanity. While many of us were
Speaker 1: late to Crocker's party, a lot of people are there now.
Speaker 1: For many attendees, though, especially the most ardent ones, it's
Speaker 1: not just about Britney's dignity but also their own. I
Speaker 1: think gay men are still reflectively used to indirect representation,
Speaker 1: like you're still all all boys are taught to stifle
Speaker 1: their emotions and push their feelings down and never be
Speaker 1: sad and never be vulnerable. You've got to stuff all
Speaker 1: that ship down. And so where fifty years ago gay
Speaker 1: men were attracted to over the top actresses because that
Speaker 1: was like a way to launder emotion and it was
Speaker 1: like you can you can. I can't have my emotions,
Speaker 1: but you can have them for me and I can
Speaker 1: like kind of feel it along with you. I think
Speaker 1: she was a little bit that for young gay men.
Speaker 1: I don't think I understood the depth of people's connection
Speaker 1: and devotion too and with her like until I started
Speaker 1: seeing the Free Brittany movement. And it's really it is
Speaker 1: felt very deeply the Brittany fan forums where Alex and
Speaker 1: Dummett were a profoundly tight knit world. But the fans
Speaker 1: in these forums weren't just posting. Sometimes they would meet
Speaker 1: in a tiny chat voice chat rooms that were popular
Speaker 1: among some message board users in the early to talk
Speaker 1: over audio instead of just through text. It's in one
Speaker 1: of these audio group chats where a user popped up
Speaker 1: one day who shook their entire world. I remember, like,
Speaker 1: you know, you would go to tiny Chet because you
Speaker 1: were like, you just wanted to spend some time. And
Speaker 1: at the time, this girl she would come in and
Speaker 1: she sounded exactly like Britney would. And the thing that
Speaker 1: really was fun. She never claimed to be Brittany, which
Speaker 1: only gave her credit to be Brittany. She would come
Speaker 1: in and she would just talk random everyday stuff. She
Speaker 1: would love as Brittany. She would be as Brittany, you
Speaker 1: know everything signature she would do it. My Twitter. My
Speaker 1: Twitter is Banana Alan and I created it today and
Speaker 1: um banana Alice. No, okay, it's it's like this, where
Speaker 1: can you personal a little chat thing like down here? Yeah? No,
Speaker 1: it's my person already. Oh oh it's you let it go.
Speaker 1: Five followers. I was one of the I'm one of
Speaker 1: those followers. I Alice, if you're my most bite song
Speaker 1: of all time is Piece of Me with thirty plays
Speaker 1: True Life. Wow. And so the audiences with Alice began.
Speaker 1: They'd talk about mundane things like cooking. I like to cook.
Speaker 1: Probably have a favorite recipe, that's fine, Do you do
Speaker 1: you have a favorite recipe? No? I don't have a
Speaker 1: favorite recipe or anything, but I like making most sad Ya.
Speaker 1: What kind of jobs she should get? You have such
Speaker 1: a sweet voice. You should be like a telemarketer or something.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, she should be. I'm calling from you know,
Speaker 1: and I'm trying to solve it. The music she was
Speaker 1: listening to, do you have any foundations for new music house? Um,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I really like this guy named Ron Pope.
Speaker 1: He's really cool. He's like he's a guy from New
Speaker 1: York and he's um. I like him alive. She'd even
Speaker 1: get a bit maternal with them in moments, telling overly
Speaker 1: excited stands to go to bed. No, I didn't sleep
Speaker 1: at all. I haven't shot at all. Oh my god,
Speaker 1: Oh my god. Bed no way. At first it was
Speaker 1: an exclusive club. The first couple of times she were there,
Speaker 1: there wasn't that many people on tiny chat. It was
Speaker 1: like fifteen people or something. But then lower about this
Speaker 1: mysterious figure started to spread and stands with joint tiny
Speaker 1: chats in the hope of holding court with this uncanny
Speaker 1: Britney sound alike. She was almost like a mirage there
Speaker 1: for a moment, then just as quickly back into the
Speaker 1: shadows and then she kind of stopped, you know, shumming up,
Speaker 1: but she didn't vanish completely. Alice liked a talked to
Speaker 1: Alex outside of the tiny chats. I remember Alex telling
Speaker 1: me that she once had talked with her and then
Speaker 1: actually it was like this depressed person as well. He
Speaker 1: never talked to Alice one on one, but do says
Speaker 1: Alex told him they bonded over mental health. He has
Speaker 1: no idea if their connection went beyond the one conversation
Speaker 1: Alex mentioned to him, though it's been almost a decade
Speaker 1: since those Alice tiny chats. I asked to do it
Speaker 1: if you had any thoughts about where I might look
Speaker 1: for her now, if I was trying to find more
Speaker 1: information about Alice online or like some of the other
Speaker 1: people who were in the chat with you and Alice
Speaker 1: and Alice pertly know how you can because tiny chat
Speaker 1: is not the then side, and I think majority of
Speaker 1: those accounts are either bent or gone. Yeah, they were
Speaker 1: all anonymous, and so you know that's the problem. It
Speaker 1: is the problem, which is why I need to go
Speaker 1: back to Carry, who I hope can help me cut
Speaker 1: through the fantasy and figure out how I might actually
Speaker 1: find this person. My first issue is a big one.
Speaker 1: I don't have much to go on. I don't even
Speaker 1: know if Alice is this person's actual name. Well, that's
Speaker 1: tougher because you're not starting with their name. You're not
Speaker 1: actually finding the person. You're finding the name first, right,
Speaker 1: So we begin going through what little I do have.
Speaker 1: We start with the texts between Alex and Alice. As
Speaker 1: I tell Carrie about them, I noticed that a couple
Speaker 1: have a kind of signature at the end these text messages.
Speaker 1: There's really not much there except that one of the
Speaker 1: messages um Alex said to Alice, Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: want to taco so bad hashtag deep and then she
Speaker 1: replied why don't you go to Taco Bell question mark
Speaker 1: via mo plus and then afterwards in parentheses H T
Speaker 1: T P colon slash slash m O P L dot
Speaker 1: us and I've I've never heard of this mo plus before. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what's that might be something to look into, I guess.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, definitely a mo plus. It the best calling
Speaker 1: up available, Chris says its website. So this person was
Speaker 1: using some calling app. Yeah. That's kind of interesting though,
Speaker 1: because that seems like a way you would sort of
Speaker 1: cloak your identity. Carrie looks around on their website. You
Speaker 1: could try I do this stuff all the time, like
Speaker 1: sending an email, just to really try to be extremely
Speaker 1: casual about it before they can get their defenses up.
Speaker 1: You might be able to get something that way. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: I'll definitely try reaching out to them. See look, I'm
Speaker 1: talking to you, and I've already I'm already much further
Speaker 1: than I was before. Next, we pour over the audiophiles
Speaker 1: Alex sent Carry uses headphones to listen while I poke
Speaker 1: around for more Alice info online. Every now and then
Speaker 1: I hear Carry laugh, and each time I guess which
Speaker 1: part in the audio she's at. As she listens, Carrie
Speaker 1: jots down user names she hears other people in the
Speaker 1: tiny chat share as they discuss who's in the room.
Speaker 1: She points out that people often use different versions of
Speaker 1: the same handle for a bunch of services. So I
Speaker 1: put variations of those user names into my search bar.
Speaker 1: It feels like we're making progress, but still no solid leads.
Speaker 1: So wanting something a little more interesting, I start reading
Speaker 1: up on Britney's Instagram, looking for anything resembling a clue.
Speaker 1: On November one, a day after Halloween, and just over
Speaker 1: a month before Alex took his life, she had posted
Speaker 1: something that seems to fit the bill. The caption reads,
Speaker 1: oops a day late, but hey, I was Alice this
Speaker 1: year for Halloween. Could mean something, But Alice in Wonderland
Speaker 1: is not exactly an obscure reference. I do this dance
Speaker 1: for a while. Searching user names looking through Brittney's Instagram
Speaker 1: carries right. Anyone with the Internet can be an investigator.
Speaker 1: Most of us do it all the time, background checks
Speaker 1: on our Tinder dates, stocking xs, even the ones we
Speaker 1: don't really give a shit about, looking for meaning in
Speaker 1: every other post. Everyone leaves a digital paper trail these days,
Speaker 1: and within a few minutes of googling someone, we can
Speaker 1: piece together our own story of who they are based
Speaker 1: on the fragments we find. But how do we know
Speaker 1: what's real on the surface. Alex's digital paper trail, at
Speaker 1: least the one associated with his birth name, didn't tell
Speaker 1: the full story. Alex started using the Internet early, and
Speaker 1: from the beginning he didn't play by the rules. As
Speaker 1: a ten year old, he started trolling mostly grown up
Speaker 1: movie fans on a message board. He'd post reviews of
Speaker 1: movies that hadn't even been released, yet the adults were
Speaker 1: not amused. As more people moved into the virtual world
Speaker 1: with the rise of my Space and Facebook, Alex took
Speaker 1: a similar approach to those spaces. While everyone else was
Speaker 1: using social media to share engagement photos, college graduation posts,
Speaker 1: and job announced Alex used it almost exclusively like he
Speaker 1: did those forums. For humor to play. Here's show she
Speaker 1: recalling one especially memorable Facebook update. He made a post
Speaker 1: that I had had a kid. Oh my god, I
Speaker 1: remember that, and then and then your dad, your dad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, you probably remember it better than I do.
Speaker 1: I did remember it, but I wanted to get his
Speaker 1: wording exactly right. So I went digging through some files
Speaker 1: Alex left for us, and there it was the fake
Speaker 1: pregnancy announcement. So that it's two screenshots. One is from
Speaker 1: Alex says three hours ago, and then it says, finally
Speaker 1: able to break the news, my sister is pregnant with
Speaker 1: a baby. Boy. You go, girl. Never thought I'd be
Speaker 1: an uncle at such a young age. God bless can't
Speaker 1: wait until thor Emmanuel blesses us with his present and
Speaker 1: heart emoj And then below it is a screenshot from
Speaker 1: your dad's Facebook and it says one hour ago and
Speaker 1: it says, just learned that I am going to be
Speaker 1: a grandfather soon. Seems weird. Seems weird, But good being
Speaker 1: so mad at him that because I had to ideal
Speaker 1: with the fallout of that, and at that point I
Speaker 1: did not think it was funny. At that point, people didn't,
Speaker 1: at least on social media. People did not think that
Speaker 1: people control like that. At the same time that he's,
Speaker 1: you know, posting these silly things on social media throughout
Speaker 1: the years, he's on message boards, posting very serious things,
Speaker 1: connecting with people, meeting people. You know, all these people
Speaker 1: are seeing aside of him, or he's showing these people
Speaker 1: aside of him, or feeling comfortable enough to be super
Speaker 1: authentic in a way that he didn't ever feel like
Speaker 1: he could be on social media. Hey guys, and better
Speaker 1: than you. Oh my god, I'm having so much fun
Speaker 1: on the beach. That's Alex in in a video he
Speaker 1: posted to Instagram with the caption my short film inspired
Speaker 1: by like everyone on social media. James remembers the time
Speaker 1: Alex shared his frustrations about how a lot of people
Speaker 1: reacted to his Instagram posts he had posted just like
Speaker 1: a shirtless photo of him outside, which got like, you know,
Speaker 1: hundreds of likes, and then he posts like a really
Speaker 1: beautiful picture of just like an open window and some
Speaker 1: landscape and it got like no likes, and like in
Speaker 1: the comment section, he like calls out all his own
Speaker 1: followers for like not liking content unless it was like
Speaker 1: a sexualized picture of him, like naked outside. I think
Speaker 1: it just speaks to like how conflicted he was about
Speaker 1: Instagram or social media and like loving it and also
Speaker 1: hating at the same time. Well, so fial media left
Speaker 1: Alex feeling disillusioned. On forums he could be his full,
Speaker 1: uninhibited self. Being himself in so called real life often
Speaker 1: came with consequences. Back when he worked at that Bengal
Speaker 1: shop with Bath in two thousand nine, Alex would get
Speaker 1: reprimanded for playing music too loud or not having the
Speaker 1: details of the latest Bengal special memorized. It was clear
Speaker 1: to Bath that Alex found so many of the job's
Speaker 1: rules pointless. Why memorize every kind of bangle when you
Speaker 1: could just turn around and look at the board behind you.
Speaker 1: I just remember like anger, and I don't mean rage,
Speaker 1: I just mean in response to him being too much
Speaker 1: or too annoy or whatever he were to get in
Speaker 1: trouble for being too much music wise or customer service wise.
Speaker 1: It wasn't met with shame or worry. It was met
Speaker 1: with like anger and sarcasm or snippy irritation. And I
Speaker 1: do think that probably was a big part of why
Speaker 1: he liked the Internet so much, because he could kind
Speaker 1: of like, he didn't have to jump through any hoops.
Speaker 1: He could just like put whatever he wanted, whatever you
Speaker 1: want on the Internet, and let's you get your account suspended.
Speaker 1: But yeah, yeah exactly, I mean yeah, and he and
Speaker 1: he did a lot all the time. Yeah, but it
Speaker 1: didn't cost him a paycheck or yeah, exactly cost him much.
Speaker 1: He just opened into account and he did. Freedom. That's
Speaker 1: what the Internet gave Alex. Freedom to express himself, freedom
Speaker 1: from a world with so many pointless hoops to jump through,
Speaker 1: hoops that can feel especially daunting when you're living with
Speaker 1: mental illness. The Internet's promise of freedom from rules and
Speaker 1: gatekeepers is actually a big part of what fuels my
Speaker 1: fantasy that Alison Brittany could be one and the same.
Speaker 1: Over the years of Brittany self has used the Internet
Speaker 1: to circumvent various gatekeepers. She rocketed to fame at the
Speaker 1: beginning of the Internet era, but it wasn't until the
Speaker 1: late two thousand's, in the midst of a media frenzy,
Speaker 1: that she really took to the Internet to express herself publicly.
Speaker 1: During that time, Brittney's website became one of the only
Speaker 1: places where she could speak directly to people. Fans still
Speaker 1: talk about the posts she shared on her short lived blog.
Speaker 1: Perhaps the most infamous was titled You'll never see it
Speaker 1: my way because you're not me real talk. I'm like
Speaker 1: sure I wrote a anger post with that exact same
Speaker 1: title at one point. Then there's the first post on
Speaker 1: her blog, a poem entitled Remembrance of who I Am.
Speaker 1: It included a note, this is for everyone who thinks
Speaker 1: they know me. After years of Brittany being almost untouchably famous,
Speaker 1: her blog seemed to offer her unfettered thoughts. Today, Instagram
Speaker 1: has taken center stage as a window and Brittany's life.
Speaker 1: But in an era of highly polished celebrity social media accounts,
Speaker 1: when so many A listers employed teams to carefully construct
Speaker 1: digital personas, Brittany's Instagram stands out as feeling like her
Speaker 1: blog almost intentionally low fi and haphazard on Instagram. It
Speaker 1: feels like Brittany is really being Brittany. Is it outlandish
Speaker 1: to think that this same Brittany, who has regularly gone
Speaker 1: online to express herself and rejected the manicured approach to
Speaker 1: social media, might stumble into some online forums to chat
Speaker 1: with fifteen or so trusted stands. Another thing fueling this
Speaker 1: fantasy is that I know for sure that Alex did
Speaker 1: connect with some of his favorite celebrities online. There was
Speaker 1: Mira Sarvino, star of Alex's all time favorite movie Romeyan
Speaker 1: Michelle's high school reunion. Alex left some of his passwords
Speaker 1: to show she, including one to a Twitter account of
Speaker 1: his that somehow hadn't been suspended in his d M.
Speaker 1: There she was Mira Sorvino, chatting it up with a fan.
Speaker 1: What we thought might have been a fantasy while Alex
Speaker 1: was alive, just one of the many funny, random absurd
Speaker 1: things he'd text us about had actually been real. Here's LEXI.
Speaker 1: You're sort of immersed in your own ship and then
Speaker 1: like he sends you like a weird tax being like,
Speaker 1: oh my god, I'm talking with Mira Sorvino. And you're like,
Speaker 1: what cool um? And it's like obviously, like I want
Speaker 1: to be supportive, but it's like, in the back of
Speaker 1: my mind, I don't fully believe him, but like I
Speaker 1: don't know if he actually is that's amazing, you know,
Speaker 1: And turns out he was. They're definitely like were moments
Speaker 1: of me like not believing him, and those moments were
Speaker 1: like probably when I was most immersed in my own
Speaker 1: mundane life. Alex was also always posting about his biggest
Speaker 1: celebrity crush, Fred Durst, the lead singer of Limp Biscuit
Speaker 1: I Know. Eventually all of Alex's Durst tributes got Fred's attention,
Speaker 1: and he left an emoji comment on one of Alex's
Speaker 1: Instagram posts and viewed some of his stories. Alex talked
Speaker 1: about it for weeks. Thanks to the Internet, fans can
Speaker 1: feel closer and more connected to their favorite stars than
Speaker 1: ever before. If Alex was interacting with the star of
Speaker 1: his favorite movie and his number one crush online, is
Speaker 1: it possible he was interacting with his favorite singer too.
Speaker 1: I go back to my search for Alice, which in
Speaker 1: a way feels like embodying Alex's digital freedom. It is
Speaker 1: freeing to put my skepticism to rest and just dive
Speaker 1: in show. She an expert internet sleuth in her own right,
Speaker 1: offers to help, and we decide to swap notes. Tell
Speaker 1: me what you found about Alice so far, because you're
Speaker 1: like the super sleuth extraordinaire. Well, I guess that when
Speaker 1: I first started doing the investigating, I was hoping that
Speaker 1: what I would find would be proof that it was Brittany.
Speaker 1: But while show, she's found a lot more than I
Speaker 1: have other clips of Alice talking to people in tiny chats,
Speaker 1: some of her old tweets and other posts, she hasn't
Speaker 1: found proof. In fact, she's mostly found skepticism. As I
Speaker 1: started doing more investigating, I saw so many posts from
Speaker 1: people um that said it definitely wasn't Brittany. People are
Speaker 1: very passionate over this. That was one thing I found.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of posts where someone just asks
Speaker 1: who has banana Alice, And it's pretty hilarious to see
Speaker 1: there are so many passionate response is saying it's not Brittany,
Speaker 1: this was from so long ago. It's just someone pretending
Speaker 1: who cares leave it alone. I tell carry about these
Speaker 1: discussion threads too. I mean, so what I'm getting from
Speaker 1: all of this is you have probably already a community
Speaker 1: of sleuths who are on this because it's just the
Speaker 1: sort of thing anybody would obsess over right. If you're
Speaker 1: a Britney Spears fanning, you think maybe you talk to
Speaker 1: Britney Spears like you've already. It's got a lot of
Speaker 1: the work Chris is now trying to do. My feeling
Speaker 1: about it is that there's probably a lot of this
Speaker 1: fook work just sitting out there waiting for you, um
Speaker 1: in the form of these other fans. So I create
Speaker 1: an account on that forum to reach out to some
Speaker 1: of the people who say they interacted with Alice. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm waiting for it to get approved. I look in
Speaker 1: other parts of the online Brittany stand world. I find
Speaker 1: a Twitter account that some Britney fans they kiss her
Speaker 1: latest secret profile. Then I spot a verified Twitter account
Speaker 1: belonging to an actor that follows and has interacted with it.
Speaker 1: I message him to ask why a lot of fan
Speaker 1: sites were claiming it was her. He says a friend
Speaker 1: of mine was following it and buying into a conspiracy
Speaker 1: that it must be her. Trying to reach out in anonymity.
Speaker 1: This response makes me think of Alex. How he was
Speaker 1: that friend for me, always sending me some new Brittany theory,
Speaker 1: how he tried to get me to go into the
Speaker 1: tiny chats when Alice was there. I never fully integrated
Speaker 1: into Alex's online world, but he would invite me to
Speaker 1: dip my toes in. This was one of Alex's greatest gifts.
Speaker 1: He would pull you out of your own life and
Speaker 1: into his world. You felt like you could like step
Speaker 1: inside of this fantasy with him and like sort of
Speaker 1: escape your real life and like go into like fun
Speaker 1: alex Land. And a lot of times I would find
Speaker 1: myself not caring whether or not something was real, even
Speaker 1: as Lexi and I and so many of his other
Speaker 1: friends went on with our own mundane lives. We benefited
Speaker 1: from the way Alex's weird online world liberated him and others.
Speaker 1: It seems to me now that so much of what
Speaker 1: Alex was doing for me, how he helped me expand
Speaker 1: the range of my voice over the years, was what
Speaker 1: these online stand communities were doing for him. I may
Speaker 1: never have joined in on the tiny chats myself, but
Speaker 1: my own world was better, more colorful because of the
Speaker 1: people he met in them. As I continue to poke
Speaker 1: around on Twitter, I decided to look again for accounts
Speaker 1: that have a similar handle to the one Alice shared
Speaker 1: in one of the tiny chat recordings Alex sent me.
Speaker 1: I had done this a few times already, but before
Speaker 1: I never bothered to reach out to the profiles I
Speaker 1: did find, figuring they were all copycats inspired by the
Speaker 1: lore of Alice. This time, when I searched, there's an
Speaker 1: account I didn't see the last time I looked, one
Speaker 1: using the same user name Alice. Once did I tell
Speaker 1: myself that it's obviously not her, that there's no way
Speaker 1: she could be hiding in plain sight, or that she
Speaker 1: would choose to return to Twitter during the exact window
Speaker 1: of time is my search for her. I almost don't
Speaker 1: reach out, but then I imagine Alex's Harry ghost telling
Speaker 1: me to submit to the fantasy. Even if it isn't her,
Speaker 1: this person is obviously aware of Alice. So I send
Speaker 1: a message just in case they know something. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure i'll even get a reply, but the next day
Speaker 1: I do, and she says it's her. It's Alice. Next
Speaker 1: time on unread, Oh gosh, I'm just I've had a
Speaker 1: stomach ache last three day straight. I can't. I can't
Speaker 1: imagine I'm not going to respond her immediately because I
Speaker 1: feel like this is such an online thing. I feel
Speaker 1: like I'm responding to her too quickly. It's like I'm
Speaker 1: texting with somebody who I just met on an app
Speaker 1: or something. I'm like feeling like I'm responding too quickly.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be. I'm trying to play it cool,
Speaker 1: you know. It's like you're texting Alex on Instagram like
Speaker 1: a friend. He is just gonna like disappear good