Fame

Bryce was a good kid. For an 11 year old, anyway. His mom, Meg, had persuaded his dad to buy him his own phone a few weeks ago. Most kids his age had an iPhone or equivalent for a year or more already. His mom was resistant at first (she never had a phone growing up, basically because they didn’t exist then). But he had done so well in school, in sports, with friends, that when the time came to renew their phones she persuaded his father it was time to invest in a phone for him. He reluctantly agreed. 

Bryce had spent most of the past few weeks glued to his phone. There were going to be rules eventually, but Meg felt like it wouldn’t harm him too much to bend them at the beginning. Bryce was fairly open with Meg, so he would show her funny Snapchats from his friends or who had the most wins in Arsenal. So when he called Meg to his room to show her his best friend, Jacob’s latest Tik-Tok video, she went.

“What’s Tik-Tok?” she inquired. “It’s, like, this place where you can post short videos of you dancing, or whatever”. Meg watched a few and was intrigued. She had been trying to get her mommy blog, Meg’s Minions, more followers for years. She had a select few hundred but just couldn’t manage to generate the viewership that these video platforms offered. Maybe this was the way to go.

Meg decided she could start making videos of her younger son, Candon. He was always dancing around and jumping off of things, like 4 year olds did. Her first few did not get many views. But one day, Candon decided to wear his bathing suit all day. He even came to dinner that way. Meg began filming. “Candon, why don’t you have clothes on?” she questioned, stifling a giggle. “Becuz I just wanna eat my dinner nekkid!” he exclaimed. Meg uploaded the video to TikTok. She told her husband that night, “I’m going to make him famous”. She was half-kidding. Wasn’t there some kid who made his family millions simply reviewing toys? Meg checked her phone before she went to bed. 300 views. She fell asleep.

The first thing Meg did when she woke up the next morning was check her phone. Her video of Candon had 15,000 views! “Honey!” she shook Mark, her husband, awake. “Look!” “Wha…” he stated, rubbing his face. “Candon got 15,000 views overnight!” Mark was nonplussed, but Meg was elated. She linked Mommy’s Minions to her TikTok account, and the views exploded. 

By the end of the week, Meg’s video of “nekkid boy” as he came to be known, had been viewed over 900,000 times and been shared on Twitter and Facebook over 500,000 times. The link to her blog just increased views (she hoped). Meg had done it; she had gone viral!

Comments ranged from the usual, “Zomg Meg, you’re living my life!” or supportive, “All of us want to eat our dinner naked. I aspire to be this kid!” to the negative, or bizarre. “What is this mom thinking, putting her mostly naked kid on the internet? She might as well wave a flag, stating ‘Pedophiles welcome here’! JFC.” That one was retweeted 50,000 times. “Hey nekkid boy, want me to force feed you? Cuz I cud get inna dat”.  

Meg saw all the comments; the ones who questioned her parenting and the even crueler ones who made fun of her son’s body. At first, the negative comments bothered her, but her distress was soon overshadowed by page views for her blog and shares of Candon’s video. She was even interviewed by another mommy blogger. When questioned about the negative attention surrounding her son, she shrugged it off. “I don’t plan to stop sharing videos of Candon. He’s getting a lot of positive attention too. Although he’s probably going to hate me when he’s a teenager” she joked. The internet, however, is fickle, and none of her other videos of Candon attracted quite the same attention.  After a year, she abandoned her Mommy’s Minions blog and stopped posting videos.

10 years later

Candon sat with his friends at lunch, checking his smartwatch. He had a message from Myfflyn, the girl he had a crush on, about video-chatting later. Cool. While he was scrolling through his other texts, he was approached by Brady Quinn, popular jock/asshole extraordinaire. “Yo, dude, your name Candon?” Candon looked up at Brady. “Yeah, why?” Brady laughed and said, “No reason, just curious”. Brady went back to sit with his friends and soon their whole table was looking at their phones, shooting looks at Candon, and laughing.  What could be so funny? Candon found out later that afternoon.

Candon’s friend, Miller, came over to Candon at his locker at the end of the day. “Dude, did your mom used to post videos of you when you were a little kid?” he asked. Candon looked confused. “I never heard anything about that”. “Dude, that’s what freaking Brady’s saying. You are the same kid as “Naked Boy”. Something about his mom and yours had something called a mommy blog and she posted you there and like, everyone’s seen it. Like literally everyone on the planet, dude”. “I don’t know anything about that, man. I gotta go, catch ya later”. 

Candon dropped his backpack on the floor by the door, washed his hands, and went up to the spare room, where his mom did her sewing. She had an online shop where she sold her creations. Mostly she sold some type of disinfecting gloves or something like that, Candon wasn’t sure. Disposable gloves had long since been banned; there were a few still floating around the internet that you could get for about $5000 a box. Lots of people still wore gloves to go shopping even though there was a series of vaccines for coronavirus. Still, his mom made money off of her sewing shop (she had gotten into making masks when the coronavirus hit, after she stopped her blog). 

“Hey, Mom, did you use to post videos of me when I was a kid? Something about ‘Naked Boy’”? Candon’s mom turned towards him. “Candon, did you disinfect your backpack and watch and wash your hands?” He rolled his eyes at her. His friends’ moms were all the same, always asking about washing hands and disinfecting stuff. “Yes, Mom. So did you?” “Well”, she hesitated, “yes, honey, but that was a long time ago. I took all that stuff down so don’t worry about it, no one will see it. Why do you ask?” “Just…this kid at school asked me if I was him.” “Well, like I said, I took that stuff down long ago, so I wouldn’t worry about it. No one’s messaged me about that for years. People have short attention spans, they move on to the next viral video and you get forgotten”, she said, not without a touch of sadness. 

Over the next few days, Candon’s mother noticed he was in his room more often and seemed tired and withdrawn. But she chalked it up as typical teenage behavior. One day, he came home, stomped upstairs, and slammed the door. Meg knocked. “Candon, what’s going on? Did you even wash your hands?” “Yes, Mom, Jesus! Leave me alone!” “Ok, ok, we’ll talk later when you’re calmer.” She went downstairs and gave his backpack a quick spray of Lysol, just in case.

The next morning, Candon came down and grabbed a Pop-Tart on his way out the door. His mom stopped him. “Candon, you forgot your backpack! You’re going to need that at school.” “Oh, right”, he said, and picked it up. “Do you want to talk about whatever’s bothering you?” “Eh, some guys at school were being dicks. But it’s ok, I’ve got it all figured out now”. “Oh, ok, good, honey. Have a good day”.

Candon never made it to school that day. Brady and his band of followers, they were never going to stop. And his own mother! Brady was right, she threw him under the bus for her 15 minutes of internet fame. Jesus. And wtf was his dad doing while all of this was going on? Didn’t he care? Apparently not, he never stopped Candon’s mom from posting all of those embarrassing videos. Took them down, she said. Maybe…but there’s always a copy somewhere. How Brady got his hands on it, Candon didn’t know. But he made sure to pass it around to everyone in school, highlighting his 4 year old wiener in that small bathing suit. Myfflyn stopped texting him and blocked his number. No girl was ever going to go out with “Tiny Dick” as he was now known around school, and on his social media platforms, which had been hacked. Even some of his friends were avoiding him. Well, Candon had a plan to stop them all.

He was found in his car by two hikers. He’d stolen his dad’s gun (and lots of ammo) from the safe the day before (Candon figured out the combination was his brother’s birthday, followed by his). Police speculated he may have contemplated going to school and eliminating his torturers as the reason for all of the extra ammunition, but in the end the only life he took was his own. He left no note; just the history on his smart watch.

When Meg felt stronger, she looked through his smart watch and was horrified by the texts and DMs she found there. She was angry. They should sue the parents of those boys! Who taught their kid to act that way, talk like that?! But then…she had a better idea.

Meg reactivated Mommy’s Minions, posted Candon’s school picture, and made a heartfelt blog post about her son and what he had suffered silently. She linked to her post from her other social media platforms and hashtagged it: #soheartbroken#myboy#cyberbullying#stopbullying#bullyinghurts#bullyingawareness

By the end of the week, her post had been liked 1 million times and shared 900,000 times. Meg was pleased.