Name: Ava

Race: The Human Race

Sexuality: Pansexual

Gender: Bitch

Pronouns: Your Highness

When I started doing writing full time, I began spending a significantly larger amount of time on social media. Learning how to get the highest amount of reach across platforms, the most likes, followers, subscribers, and all of those things that I’d never thought about before suddenly became more important than they’d been before. I didn’t really know too much about the algorithm and had absolutely no idea what I was doing.

I did a pretty significant amount of research before I even began posting and most of the articles said the same thing. The basics really just looked like; post the things you’re passionate about, use hashtags, be consistent, and produce quality content. So that’s what I’ve been doing, putting out quality content that I’m passionate about consistently and it’s been doing pretty well. But being on the internet, it’s hard not to notice the people who are just killing the game. Some of them just come out of nowhere and suddenly get thousands of followers, becoming famous pretty much overnight.

I’m sure that part of it is that they follow the same rules that I do when it comes to gaining followers and extending your reach on social media, but I’m also sure that a part of it is that they play the game, exploiting every rule they’ve got. Pandering to the sexual nature of the internet, the creepy nature of some followers, and the fact that people are insecure and look to these “perfect” Instagram models and celebrities, wishing they could be more like them. I was curious about how that game was played, so I decided to join.

Ava was born from a video of me trying to re-create e-girl makeup; that’s when I had the idea. What if, I were to create this fake person, who was the most stereotypical e-girl type that I could muster, and see how far I could get online and on social media. If I played the game the way these Insta-models were playing it, could I keep up? How easy would it be to gain followers and get the clout these girls were getting every day if I let myself use all the editing software, filters, and pandering that I wanted?

My co-host of What? The Podcast, Brie and I came up with the aesthetic for Ava a few days after she came into being and decided that we were going to run this experiment to see where it led us. Obviously I had some rules for myself; Ava may be a made up character but she still has my face. The first rule was, no scandals just for the sake of clout. Second, nothing inappropriate, I will not be selling any Ava nudes if requested and finally, nothing that harms my integrity as a writer and as a person. Which is why I wanted to post this abstract for the experiment, if you will, to let the people in my life know what’s going on and invite them to follow along in the discoveries if they wish to do so.

If you would like to follow the Ava the E-Girl Instagram account you can click here. I will also be posting about interesting developments and discoveries as the experiment goes on so if you’d like to follow that, just make sure you like and follow my Facebook Page. Before we begin this experiment, I wanted to put a couple of things out there for anyone who has concerns.

1. These images will be heavily edited. I personally do not believe that editing to this level is necessary, but to play along in the game, I will be doing that. But just know, it will only be on the Ava Instagram account.
2. Ava is a fictional character written by my co-host Brie and myself, we will probably be lying about where she is at any given time and might be editing her into events.
3. We fully intend to have a conversation once we get results back from this experiment about how harmful social media can be for the mental health of people, especially young people, and how this e-girl trend is notorious for targeting underage girls.

I’m excited to see how this goes and see what I can learn about how easy or hard it is to create an entirely false person on the internet. I think that if we can prove that it’s easy to convince people you’re something that you’re not, we can have a conversation about not comparing yourself to people you see on the internet because it’s possible it’s fake anyway. I think we are reaching an amazing place in our society where we are beginning to swing in the direction of appreciating all people, all body types, and all types of beauty; but I don’t think we are in a place yet where social media affecting mental health in a negative way is not still a problem.

If you’d like to keep up, make sure to follow @ava.the.e.girl and if you have questions or thoughts that you’d like to contribute to the experiment please feel free to DM me anytime!