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Greetings Spaceblobs,
You may be familiar with Reesa Teesa.
I wasn't, at least not until I was running an errand in my mother's car. She had left the radio on, and NPR's 'All Things Considered' host, Ari Shapiro, was interviewing the hosts of the 'ICMYI' podcast, Rachelle Hampton and Madison Malone Kircher. They were discussing the latest viral phenomenon on the internet.
'ICMYI' stands for 'In Case You Missed It,' and I certainly had.
The phenomenon they were discussing was a 52-part story titled 'Who The F Did I Marry?,' a series of TikTok videos posted by Reesa Teesa where she narrates her experience of meeting, dating, marrying, and eventually divorcing a pathological liar. The story was so captivating that some people, like @marypp2016, the TikTok user quoted above, had to cancel all their plans to binge-watch the entire eight hours of content.
Here's a 20-second summary [SPOILERS]:
Reesa Teesa went on a fantastic date with a man in the Atlanta area in March 2020. Due to Covid-19, they decided to quarantine together. Everything seemed to be going well; he was paying the rent and bills and showering her with gifts. However, the promises he made started to fall through, the new house, new car, trip abroad. He always had a plausible excuse, and even showed her his financial statements. By the time she realized what was happening, she was pregnant. Despite knowing deep down he was a fraud, she decided to marry this man due to fear of raising a child alone.
Eventually, the truth came out. He had been using screenshots from the internet to falsify his bank account printouts. He was faking phone conversations with his family members and friends. He had swindled at least one ex-wife, maybe more.
Speaking to the camera, Reesa reflects on how she had ignored 'The United Nations of red flags' to be with this man. She questions whether it was her fear of bringing a child into the world alone that clouded her judgement or a more general sunk cost fallacy, having already invested so much in the relationship she felt she had to make it work.
And the internet was hooked. People began to tune in for the next episode of 'Who The F Did I Marry?' much like they would for a much-anticipated episode of their favorite TV series. They told their friends and the videos quickly went viral. Currently, each has hundreds of thousands of views. It was indeed, must-see TV.
People, especially women, sided with Reesa. They felt for her. They related to her. People often don't believe that scams can happen to them. "Join a cult? Me? No, never. I would never fall for that." But in this case, people identified with Reesa. Here was a smart, hardworking, caring, trusting person looking for love who got the wool pulled over her eyes in the midst of a global pandemic.
I think many people watching 'Who The F Did I Marry?' harbored their own pandemic state-of-exception story in which the normal order of things was suspended due to this serious global crisis. I've only watched a few installments of ‘Who the F…’ myself, but given the House's recent decision to ban TikTok, it seemed a good time to examine how this serial drama blew up the internet.
The relatability of Reesa Teesa's story came from its unscripted nature, its direct-to-camera delivery. Reesa appears in the videos from her bathroom, from her car, on her commute, with her hair undone, enhancing our belief that she is telling the truth. Verisimilitude is the appearance of being true or real. In storytelling, verisimilitude describes the willingness of the audience to buy into the storyteller's narrative. Think of it as a series of deposits and withdrawals. If an audience perceives a storyteller to be trustworthy, they will grant them significant leeway with the so-called facts they present even as they begin to twist. That's why, at least in stories, we love getting fooled. In the real world, not so much.
Early on in their relationship, Reesa Teesa's former husband succeeded at approximating Reesa's version of the perfect husband. And when the cracks started to show, Reesa ignored them. However, to the extent to which Reesa masterfully deployed the viral story for the internet on a short-form medium like TikTok, she also raised some eyebrows. Some questioned whether Reesa Teesa's story was as off-the-cuff as it seemed or an elaborately crafted form of reality TV.
But is this a new phenomena?
Jump Scare
In 1999, 'The Blair Witch Project' leveraged the then-nascent power of the internet to create an immersive hoax that convinced many viewers that a low-budget horror film about three ‘missing’ film students was actually a documentary. The filmmakers, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, created websites, fake news articles, and even a faux documentary that aired on the Sci-Fi Channel to build a convincing narrative around their film. The movie was presented as found footage from a group of student filmmakers who had disappeared while researching the legend of the Blair Witch in the Maryland woods.
In truth, Myrick and Sánchez had hired actors Heather Donahue, Michael C. Williams, and Joshua Leonard to play the parts of the three missing students. The producers dropped the three in the woods and guided them using GPS trackers, leaving behind scenarios for them to improvise. They amped up the tension of certain scenes, such as the trio getting lost and arguing over what to do by hiding in the woods, rustling branches, shaking the tent, and playing a soundtrack of children frolicking to unsettle the actors. In an effort to make the haunted camping trip seem more authentic, the actors were deliberately run around in circles until they were tense and exhausted. Reflecting on the famous final scene that takes place in the supposed lair of the Blair Witch, an abandoned, dilapidated cottage, Myrick said, "Nobody was scared. They were tired!"
When the film hit mainstream theaters, many people believed it was real. "It's definitely true," I recall people saying, "I saw it on the internet." Back then, the internet had the same aura as newspapers when they first came out – people believed what they read and saw. I absolutely detest a jump scare and generally avoid horror movies, so I never saw Blair Witch in theaters, but I was still touched by the phenomenon.
The concept of 'the medium is the message,' as proposed by Marshall McLuhan, suggests that the medium through which information is conveyed significantly influences how that information is perceived and understood. In the context of television and the internet, these media forms not only disseminate information but also shape the user's experience of that information. Every new enhancement in visual technology increases our expectations for verisimilitude. There's a remake of ‘Blair Witch’ in the works, but it's hard to believe that anyone could possibly fall for it.
In 1895, when the Lumiere brothers' 'Arrival of a Train' premiered, some audiences truly believed a train was hurtling towards them as they sat helpless in their seats. In 1800, when Robert Ker Porter’s panoramic painting 'The Storming of Seringapatum' debuted in London, people were said to have fainted in the streets on account of seeing the bloodstained battlefield in Mysore, India, in which the British colonial army defeated (some would say massacred) opposing troops.
The 'feral filmmaking' that made Blair Witch so believable is commonplace today and most people are not (one would hope) as keen to believe something just because it appears on a website. Beyond that, people have grown accustomed to the constant documentation of the everyday to the point they understand what it takes to produce a convincing fake.
The backdrop technology of ‘Blair Witch’ was television and Hollywood film, mediums that produce a passive consumption in the viewer who is presented with a pre-packaged narrative or message. By contrast, Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez deployed the internet to enhance the veracity of their story by filling true crime chat rooms with rumors. The rest they say is history. Murderinos spread word of the three ‘missing’ students and this low-budget film became a hit in a time before any of us knew what 'going viral' even was.
But is it real?
Verisimilitude has taken on new dimensions in the digital age. With advanced technology, the line between reality and virtual reality is becoming increasingly blurred. The hi-resolution worlds of AI and virtual reality are a double-edged sword. On one hand, they provide us with new forms of entertainment and ways to connect; on the other, they raise profound issues related to trust, authenticity, and the manipulation of information.
It's hard to imagine being frightened by a painting, but the mediums through which we perceive and learn to trust information are always changing. As those mediums change so does the way we perceive reality. Hopefully our capacity to spot deep fakes keeps up with the technology used to create them, because how we interact with those realities can significantly shape our worldview.
In the ramp up to the presidential election here in the United States, I am reflecting on the importance of understanding how to discern the real from the realistically portrayed, as we navigate this era of digital verisimilitude. As someone who has thought a lot about the medium and the message and the way those two interact, I see how the digital age poses a significant challenge to our understanding of the truth, or what our sense of shared reality even is.
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