“As a new student at a mostly white, affluent school, I didn’t have a community. Until I found the message board.” abbyadesanya writes
Photo-Illustration: The Cut; Photos: Getty For better or worse, I grew up online. By the age of 7, I had developed a love for reading, but my mom’s nursing school kicked into full gear right when AOL CDs began piling at the foot of our mail slot. What an iPad is to an unruly toddler now, our hefty Gateway PC was to us then: sitting me in front of a computer was the easiest form of child care. My first username foreshadowed how I would pretend my way through the internet from that time onward.
We moved three times after that, and this dynamic kept repeating. The constant movement took a toll. I turned inward and struggled to make friends. I never developed a sense of style, my wardrobe existing far outside the realm of Lacoste polos and Coach purses I began seeing every day. A tiered system existed at every school I floated in and out of; inexperienced with navigating them, I could typically expect to land on the lower end.
On the back of every Clique book, a question was posed to the reader: “Are you a Claire or a Massie?” To learn the answer, you were invited to “find out at lisiharrison.net.” As an adult, it’s clear the series was fully satirical, but back then, I could see parallels with my real life: Everyone else seemed to be a Massie, and I felt like a Claire. After finishing the book, I felt as though I knew the answers to a test I could never study for.
I soon fell into step with the most respected girls on the board. There was Lindsay, who was smart and remembered everything anyone on the board had ever said; Nicole, who was kind, keeping her saucier takes within our private chat rooms; and Allison, the ringleader, a true Massie.
In the back of our minds, we all knew we were faking it. No one that wealthy or popular spent all their free time online, right? But we replicated our real-world dynamics anyway, granting ourselves the safety in pretending, a joy in climbing the ranks in a way we could control. We would allow our “cool girl” fantasies to run free as long as everyone held up the curtains.
But I had been freed from the fear of rejection. I was no longer afraid of not being a Massie. But if I wasn’t her, who was I? I took a break from the message board and spent the rest of the year finding out. I went shopping at Forever 21 and didn’t hate it — though I kept the Balenciaga ads plastered on my bedroom wall. I made friends with a couple of girls from geometry class; soon I was too busy planning our next sleepover to worry about which weekend parties I was missing out on.
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