A Strange Fan

It is a strange relationship that we Americans have with our female celebrities. We can’t seem to find an altar tall enough to adore our darlings from, if only so that the fall may be all the greater and longer. Like tribes of old watching their youth sent into the wild, we watch as reality contestants duke it out competing for survival, as young debutants embarrass themselves for us, just to see them eliminated from the fame that we’ve all had to accept never having ourselves. After all, it’s comforting to know other people like me aren’t famous. But it is the ones who go far beyond mere reality that we truly enjoy, who make it to Eden itself, and still can’t resist snorting up a line of the forbidden fruit. Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, Ingrid Bergman, Grace Kelly, Rita Hayworth, and the proud lineage of countless other women whose disgraces we boldly define like complaining of dust on a mirror. And yet, dear reader, I must confess I have a certain love for them as well. For those actresses that don’t do too many vices, consistently sleep with the same couple of people, and maybe produce an artsy film or three. The ones who seem to somehow save themselves from us. And so I wanted to take the time to tell the already famous tale of one Rome Facepage and her strange career. I wish I could say I’d known her personally, that we’d had amazing conversations about life and all the incredible things she’d gone through. Instead, I’ll just tell you why I wish for that. I’m a strange fan but Rome’s life is a strange story. It’s the crazy ones who stay loyal.

The Father of Rome

Rome was the daughter of one Mark ZuckenFark, who in the midst of his undergraduate days created a social networking website that became incredibly popular. With the extraordinary timing of a man hit by a car in the Nevada desert, this website captured America and became ingrained into everyday life. He called it facepage and from its very inception it was an instant success. ZuckenFark tried to hide his true identity on the social site by simply making his last name Facepage and welcoming new members by automatically linking to their profile. After several years, millions of users, and a few lawsuits later, it ended up being more convenient for ZuckenFark to simply change his last name to Facepage. His business grew thanks to illegal downloading and sophisticated phone cameras that slowly eroded the foundations of the music, television, and movie business. Advertisers eventually had no choice but to shop their wares on the exclusive and influential Facepage site. How else would anyone know a movie existed or that your band had a good song, but to post it on Facepage for their exorbitant fees? They also employed several innovative marketing ploys such as charging users for deactivating their accounts rather than at activation and not sending junk mail, ever. Over time, Facepage accumulated a massive amount of wealth, a gorgeous wife, and an autobiography (You’ll Be Back, Douchebags!) that you could download a copy of for $4.99. Such is the way empires are formed. In the midst of this wealth and power, Rome Facepage was born on April 14th, 1999.

Online Childhood

From the very beginning, Rome could be found online. Her father, Facepage, liked to post videos of her that would spread to the millions of accounts that didn’t understand how to operate the ‘Friend Delete’ function on facepage. Her first steps, her first words (“I has friends!”), and her first potty accident can all be found on the web archives. She had her own account by the age of 7 and thousands of people befriended her within moments of its creation. Her father was very strict about the privacy settings at first. Facepage adamantly warned her, “No posting your home address. No talking to boys older than twelve. And absolutely NO PHOTOS IN THE HOUSE!” Her profile image was all smiles at first. Cute, filled with friends and laughter. When the teen years hit things got quiet and she resorted to images of unicorns or when the mood hit her something even more androgynous. She stopped posting profile updates and stopped answering comments. Frankly, there are times when I wish myself and the other fans had more details about this period. Some of us think that she got burned out on the constant chatter of people she didn’t know online. Others think she became bitter at all the attention that came from the fact that they only talked to her because of her Dad. Personally? I think it’s just a cause and effect problem. If you didn’t do anything to get famous, how much can you expect to really care if it stays or goes?

Earning Fame

After the fans of her infancy had wandered away, when she had quit posting anything but ever darker profile pics of the latest known-obscure images of the web, there came a change. Rome, still linked to millions of friends on Facepage, began to post videos from a comedy group that consisted of her friends in high school. She used the connections from the site to get the group started, herself appearing in a few of the sketches but never as a major actress. The stuff was sophomoric at best, adults being obnoxious and kids having all the answers they needed at the time but there was a certain cleverness about the writing. A certain outsider’s touch, like the voice of someone you’ve never heard before speaking across a room of familiar tones. “Oh my God, you’ve been on Facepage for like, four hours talking to your 247 friends. And of those people, you think…like maybe 6 have actually hung out with you in the past week?” They were the kind of jokes that were only funny if they were told in person. Many of the comment sections derided these scenes and said that the writer should be suspended from school for such stupidity, but the people who made these comments were hardly capable of judging anything except what they liked anyways. There were enough watchable sketches, not necessarily funny ones, that a following began to develop thanks to Rome’s distribution. People began to check back to their website for weekly updates. And thus internet fans are born. After the show moved to its own website people began to forget she had anything to do with it at all. One of the male actors who wrote most of the better episodes once commented, “Great, we’re popular on the internet. By the time I get to a bar and tell a girl who I am, we’ll be old news again.”

Losing Anoynomity

After several years and a few major offers, Rome’s comedy group decided to make an internet film. It was broken up into five ten minute segments and spoofed teen horror films of the 70’s. It took place at a summer camp and featured the cast all showing up to become counselors before being killed off one by one. Frankly, I think they just stole most of the jokes from ‘Wet Hot American Summer’ but the thing has a cult following now and you inevitably get flamed for saying so. Rome, now about 16 or so, had a fairly minor role that included a gratuitous sex scene. I’ll just get this out of the way now…yes, this is what turned me onto Rome all those years ago. Who knows what makes one particular filming of two people screwing any different from another? Is it because we can relate to it better? Because it stirs us the way a scene of someone dying isn’t as moving as our favorite hero’s last words? Whatever the answer, in the first few months of the movie it was all people could or would talk about. Those who’d never forgotten Rome reminded everyone else and everyone new to Rome began to wonder when she’d turn 18. I was fourteen when I saw her and not even watching the actual film. A porn site had spliced out her particular scene (to save everyone time) and you could link to it directly. There wasn’t anything private shown, no nipples and no skin that wasn’t somewhat safe to be watched at work. But between the moaning and the gyrating, Rome Facepage’s entry to fame could still get your imagination purring.

Mortification

Rome, by all accounts, was horrified. Her profile filled with comments from the pitying to the pitiful. Her facepage profile had only been a mild interest or curiousity for most people, but almost overnight it became a pastime. Her father was quick to swoop in and ban the comments board, red flag any message with her name in it, and have the video taken off the comedy group’s website. All of this, naturally, meant that people made their own comment boards, called her a different name than Rome on facepage (‘Emor’ was the one I used. Creative, I know), and claiming to take a video off the internet is almost an oxymoron. It was almost like Facepage making a big deal out of the video just fanned the flames of people’s interest even more, made the fantasy all the more alluring to know that there was a crazed beast keeping the princess locked away. During interviews Rome claimed that her first reaction was to lock herself away in her room. That she was scared to even check her e-mail in case there was yet another creepy solicitation or raving fan. She also hit a curious growth spurt after the sex scene became so incredibly popular. She attested to blooming in size a full four inches over what felt like mere days. When one of website’s many advertisers found out she was suddenly in need of new clothes, they offered to supply her with a full wardrobe and salary if she would appear in only their clothes in all future photos posted on her profile. She was, at the time, receiving 234,000 views per day on average on the open photo albums alone. At first she didn’t make any offer and still maintained lock down on her profile. And then one day everything on her profile, the comments, photos, and interests section were up and running again. Her entire collection of photos was deleted and new ones with her wearing the new wardrobe replaced them. Her new favorite band was the current best seller. And her favorite movie was coming out that Fall.

What To Do With Fame

The two years between Rome’s ill-advised debut and her 18th birthday passed slowly. I say slowly only because it seemed that way for both the people who fantasized about that magic day when she would be legal in America and her agent whom she hired to guide her career. She released several internet movies over this time period that had lukewarm sales because of her firm attempt at restoring a family image. There was one web movie about her solving crimes that had a paltry 10,000 downloads, despite much hype from the internet community. During that strange phase where every movie and video game that came out had to involve cybernetic implants, Rome played a ‘busty cyborg sidekick’ (who possessed the eerie ability to say that three times fast) in a trilogy of FPS titles called ‘Maximum Rebooty’. The gameplay was generally given low marks but Rome’s new and growing fan base appreciated the effort to appease them. Her profile interests and pictures on Facepage were under the strict control of the fashion company and rarely had anything truly interesting to look at, but there were rumors steadily growing of a wild lifestyle that all the money from her fashion and product placement contracts afforded. Binge drinking at the most expensive bars in Manhattan. Flirting with celebrities. Sex scandals. The stuff most young people do if they have half a chance, though in Rome’s case I’d say that she had a bit more than that. A cell phone image or two would appear on the web, but her father’s attorneys were among the best in the cyber law trade. The poster would be traced by the network they used and no matter how anonymous the origins, they were usually found and fined for posting a trademarked celebrity likeness. Naturally, this didn’t stop anyone.