The media and the government spun the story, like they do. Do you see? the government said. If this is how selfies make people behave, making them illegal must be the right thing to do.
As the task force rounded up more celebrities, there was less inspiration for regular, noncelebrity people to take selfies. And then marketing took over the rest. Instagram changed, pivoted to become a makeup company with a line of foundations based on the different filters of yesteryear. Who cares about selfies when you can look like a selfie all the time? It was a huge success.
People’s interests changed. People forgot why they had been so upset about the ban on selfies, why it had seemed so important at the time. Everyone moved on.
Everyone except Kim Kardashian.
Kim refused to go down without a fight.
Kim was an outlaw, a self-professed freedom fighter. She lived on the run. She had walked away from her entire life, from everything, and disappeared. No one knew how she lived, how she survived. They only knew that every so often she would turn up again online, post a selfie, leave everyone freaking out, and then go underground again.
The government had their best hackers trying to figure out where she was, how to triangulate her location, but they were never able to do it. They had software that they used to detect and erase selfies online. It had been a big help in discouraging people from taking and posting such images. But Kim was too good for them, too smart, always one step ahead.
They closed all her accounts, all the access points they were aware of. But then suddenly there’d be a new account, with just one picture on it. Her followers would find it and it would go viral, everyone sharing this illegal new selfie from the criminal, the one true master of the form, the once and future queen.
The men were furious. There was no way this was going to end well for Kim. They would get her eventually. It couldn’t last forever. With every selfie she posted, they got one step closer to catching her. They had fantasies about taking that phone away from her. Smashing it while she ugly-cried in front of them.
But all they had gotten for their troubles was more selfies. Kim’s calm, beatific demeanor, her contoured and highlighted face, smiling. At what, they had no idea.
ON THE DAY you meet Kim, you are feeling aggressively bad and hopeless about life.
It’s almost the end of your shift at Best Buy and your manager is completely hassling you. He says that he received a complaint from a customer that you had not been helpful, and that you hadn’t smiled enough during your interaction with this customer.
Like what does that even mean, smiling enough? You hadn’t smiled at all, actually, that you could remember. Why would you? The customer was a complete jerk. He asked you about Bluetooth speakers and you had politely and helpfully and accurately told him where to find them, even suggesting which one he might like the best. You had fulfilled your end of the social contract governing the interaction.
But then he had tried to flirt with you, asking things like how long you’d been working there, how was it you knew so much about music. Asking what you liked to do when you weren’t at work. None of his business! You are not under any obligation to return the unwanted flirtations of customers that you were aware of. Best Buy is a national consumer electronics chain, not a brothel, the last time you checked.
And then the customer saw that you weren’t being super receptive to his advances and switched tactics. He started arguing against your opinion about Bluetooth speakers, belittling the information you’d given him, explaining the myriad ways in which he thought you were wrong. About speakers! The thing that he had asked you for help with!
Which, fine, dude, whatever. He asked you a question, you gave him a solid answer; if he wanted to argue about it with you, that was his problem. You know more about electronics than he will ever comprehend in his entire life. But having to stand there politely while he berated you, you got just the teensiest bit eye-roll-y with him, and then he stormed off to find your manager.
So now you’re receiving an extended lecture from your hack manager about customer service. You could try to explain the situation to him, but what would that even get you? You really need this job. You barely have any marketable skills. You’d had a whole career path laid out in front of you once. Sort of. Was YouTuber a career path? You’d been really happy making YouTube videos about electronics. Reviews of products, teaching people things about how they worked. Showing ways to hack apps and software to get them to do things the companies hadn’t intended.
But you’d eventually decided to give it up, and “Minor YouTube Star” is not exactly something that impresses people on a résumé. Which was how you ended up with this crummy job at Best Buy, where you are easily the smartest and most overqualified person on staff . . . despite the fact that your boss and the customers routinely treat you like you’re an idiot. You are just really into electronics, and this seemed like a good, safe place to do something vaguely related to your interests. At least until you figured something else out.
But you’d never figured out the something else. And working here involved this terrible uniform of black slacks and ill-fitting, cotton-poly-blend polo shirt that makes you feel as unattractive as possible. Although apparently not unattractive enough to keep men from being creepy! So maybe there’s still hope! Who knows?
As your boss continues his tirade, you notice out of the corner of your eye that there’s a customer hovering weirdly close by. It’s a woman? Maybe? She’s idly perusing the cameras, which are kept locked up behind glass. She’s dressed in all black, a long hooded coat that sweeps across the floor, and giant, dark sunglasses cover most of her face. She’s standing there and pausing in front of the cameras in a way that makes you think she’s not really looking at anything, but rather eavesdropping on your conversation. LOL, “conversation.” Eavesdropping on the long one-sided lecture you’re receiving.
You can hear words coming out of your mouth, totally disconnected from anything happening in your brain. “Oh, yeah, customer service is key,” you’re saying, on autopilot. Just anything to get through this moment so you can go back to reshelving cables or whatever, something that makes you look busy enough that customers are less likely to come up and talk to you.
This is the fourteenth time you are hearing the words customer satisfaction during this little instructional moment, and it’s starting to sound insidiously sexual. That’s just your brain, right? Hearing a word so often it starts to lose all meaning.
He’s still talking, still saying the same thing over and over again, and you are wondering what could possibly ever end this lecture when the woman in black comes over and interrupts your manager. Like liter
ally right between the words customer and service.
“Excuse me, are you the manager?” the woman asks. Her voice is husky, low.
“Yes, that’s me,” the manager says, surprised at the interruption.
“I wanted to ask your opinion about these cameras,” she says.
The manager looks curiously at the woman. “You want to buy a camera?”
“Oh, no,” she says, laughing, placing one hand on his chest in an obviously flirtatious gesture. “Not for me, for my husband.”
“Oh, sure, we’d be happy to help,” he says, looking around for you, but you’ve already taken your cue and walked away, leaving that conversation behind thanks to the momentary distraction of the flirtatious wife. And you certainly aren’t supposed to know very much about cameras anyway, so you feel safe walking away like you’re all excited to get back to work.
You mentally thank the woman for the moment’s peace and the grace of the exit she granted you. You spend the rest of your shift staying as far away from potentially threatening customers and your manager as can reasonably be expected while still appearing to perform a worklike function.
LATER, THE LAST CRABBY CUSTOMER has finally wandered out of the store, your team members are gone, the store is locked up, and you are alone in the storeroom, finishing up some inventory work your manager gave you.
You are rushing to get everything put away in its proper place when you hear a voice coming from somewhere back past the shelves of printers. You look at the rows and rows of towering metal shelves, each packed tightly and chaotically with different boxes and bins of consumer electronics. You peer into the place where the storeroom recedes into shadows.
“Um, hello?” you call. There definitely should not be anyone here. You’re probably imagining it. You go back to sorting boxes of SD cards.
Then you hear another noise. A box being slid along a shelf. And humming? Maybe?