translated from Spanish: “I became a meme and my life became a nightmare”

Deborah felt nice that early 2012 night.
He was at a family party when he put on some dark glasses and took a selfie with his cell phone.
She, who was 15 at the time, shared the photo on her Facebook profile. But the recording in images of that moment of joy became one of the greatest traumas of his life.
How I felt about becoming a meme
At first, shortly after posting the photo, the first thing it earned was “Likes”. But a few days later Deborah noticed that some strangers were sharing the image.
It soon became clear that sadly his photo was becoming a meme – images that are used to make teas and jokes and are shared on the internet – because of his appearance.
In a mocking tone, Deborah was called the “Oakley diva”, a brand of sunglasses.
While the photo generated many laughs among those who shared it, Débora wept in his room, in a neighborhood of Sao Paulo, Brazil.
She was so affected, she had to be held in her house to avoid being recognized elsewhere.
“I felt ugly, humiliated, less than other girls my age,” Deborah, who is now 22, told the BBC.
“The comments on the memes with my photo talked a lot about my appearance and that bothered me,” he added.
At that time, he dropped out of school, stopped dating and thought about suicide.
“I had no strength at all. She was crying and crying and she blamed me for sharing that picture.”
A few weeks ago, about seven years later, Deborah saw her photo used for a social media meme again.
Why do some teens abuse themselves on social media?
“The photo had stopped using it, but recently they re-shared it on Facebook and Instagram,” she said.
The photo went viral when Deborah was only 15. Now, with a 3-year-old son, she works as a dependent at a pharmacy in Sao Paulo and is looking for how this new wave of memes won’t affect her like she used to.
He decided, for example, not to hide as he had done years ago. On his Facebook profile, he wrote that he would sue pages using his photo.
“I realized I wasn’t the problem. I’m not going to accept that they’re doing all that stuff they did to me seven years ago,” he said.
In memes, Deborah is classified as an example of an ugly woman.
The selfie
When he posted the selfie that later became a meme, Deborah thought he would win a lot of praise.
“I thought she was very pretty. At the time I had a very big self-esteem.”
He recalled that the photo began to be shared by a young man who had a friend in common with her.
“He looked at the photo, laughed at her and started spreading it on the internet,” he said.
Deborah asked him to erase it. He removed it from his profile, but countless pages had already taken the selfie and shared it.
So we channel our obsessions on social media (and why we can get out of hand)
The first time he left his home after posting the photo, Deborah noticed that many people had seen the memes with his face.
“I had no idea of the impact the photo had had. When I went to a store, near home, many people recognized me. Some young people started laughing at me. It was horrible,” he said.
“Many pointed their finger at me. I realized at the time that they were laughing at me because they had seen the meme,” he explained.
Memes became popular during the school holidays. When Deborah returned to school, she discovered that her classmates had also seen them.
“Again, many recognized me and made fun of me,” he wrote. Soon he had to leave school.
Facebook and Instagram point out that they are working to eradicate bullying on social media. Deborah’s mother recalls that by then her daughter was completely aisleted.
“I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to help her, but in this case I had no idea what to do. She was in a lot of pain,” she explained.
For the psychologist Marck de Souza the subject is quite worrying about the scope of the dissemination of images.
“Social media can have a very large weight in a person’s life. That ridicule of someone, which used to happen but on a smaller scale, now has uppercase proportions, because one click is enough to share a photo,” he explained
“Because the content can be viralized and cannot be completely deleted from the networks, the person cannot disconnect from it. So the ridicule on the internet can be present forever,” he said.
In mid-2012, Deborah wanted to die.
“I had no reason to live. I was depressed about everything that was going on,” she said.
He then took several medications that were in the house. “I was saved by a few relatives, who I told them I had taken the drugs. If I had poison in the house at the time, I would have taken it. I just wanted to get rid of all that stuff I was living,” he wrote.
Luckily the medicines he had taken did not pose a danger to his life.
Start over
“They always put white girls as cute while I’m the ugly one,” says Deborah, around mid-2014, cyberbullying – the internet harassment – against Deborah ended.
“Little by little, the meme was losing grace for people and they stopped sharing it. That’s when I started living my life normally,” he explained.
The young woman was able to look in a mirror with more tranquility again.
“My self-esteem was improving.”
Despite the delay, he was able to finish his high school. “It was important to me, because it was like starting to live again,” he said.
In 2015 she began dating a young man, and the following year she realized she was pregnant. She and her baby’s father are not together now, but for her “it was important for her to believe in me again.”
The Return of the Memes
In early July, Deborah was surprised to see that the meme with her image had reappeared and was being shared again.
In posts on different Facebook pages, they made fun of the same thing: their physique.
She began sending messages to page owners to stop sharing the photo.
“A boy told me that he thought I was dead and that no one would bother,” he said.
Another thing that caught his eye was racism. “Since they started sharing my image, I’ve read a lot of very racist comments against me. When it all happened in 2012, I didn’t understand much, but now I do,” he added.
And he said, “I’m very proud of the color of my skin.”
“In memes you can see racism because they always put white girls as cute while I’m the ugly one. They could make a black woman look pretty, but they don’t. For everything I’ve been through and I’m still going through, I realize it’s essential to fight racism,” he said.
Victims of cyberbullying should seek professional help, specialists say. The main step Deborah wants to take to avoid exposing your image on social media is to sue the owners of profiles and pages that share these memes.
“I will take the right measures if the person does not want to delete the photo. No one has the right to expose me like that.”
In a statement to the BBC, Facebook reported that bullying and harassment violate the community standards of that social network.
In the submitted text, the company asks people to report content they think should not be on the platform.
Deborah, however, says that since 2012 she has reported all the memes with her selfie and also asks her friends to report the case to Facebook.
However, he says the images have never been erased. “They only deleted the photos when I asked the owner of the profile or page directly,” he says.
Facebook also said they have acted to increasingly curb bullying cases.
In 2018, it launched a review tool for photos, videos or posts, in which it is possible to request that a report, if it did not have the expected results, be re-evaluated.
Instagram has informed BBC that it has tools to combat and prevent bullying. Cases must be reported to the social network to be evaluated.

Original source in Spanish