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GUEST ESSAY: I was 11 and I didn’t realize I was talking to a predator.
Internet darling @joan.of.arca, real name Sophie Browning, recounts her experience as a member of the first generation to have free internet reign during adolescence.
Anime fans around the world flocked there to share fanart, post custom wallpapers, make anime-themed personality quizzes, and chat with fellow otakus (slang for obsessive anime/manga fans.) It’s been years since the height of its popularity. The site is now a deserted digital wasteland abandoned by anime fans who flocked to more fandom-friendly platforms like Tumblr, Reddit, and Discord. If you wanted to see the beginnings of @joan.of.arca, my meme page/public diary/portal into the inner workings of my mind, you could probably plug the URL into the Wayback Machine and see the early imprints of my now very large digital footprint.
Making an account on theOtaku.com was a very transgressive act for me, you see. I was a good girl with undiagnosed OCD who thought forgetting to do an assignment would jeopardize my chances at college and believed that telling a lie to my parents would propel me into a life of crime and drug addiction. I always followed the rules. Not because they made sense, but because I was terrified of what would happen if I didn’t. Having any form of online presence beyond Club Penguin and Webkinz was simply against the rules. Talking to strangers on the Internet was out of the question. But then I began wearing training bras and started to get bored.
I discovered anime when I was ten. Spending hours on Internet Explorer led me to interesting places, and eventually I found a website streaming episodes of Sailor Moon in its original Japanese. I was transfixed. I fell in love with the “magical girl” genre, which usually featured a group of teenage schoolgirls fighting evil with their newfound superpowers. In Sailor Moon especially, female friendship was always the central theme, something I didn’t always find in American cartoons. My newfound appetite for anime, manga, and Japanese culture was difficult to satiate beyond the confines of the Internet. I was bullied by my peers for being the weird anime girl. It got so bad that my teachers put me in a special group for kids who struggled to socialize. I needed friends if I was going to survive fifth grade, and the only way that would possibly happen would be on a website for anime fans. So when I lied and set my age to 13 on theOtaku.com, the minimum age requirement, I experienced the thrill of breaking the rules for the very first time.
I discovered very quickly that I could do a lot more than share my art on theOtaku.
There was a 24/7 chatroom filled with like-minded losers like me, all eager to talk about the things I learned to keep from others out of fear of judgment. I went from having a couple friends in my real life to dozens in this virtual utopia. The constant engagement and notifications were intoxicating and instantly addictive. I was hooked, and nothing was going to stop me, not even the nagging voice in my head telling me that all that is done in the shadows will come to light, even my embarrassing online persona. Once I accepted my addiction, the voice slowly became easier to ignore. I started branching out after a couple months. First it was a secret Tumblr blog, and then I made a Skype account. Nothing was off limits. It was like a whole new world was open, and as a girl with Manic Panic-dyed red hair from Minnesota, could you blame me for wanting to experience it?
When I joined the chatroom one afternoon after school like I always did, I saw some of my online friends talking about how they were starting to study Japanese. “The only real way to learn a language is to use it (* 0 * ),” someone typed. I never used the “Japanese” I was attempting to teach myself. There was simply no one to practice with, especially not in the Minnesota town I lived in. All I had was subtitled anime, a journal filled with “ichigo = strawberry” and “inu” = “dog,” and Google Translate. One of them recommended a website that was designed specifically to match English-speaking Japanese learners with native Japanese English learners to connect over email.
So I submitted my email to this penpal service. It matched me with a few people, none as enthusiastic or receptive as the kind businessman who eagerly introduced himself. For the first time, I felt so proud that I disobeyed my parents. While my peers were busy typing “boobs” into Google Images, I was doing something constructive with my little act of defiance. I was learning Japanese.
I remember almost nothing about the guy, except that he lived in the city and that he needed to learn English for work. When I try to remember him, I can only see the default profile picture next to his email address.
He let me type a few emails in broken Japanese before he started to ask me questions. It felt so innocent, like he was earnestly trying to get to know the person on the other side of the screen. He asked me how old I was, and I told him. He said he was in his forties, but that it didn’t matter. He said something that my parents said a lot – that I was mature for my age. Soon, he wanted to know what I looked like, suggesting that I send him a picture of myself. Even then, I had the foresight to sense that something was wrong. I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable sharing something so personal, but ever the people-pleaser, I described my appearance as a compromise: “I’m about 5’5 with brown eyes and shoulder-length red hair.” That’s all I could manage to give him. I’m sure it was a real disappointment, what I imagine was a big letdown for an online predator.
So naturally he pressed for more explicit material. That’s where the conversation ended, and the next day my parents found the emails. They found everything, actually. The drawings, the embarrassing posts on TheOtaku.com, the chatrooms (they really hated this), the Tumblr, the Skype account, and those awful emails. They raided my computer and combed through my search history, scrutinizing each and every page I had visited during these months of rebellion. One parent sat resigned, clearly disappointed in their failure as a parent to protect me, while the other ripped into me, made me feel like a sexual deviant. I remember shamefully replying “yes” when I was asked if I knew what “pornography” was, even though I had never seen it. What started as an innocent attempt to connect to the world, to look beyond my small town and find community was presented back to me as a reflection of my depravity. I went to bed that night feeling a whore.
I had my taste of insubordination, and now I was done, I decided. I had broken the rules against my better judgment and paid the price. So I stayed off social media for a couple years, as long as I could bear it and until I reached the age where having it was nonnegotiable. Slowly I reentered my parents’ good graces. I began to see grades as a way to prove myself, as demonstrable, tangible evidence that I was capable of doing what was asked of me according to a set of directions and conventions.
It would be years before I gained the trust of my parents before I would start posting and talking to strangers on the Internet again. I'm glad this all happened, though, and I even find it a little funny. Turns out there are creeps everywhere, especially online and – I guess – especially on language exchange pen pal sites.
I’m now in my second rebellious phase, and I’ve been here for a few years now, shitposting and oversharing on @joan.of.arca. I haven’t pissed off my parents (yet), but there are still plenty of creeps. Maybe that’s something about the Internet that will never change.
By Sophie Browning.