“It’s your turn,” said the girl smiling across the table, her hands beneath her chin. “I’ve been talking about myself all night, and you haven’t said a thing about you… Tell me some juicy stuff, come on…”
Alfredo returned the smile, and almost started to tell his story. He still saw honesty and openness as his most cherished qualities, so it took some effort not to oblige. The girl was excellent company, and as such deserved the gesture.
But then he remembered that his life no longer belonged to him.
It all started when Alfredo decided to open up his life completely, with the best of intentions. Since he lived in a relatively isolated area on a tight budget, it was cheaper and more practical to stay in touch with his friends through the Internet, and he did so more and more. Little by little, he found himself spending, and sharing, large chunks of his day on Facebook, the preferred social network of most of most of the people closest to him.
One day, someone told him he needed to be careful and start guarding himself a bit more, or else his life would become a one man reality show.
Alfredo liked the idea. He wasn’t a fan of that type of thing, but it did seem a perfect way to prove what he’d always said: total openness breeds intimacy. He decided he would treat his Facebook presence as a reality show. Everything would be shared, with constant updates, photos, and whenever possible videos, no matter how mundane the content was.
Initially, he thought all he would manage to do would be to irritate his friends, but something strange began to happen: the number of his followers kept increasing exponentially. It only took two weeks to get to the point where he had to migrate the Alfredo Show, as he called it, to its own page, because he had reached the limit of friends in his personal profile.
Without any intention or idea how, Alfredo had gone viral.
With success came the sponsorships. A couple of big brands paying Alberto to use their products were all it took to give him enough regular pocket money.
That’s when his problems began. At first, being able to meet his friends regularly was good, but soon they began complaining about being included in the Alfredo Show’s posts. No matter how much he calmed them and made arrangements for their privacy to be maintained, Alfredo found himself with less and less people wanting his company.
He portrayed that too in the Alfredo Show, and if on one hand he got support from several strangers, on the other he alienated his real friends.
All of the sudden, Alfredo found himself with some fame, and the attention of thousands of people, but he never felt more alone.
Eventually, he started to make contact with the most interesting people that followed him. He never felt real close to them, but they were company, and he tried to enjoy it for what it was.
Sometime after, a big publisher made Alfredo an offer to publish his autobiography. He was reluctant, but realizing that writing the book wouldn’t be that hard, he ended up accepting. He had everything written anyway, it was just a matter of copying and pasting from his Facebook page, tweaking it a bit, and giving it a few narrative touch ups.
He insisted on calling his book “Open Life”, because he still stood by his principles, and had hoped to spread his message. After all, if everyone thought like he did, he wouldn’t have lost all those friends.
The book was never published. Facebook representatives contacted the publisher, claiming rights and compensations. From their point of view, since the content had been created for Facebook, then the company owned it at least parcially, and therefore wouldn’t allow it to be published without an agreement concerning the revenue percentage that they thought they were entitled to.
The publisher decided they didn’t have the legal or financial resources to go up against Facebook in court, and so aside from a few proof copies, Alfredo’s book never came to be.
In what no one could classify as anything but pure revenge, the social network went to court anyway, and filed an action to stop any content reproduction, which meant that anything that Alfredo had shared on the social network could only ever be reproduced there.
Tired of it all, Alfredo deleted his profile and cancelled the Alfredo Show permanently. He felt like he was rebooting himself, in a way. They wanted his life and his past? Then they could keep them. Alfredo would create a new life for himself.
All that had happened three months before the date. And the eager girl in front of him, that he had met through one of the old friends he’d since reconnected with, had no idea.
Alfredo liked her. He felt he could get to like her more, and he didn’t want to ruin the evening.
“One day I’ll tell you all about me,” he finally said, hoping he wasn’t driving her away. “For now, let’s enjoy the moment, just the two of us. Can we?”
“Ooooh, a man of mystery.” Her smile widened “I like it. Sure…”
It was one of the best nights of Alfredo’s life. To this day, he hasn’t shared that evening’s full details to anyone.
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