She’s an internet celebrity: a Twitter, Instagram and YouTube personality with thousands of followers. Molly Soda takes selfies, does make-up tutorials, that kind of thing. But she’s not doing it for the normal celebrity kudos or to try to get brand endorsements – she’s living her life online as a work of art. She takes the tropes of digital life and twists them, extends them, tears them apart. She posts nudes exposing her hairy armpits, and her make-up tutorials end up making her look like a clown. She’s essentially pushing the stereotypes of social media until they become a kind of lived-in performance.
The walls of this neon pink room are pasted with clickbait headlines and real comments from her social media accounts. It makes for gross, painful and uncomfortable reading. It’s basically a wall of men either insulting her or telling her all the things they want to do to her. Some of it is funny, like the guy begging her to help him stop masturbating, but most of it is just plain frightening, like the control freak capslocking ‘I ONLY THINK ABOUT YOUR WELLBEING’.
There are videos too. A compilation of her singing in her room, tablets on the floor showing her looking at her phone in bed, a webchat video of her crying as commenters try to comfort her.
The show works because Soda’s exposing the seedy, aggressive, anonymous, sexual underbelly of digital life. Not just hers: we’re all implicated. She’s daring people to come at her, then exposes all the heinous shit they send her way. This pink cutesy room and its horrible content is familiar, real and grim. Art holds up a mirror to society, and Soda’s mirror is so grubby that you’ll want to look away. But this is a reflection of right now: don’t look away.
@eddyfrankel