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A split-self social-media life turns urgent when a woman spots a hidden distress signal in a friend’s video.
The small screen shows her a version of herself she doesn’t quite recognise, like that moment in a dream when one thinks they see someone they know, but it’s someone else who looks almost identical. In the dream, that someone else disappears into a cinematically faceless crowd. They become ornamental.
The Not Her she faces performs her daily routine. The routine is overedited, condensed to fit 60 seconds. The app allows up to 180, but she decided to approach perfection rather than waste seconds. But Not Her still needed enough seconds to represent a 24-hour day.
Her 24-hour units are always such boundless, generative propositions. She has had so much time since the divorce. Thanks to the distraction of a failing marriage, she officially abandoned her postgraduate studies. Her department said there would be a place on the master’s programme for her next September.
Her social media efforts were a by-product of this lifestyle shift. She simply tried to monetise what she was already doing: selecting and swiping, filling time by oversharing.
The money took a while to start coming in. Soon, floodgates opened.
Sometimes, Not Her is a disembodied voice, narrating something topical – from political developments to celebrity gossip, from ongoing wars to viral moments. Not Her is part observational comic, part social commentator.
Other times, Not Her is a face, top half, or full body. Not Her walks her viewer through her day.
She has pointed her phone at herself and recorded, but silenced herself. The words come later, from Not Her. It’s communication across two planes of existence: live experience and retrospective addition. It’s a chess match with Not Her, where moves are made and responses are impeded.
The result? Not Her guides her viewer through her quotidian, implying agency even though the footage she talks to is a historical document. Not Her speaks of decision making and entertains alternative courses of action, despite the immutability of whatever’s being done – fixing a meal, choosing an outfit, walking down the street.
She’s alienated from Not Her, perhaps because of this additional separation within Not Her: voice vs. body.
She completely forgets about Not Her after seeing something more urgent. After her fifth rewatch of her latest post, she refreshes her feed. She opens a video posted by her closest friend, Sally.
Sally has persistently reached out to her post-divorce, but she often ignores the calls. She replies to Sally’s messages with as much minimalism as she can get away with.
Sally’s video is of her in her kitchen, sharing a pasta recipe. The video isn’t about pasta. It’s about something in the spaces between recipe steps, something blink-and-you’ll-miss-it.
She’s certain that she sees it: the secret hand signal women must make in a domestic abuse situation. She has memorised this fast sequence: 1. Palm out to camera. 2. Tuck thumb. 3. Trap thumb under fingers.
She pauses Sally’s video, closes the app, and locks her phone. Panic sets in.
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George Oliver has just finished a PhD in contemporary transatlantic literature at King’s College London, where he also taught American literature for three years. He is both a short fiction and culture writer. His short stories have recently appeared in ‘BRUISER’, ‘Clackamas Literary Review’, and Querencia Press, and he was shortlisted for Ouen Press’ 2019 Short Story Competition.
