Matt raised an eyebrow. “Are you serious? That’s what they call themselves?”
Gus shrugged. “C-list celebrity, C-list fans.”
Rasul was oblivious to all of this. He was too absorbed first in his edits, then in a barrage of advance magazine interviews, all of course he had to juggle against teaching. Most of Jacob’s taunt photos were of Rasul working, though they did manage to sneak away one afternoon to get a pic at the lighthouse. Rasul said he needed to go for research, but it was also a nice day out, for the time of year. Jacob didn’t bring up the online struggles. He figured if Rasul didn’t mention them, that meant he didn’t want to know.
Meanwhile, Jacob continued to run his bookstore, arrange for the care and feeding of his boyfriend, and check in with his haters. The bookstore’s business was up, significantly in fact, and Rasul was so blitzed at the end of every day that Jacob practically poured him into bed. This left him a lot of time in the evenings to check on things online. He frequently startled the cats as he talked back out loud to comments from users named adina4life33 and WeLoveAdinaAndRasul. The user who really made him angry, though, was truthseeker98. They were the ones who had all the Copper Point photos and who seemed to possibly be feeding new shots to Adina for her deepfake videos and photos. This meant someone was in his town, in his store, spying on him. It made him crazy.
He tried to console himself by saying the Adinastans obviously had no life and were incredibly sad creatures he shouldn’t let bother him. He enjoyed their torment as they argued over whether Jacob was a liar or if he could somehow possibly be legit. Jacob observed them like a colony of insects from far away, and he swore he could see the patterns, could know everything about them sight unseen. There were factions, and ringleaders. They were invested in the story Adina had created, each for their own reasons. When he began looking at their pages, despite what they shouted at him, it was difficult to take them too seriously. They didn’t have a lot of agency in their own lives. Most of them had more than one passionate online following, and they were consistently angry everywhere they went. Some of them posted all day long and in the middle of the night. It would have been one thing if they’d been enjoying themselves, but they were clearly miserable.
Especially truthseeker98. It was probably some twenty-year-old who’d dropped out of school and wanted to be an online influencer the same as Adina.
Adina herself was something else. While Jacob had a complicated set of feelings for her followers, the woman who had started all this he had no patience for. She was manipulative and self-involved, and while she might have her own reasons for pursuing Rasul, she had no right. Also, she was lying.
Not just lying, but fabricating. She’d taken to posting videos of her own that were so convincing they gave Jacob momentary pause. He was aware photo and video editing had gotten intense, but this was… this was something else. If you wanted to believe Adina’s story, it would be easy with her fakes.
Why? He desperately wanted to ask her. Why are you doing this? What could this possibly get you? You aren’t dating him. He won’t come back to you, especially because of this. What in the world are you doing?
Gus wasn’t surprised by her efforts. “People get caught up in alternate realities online. I think it’s the illusion of control. Commanding the crowd like that is a heady experience. I remember in college I went with a boyfriend to a game, and this woman in the front of the stands started playing around, trying to get the crowd to mimic her. She got the whole section of the stands to respond. You could see the progression on her face. It was a lark at first, but she got caught up in the thrill of it. And people got caught up in following. She went on for a long time, and it was only some activity on the field that broke the spell. I think the internet is the same thing, but there’s a lot less to distract you if you’re operating in a bubble. Plus you can’t see people’s faces, can’t know who they are or even guess because you just don’t have enough information. But you’re sure you know them, because you fill in the blanks. It’s an endless cycle. You can distort your reality to be whatever you want, and people will follow you because they want to feel the world is more understandable than it is.”
Jacob frowned. “I don’t like it.”
“Of course you don’t. You don’t like it when it happens here in town either. Les Clark and his iron hold on the chamber of commerce is the same thing, his determination that people and businesses should behave a certain way, that progress should only happen under his terms. He just wants to control people, and people want something comforting to follow.” He winked. “That’s what I love about you. You look like someone decent and dependable, and you are. But you’re also a disrupter. You say, calmly, ‘Follow me into a new future. It’ll be fine.’ And it’s easy to believe. You could run for mayor if you wanted.”
Jacob shuddered. “I don’t want to be mayor.” He considered what Gus had said. “You really think I’m like that, do you? Someone people can follow?”
“Of course. Matt and I do. A lot of people agree. That’s why we’re supporting you for chamber president. I don’t think you’re going to win this online battle, however.”
That got up Jacob’s nose. “Why not? She can’t possibly win this.”
“Why couldn’t she? She’s a master of her arena. You don’t just leap into a war and win because you’re using logic. She’s got moves you don’t even understand. But that’s fine. You don’t really want to win there anyway.”
“But I do. I don’t want them saying untrue things about Rasul.”
“For Pete’s sake. The whole internet is going to say untrue things about him forever. You can’t possibly stop them all. But why bother? All that matters is what’s in front of you. You have him. You have Copper Point. He’s finished his novel. You’re both going to live happily ever after. Do you need anything else, really? Do you honestly need to feel like the virtual world is yours too? Maybe you could get it for a short while, but you’d have to go defend it. All the time. Is that where you want all your focus to be?”
It wasn’t, but Jacob was still bothered by the idea that people would still be somewhere carrying on and there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He didn’t want Gus to be right, and he kept thinking that if he were clever, if he found the right angle, he could get them all to stop. But as time wore on, he saw no matter what he posted, no matter how he jabbed, it was food. He began to see if he did a video post where he inserted logic into the whole thing, it would enrage them. And amidst it all was his rival, Adina, egging the fans on. And the hated truthseeker98.
There was no way out either. Even if Jacob took a break from posting, the others kept going. It drove him crazy wondering what they were saying when he wasn’t looking. But by the same token, the more he watched them post, the sicker he felt.
In a passive-aggressive, or perhaps simply an aggressive, move, Jacob started filming Rasul. He interviewed him while they walked along the greenbelt or while he lay on the couch with one of the cats. He took perverse pleasure in asking Rasul about a current event or some other time marker that made it difficult for people to accuse him of remixing old videos. He particularly enjoyed how annoyed these videos made truthseeker98.