- I accidentally became a meme and this is that story.
My name is Maggie Goldenberger
but you may know me as the Ermahgerd Girl.
Just as a warning, the end of the story gets pretty weird.
So this all started in 1999.
I'm in middle school, playing sports, I got my friends.
"Goosebumps" had come out a few years ago. I enjoyed them.
I wasn't particularly a fanatic
but my mom remembers it very differently
than I apparently was obsessed with "Goosebumps."
After school, my best best friend Kaitlin and I
would hang out.
Kaitlin had just gotten a Polaroid camera
that actually printed the pictures right there.
So we were a little obsessed with that
and would take all sorts of photos all the time.
And we would get dressed up. We had a dress up box.
One night, we were taking pictures
and I was trying to look as ridiculous
and as nerdy as possible.
We got the "Goosebumps" books out,
we grabbed her old backpack from first grade,
a vest her mom found at Goodwill,
took my hair and put them in pigtails.
I had a retainer that I usually wore at night.
We got it out, I threw it in and just started making faces.
So Kaitlin took the picture.
We waited five minutes or so for it to develop.
Once it was there it was really funny,
we thought it was great and she kept it
for years and years and years.
Fast forward to 2012, I am backpacking in India
with my current girlfriend at the time.
And we only have internet access about once a week.
We'd go to internet cafe.
And I started getting messages from my mom
wondering why my photo was all over the internet
and that there was some kind of German writing
on my photo and it was all over.
And I was like okay, mom.
I know she does not know how the internet works.
So I just ignore her.
But then then I get a message
from a friend from high school
and she says, "Hey, just so you know,
this other guy we went to high school with
is sharing that photo of you all over Facebook."
And I did end up messaging him like
hey, I wouldn't mind if you just asked
but it's really strange you're just doing this
without my consent.
Like what's going on?
And he's like, he had no idea it was me.
He said he found it from a comedy website.
So then I realized there's some legitimacy
to what my mom's saying.
So now I really want to know what was going on.
Who would put my photo on the internet?
Why is it spreading like wildfire?
So when I get back to the US I was seeing it everywhere.
Every social media site, news outlet,
t-shirts with my face on them, mugs,
countless people were dressed as me for Halloween that year.
The guys from Nerdist made a music video
with the girl from Paramore and I am just watching it
wondering what on earth is going on.
So all of this is happening.
I have all these messages asking me
what I'm gonna do about it,
how I'm gonna make money off of it.
People I need to sue.
It was pretty overwhelming
with all the information coming in all at once.
All the while I'm still trying to figure out
how this got uploaded because I asked all my friends,
no one was copping up to it.
I feel like anyone that would do it
would want to take some credit for it.
So it wasn't until a Vanity Fair article
did some serious research and found out
it was from a photo my friend had uploaded on her MySpace
and it was a public domain, this photo bucket.
And some stranger, a 16 year old from Canada,
just saw it one day, thought it was hilarious,
and uploaded it to Reddit with the caption of
"Just a girl and her books."
And then another user put on it,
"Gersberms, my favorite books"
like with that retainer accent.
And then from there, another user
put the tagline of "Ermangerd."
And that is finally when the whole meme came together.
I felt mostly okay with the sharing
and the fun of it spreading some kind of
a little bit of joy, but the invasion of privacy
and the nonconsensual selling my face,
it felt like a real violation.
I didn't feel personally attacked
because I was being a character
but there is still that underlying feeling
like why do adults think it's so funny
to make fun of a young girl that's excited about books?
We want to encourage kids to be reading
as many books that they can get ahold of.
One thing that made me really uncomfortable
was I had a friend of my brothers,
he wanted to prove I was the girl in the meme
so he started revealing personal details about my life
to an internet community and sharing a photo of me
in a bikini.
So I was out at the time, but my girlfriend was not,
she had a very conservative family
and wasn't necessarily out to most of them.
And so what he was doing to prove it was me,
like basically outing her and outing our relationship.
He just opened me up to that whole community of trolls
and it was a total violation of privacy.
Okay, so this is the weird part.
So because I'm a meme I would get different invites
to do appearances and things like that,
that I kind of grazed over.
And then one came my way that asked if I wanted to attend
a meme themed jungle furry party in the Bay area.
I sent a screenshot to a couple of my friends
and I said, hey, the offers keep rolling in.
Everyone thought it was pretty funny
but one of my friends was in San Jose
and she was like, "Oh my gosh, we have to go."
So we drive to San Francisco and we come up to
this beautiful house on top of this hill.
And something about it just feels a little spooky to me,
but we just go with it.
So we go into the house and we meet this chef
and he's telling us we're about to have a six course meal.
And it's going to be infused with something
that I can't say in this video.
And as I sit down, I realized across from me
is the double rainbow guy.
And then we proceed to have the best meal of my life.
Well during dinner, people were wearing their ears
as their designated characters
but it was after the meal when things got really furry.
So we're having drinks after dinner
and more and more people are showing up in their full fur
and I'm talking to double rainbow guy
and he is one of the sweetest people I've ever met.
And he's just like he is, like just genuine in his video.
So all of a sudden I found myself alone on the couch.
And next thing I know I have a cat coming up to me
and starts purring and rubbing against my legs.
And by cat, I mean a human being in a cat costume.
And I'm like, oh, okay, this is part of it.
I started petting it. Oh, okay, great.
And then it just wouldn't end.
I didn't have a safe word. I didn't know what to do.
And I look over and my friend is just on top of this wolf
and whatever was in the dinner is starting to kick in
and I know I need to get out of there.
So I get up, I can't find my friend.
All of a sudden I feel this hand on my back
and I turn around and it's her.
And she also needs to go and immediately at that moment.
Nothing sinister happened. We just had enough and had to go.
So we left and we had no regrets.
I had conversations with some of the most interesting
and nicest people I've ever met
and they were so warm and welcoming.
All in all, I have no regrets about the meme.
To all the little kids out there who love to read,
keep it going.
Reading is cool and do not let the internet
tell you otherwise
(mellow music)