^^^ Very first professional photo ever taken of me. The beginning.
@missy @rambo
This is going to be an interesting blog for me to write. I'm not exactly sure the tone it will have because social media has done many great things, as well as many awful things.
I'll start from the beginning. That photo up above was for my very first SG set that I wanted to submit. I was 22 at the time. Unfortunately, we didn't read the rules beforehand and I didn't have enough photos to submit as a full set. But after shooting it, I made my very first Facebook like page. I had "tons" of support (I think I got 100 likes in a few days lol) and I was ecstatic. I started posting daily on there and trying to gain likes. I didn't know how to do share for shares or anything like that, I just gained likes by people being awesome, and I started becoming pretty close with my regular fans. It was amazing, the best time of my life.
I started becoming a pretty well known model in my local areas, started getting paid shoots, and ended up being a full time model. I was enjoying my photos and my modeling, but the fetish stuff was getting a little boring for me. I wanted to do concepts that were more... fun. I started acting and all my fans were loving that. I was getting quite a bit of attention at this point and loving it. I rarely ever heard anything bad about myself, and I had my page filled with supportive people.
Until I started making Youtube videos. Youtube essentially ended me. My spirit as a model and as a person went down the drain. There were awful people on there, people I had never encountered anywhere else. Then they started flocking to my Facebook page. I had people cussing me out because I didn't reply to their messages that read "hi" 10 times in a row (I had over 200 messages a day at that point). It was a full time job for me to reply to people, and half of the messages were rude people telling me I'm too fat or too skinny or a slut or whatever. My producer at the time laughed it all off and told me not to think anything of it. The same producer later made several videos calling me names and being just downright rude. He got his followers to chime in and then my hate mail doubled.
I shut down. I was an absolute wreck. Those of you who have followed my entire career will know exactly what I'm talking about when I say these next few things. I got really overwhelmed and shut down my Facebook pages and profiles. I kept stepping away from it all, then starting new pages hoping to find that core group of fans again and have fun with it all. But every time I changed things, people kept following and kept going with the harassment. It only got worse when I found out I had cancer, which is really sad. I was done. I quit modeling.
I tried to keep my Youtube channel up, but when you're constantly being harassed by awful people in a really low time in your life, you just sometimes have to walk away. I shut that down as well. As soon as I shut that down, I had an epiphany. Although I had been told this many times before, it finally clicked. These trolls are miserable in their own lives. They have nothing better to do than try to tear you down but look at yourself! You've worked your ass off to get to where you are and how dare you let these idiots make you quit your dreams!
That day, I started my brand new Youtube channel. Blocked the old producer's channels (he had over 10 I think), as well as all of his pages on other platforms. I blocked anyone who said anything negative. And guess what... they quit. They stopped the harassment. They knew they weren't affecting me anymore so it all ended. It's only been about a month now since everything came to a stop, but I have a new mindset, and if that fails me... I'll swing the ban hammer so hard, those haters won't know what hit them ;)
So basically, social media has affected me in some crazy ways. But I'm happy to say that I'm embracing it all now and I'm ready to get back in the game! If you're reading this right now, you are amazing, and you are what makes all the bs worth it! Thank you for your support and I can't wait to see what the future has in store for me!
