"I became a meme and my life became a nightmare"

He was at a family party when he put on dark glbades and took a selfie with his mobile phone.

She, who was 15 years old at the time, shared the picture on her Facebook profile. But recording in pictures of this moment of joy has become one of the biggest traumas of his life.

At the beginning, shortly after the publication of the photo, the first thing that was won was a "Like". But a few days later, Deborah noticed that strangers shared the picture.

He soon realized that, unfortunately, his picture was becoming a meme – pictures used to make jokes and shared on the Internet – because of his appearance.

In a mocking tone, Deborah began to call "Oakley Diva", a brand of sunglbades.

While the photo elicited a lot of laughter among those who shared it, Debora cried in her room, in a district of Sao Paulo, Brazil.

It touched her so much that she had to be confined to her house to avoid being recognized elsewhere.

"I felt ugly, humiliated, less than other girls my age," Debora told the BBC, now 22.

"The comments on the memes with my photo have talked a lot about my appearance and it has bothered me," he added.

At that time, he left school, stopped going out and thought about suicide.

"I had no strength, I cried and cried and I blamed myself for sharing this photo."

A few weeks ago, about seven years later, Deborah saw how they used their photo again to memorize on social media.

"They had stopped using the photo, but recently they shared it again on Facebook and Instagram," he said.

Now, with a 3-year-old son, she is working as an addict in a pharmacy in Sao Paulo and is looking at how this new wave of memes no longer affects her as before.

For example, he decided not to hide as he did years ago. On his Facebook profile, he wrote that he was going to pursue the pages that were using his photo.

"I realized that I was not the problem, I will not accept that they do everything they did with me seven years ago," he said. he declared.

From memes, Deborah is clbadified as an example of an ugly woman.

The selfie

When he released the selfie that later became a meme, Deborah thought that he would gain much praise.

"I thought I was very pretty, at that time I had a very high self-esteem."

He recalled that the photo began to be shared by a young man who had a friend in common with her.

The friend looked at the picture, laughed at it and started broadcasting it on the Internet, "he said.

Deborah asked him to erase it. He deleted it from his profile, but countless pages had already taken it and shared it.

The first time he left home after posting the photo, Deborah noticed that many people had seen the memes with his face.

"I had no idea of ​​the impact of the photo." When I went to a store near my home, many people recognized me, some young people started making fun of me. It was horrible, "he said.

"Many have pointed at me, I realized at that time that they were making fun of me because they had seen the meme," he explained.

Memes have become popular during school holidays. When Debora returned to clbad, she discovered that her clbadmates had also seen her.

"Once again, many have recognized and mocked me," he noted. Soon he had to leave the school.

Debora's mother remembers that her daughter was completely isolated.

"I did not know what to do, I wanted to help her, but in that case I did not know what to do, she was in a lot of pain," he said.

For the psychologist Marck de Souza, the subject is worried about the magnitude that the diffusion of images can have.

"Social networks can have a great deal of weight in a person's life." This ridiculousness of somebody, which happened once but on a smaller scale, now has capital proportions, because it's enough one click to share a photo, "he explained.

"Since the content can be viralized and can not be completely removed from the networks, the person can not disconnect it, so ridicule on the Internet can be there forever," he said.

In mid-2012, Deborah wanted to die.

"I had no reason to live in. I was depressed by everything that was going on," he said.

Then he took several drugs that were at home. "Several members of my family saved me, I told them that I had taken the drug.If I had poison at home at that time, I got it. I just wanted to get rid of everything I was going through, "he writes.

Fortunately, the medications that he had taken did not represent a danger to his life.

Restart

In mid-2014, cyberbullying – harbadment via the Internet – against Deborah had ended.

"Gradually, the meme lost grace for people and they stopped sharing it.It was at that point that I started living my life in a normal way," she said. he explained.

The young woman could still look in a mirror with more tranquility.

"My self-esteem improved."

Despite the delay, he was able to finish high school. "It was important to me because it was like starting to live again," he said.

In 2015, she started going out with a young man and the following year, she realized that she was pregnant. She and her baby's father are no longer together now, but for her "it was important for her to believe in me again".

The return of the memes

At the beginning of July, Deborah was surprised to see that the meme with her image had reappeared and was shared again.

In publications of different Facebook pages, they laughed at the same thing: their physics.

She started sending messages to the owners of the pages to stop sharing the photo.

"A boy said that he thought I was dead and nobody would worry about it," he said.

Another thing that caught his attention was racism. "Since they've started to share my image, I have read many very racist comments against me.When everything happened in 2012, I did not understand much, but now I have it understand, "he added.

And he finished: "I'm very proud of the color of my skin."

"In memes, you can see racism because they always put white girls as pretty while I'm ugly." "They could make sure that a black woman is pretty, but they do not do it." I realize that it is essential to fight against racism, "he said.

The main thing Deborah wants to do to avoid exposing her image on social networks is to pursue owners of profiles and pages sharing the same words.

"I will take the appropriate action if the person does not want to delete the photo, and nobody has the right to expose me in this way."

In a statement to the BBC, Facebook reported that bullying and harbadment violated community standards of this social network.

In the text sent, the company asks people to report content that they believe should not be on the platform.

Deborah, however, says that since 2012 she has posted all the memes with her selfie and is also asking her friends to report the case to Facebook.

However, he says that the images have never been deleted. "They only deleted the photos when I asked the owner of the profile or page directly," he says.

Facebook also said that they had acted to stop the number of cases of intimidation.

In 2018 he launched a tool for proofreading photos, videos or publications in which it is possible to request that a report, if it did not have the expected results, be re-evaluated.

Instagram has informed the BBC that she has tools to fight and prevent bullying. Cases must be reported to the social network for evaluation.

BBC