Okay, this seems like a relevant thing to share today: I’ve been in this position. Back in college while on that student lifestyle, I somehow ended up with a pretty bad iron deficiency. How bad? I was not only sleeping too much, I was falling asleep everywhere – in class, in the library, in cafes five minutes after drinking coffee. It was terrible. Anyway, during a class I enjoyed, I was sat at a table with a few classmates, and I started falling asleep while taking notes; nodding off, dropping my pen, startling awake and falling asleep again, until my head was on the table. No one seemed to mind, we were all going through it I guess, and my lecturer was nice enough not to make a big deal out of it.
Cut to the next day and I was in the Students Union, when a friend came up to me and told me how funny that video was of me falling asleep in class was. What? I asked her about it, what did she mean, who made the video, and she realised I literally had no clue about it. Kindly, she told me who to talk to and I thanked her. I was already upset, but I knew it wasn’t the messenger’s fault. So, I took to Facebook and messaged the girl who made the video – a girl on my table in the class from before. I asked her about it, and she admitted it right away – she took the video on her phone during class and posted it to her snapchat. That’s how the other girl saw it, not to mention countless others.
Sorting this out was an absolute toil. I felt betrayed and violated that someone would do that while I was obviously not in a position to have any say about it. I lost friendships with the people who took the girl’s side, as if it was no big deal or “funny”. I had to tell the lecturer about it, because let’s face it, that’s a shit thing to allow to happen during class itself, the department moved to be more alert and proactive about restricting phone use in class, and all that girl had to do was give a half-hearted apology. The next semester, she was still openly using her phone in another class we had.
For a long time, I couldn’t trust anyone who held their phone up around me, as if to take photos or video. It would make me so anxious and put me on edge. I never did speak to the people who cosigned her behaviour, who acted like it wasn’t their problem that their bff video-recorded a person in class over their health condition without their consent.
I did eventually grow out of my anxiety around phones, and I resisted the urge to break that girl’s phone, but, I will absolutely bring back that energy if I see someone record a stranger in public without their consent. Take it from someone who’s been that target – if you think it’s okay, you deserve to get your shit wrecked.
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