#meez

"Are you Black in real life?"

I was in 5th grade at the time. For about 2 or 3 years I'd been playing this game I'd randomly stumbled across on a list of virtual worlds. The game was called Woozworld. I was around 12 at the time. I didn't know it yet but despite being raised by two Black parents in a Black neighborhood where I attended Black church and went to predominantly Black private and charter schools, I had internalized anti-Blackness.

This was the kind of anti-Blackness that wasn't obvious or that'd really be expressed towards others. It was purely a self-worth issue. And I didn't realize it. At the time I'd been getting my hair permed and maintained at the local salon because there were no quirky cute Black girls on television for me to aspire to look like. So I picked Miranda Cosgrove instead. I was forming interest in white boy bands and white Youtubers and cartoons with all-white casts. It was quite bleak. And I didn't realize it.

When I'd made my Woozworld avatar I chose to escape into a fantasy where I didn't have brown skin and kinky 4c black hair. I was a white girl with long flowing red bouncy wavy curls and green eyes who dressed cool and was (supposedly) 16 years old. I lied about my age and about my racial identity without even realizing it.

My Blackness was never a secret, though. I'd tell my Woozworld friends that I was Black very openly. It was something that was part of me only passively in this world but I knew it was the objective truth. And as a kid I didn't think to verbally lie about my race.

One day another player, a Black boy, asked me a question directly when we were alone, away from the prying eyes of our white friends.

(that virtual chatroom/world site EVERYONE was on in middle school / early high school back in the day apparently like 13 million users??) it got discontinued like 7 years ago but I randomly checked rn and they’re actively working on the site again lmfao.

Fun storytime/rant: my account got hacked by some dumb bitch once so I made a new account then one day after a while of trying to hunt her down to try to get my account back I gave up and then ended up running INTO HER in one of the worlds i was in and reported her immediately 😭 I’m pretty sure she got banned? And wasn’t able to use the account again talk about justice served lol. it was actually chill though. I made friends, begged my grandpa at Best Buy for the $15 one-month VIP cards, the act of running multiple browsers at once just to save outfits at the same exact time so I could glitch multiple hairstyles + clothes together and make my character look sick asf 💀

I remember watching tutorials for that as well as for editing my bio and adding images to that to make it personalized and cool. (Because you were cool if you had more shit going on even in your bio lol) I had my own chat room, a few internet “boyfriends” that never lasted long within the friend group I met online (but we all stayed friends anyway lol), and within that group I was even best friends with Miranda Cosgrove (her and I were 🤞🏻tight. But was she real? fake? who tf knows haha).

I even remember adding some of these people on Facebook, which feels wild now but was totally harmless.

The about-me pages though… spending hours editing your bio, teaching yourself code just to add MySpace graphics, YouTube videos, and whatever other images or gifs you wanted so people could get a feel for who you were. You were automatically cool if your bio was stacked personalized, creative, and not just plain (at least that’s how I saw it lmao). It was genuinely so fun back then. Looking back, the character graphics were actually something else. ☠️

also fun fact it was one of my teachers that literally showed it to us and told us to join FOR A GRADE… so yeah. the whole class did. Ty computer science from Mr. Schellnut xD