Nonfiction by Elizabeth Hall

Snark, My Mother, and Me

I forgot my sunglasses in LA. From the freeway to the mountain road, the sun lashed my raw face, cutting up my vision. Once we hit the snowpack, I couldn’t look at the road at all. With each curve, my stomach lurched. I sucked ginger candies as H. sipped a diet coke, one hand out the window. We were on our way to Nevada City for a Friendsgiving. Despite the wind and the playlist, the car felt eerily quiet. I realized it was the first time in a week that we had ridden in the car in silence. For the past seven days, my mother has been staying with us. Silence made her itchy. She preferred a running commentary. Whenever I spent time with her in person, the world felt far quieter after she left. I turned up the stereo. My headache throbbed along to the beat. The gingers didn’t touch me. Neither did the 24oz iced coffee. I needed something stronger to snuff my hangover, the one I got drinking red wine and spinning 45s with my mom. I had been desperate for one good night together before we dropped her off at the airport. No arguments, no tension. Instead of talking, we finally danced. But today, my bones still felt as if they were vibrating to disco jams. I knew the jolt I needed to distract me from my headache and lessen the distance between my mother and me. I needed analysis. I wanted to disappear into other people’s opinions. I craved the clean, cutting logic of critique. So I leaned my head against the window and opened my phone. The red icon with the cute robot face slowly downloaded onto my homescreen. One tap and I was swimming headfirst through the warm waters of Reddit snark pages. 

This was the first time I had read the pages in months. I admit: I had deleted the Reddit app from my phone. I now only downloaded it when I needed a hit. Usually, when I was sick, or on a treadmill, or say, missing my mother and her endless commentary. My mother had trained me in the art of critique, or what some might call self and world improvement. I had trained myself to find flaws, inconsistencies, and inequalities. I was always looking for ways to change myself and society. Whenever I read snark pages, the geographical distance between my mother and me seemed to narrow. See, on Reddit snark pages, anonymous strangers gather to critically discuss, mock, and cut down content creators. Most of the posts reference TikToks, the urtext of snark pages. Some users only lurk. Others post and comment. They vent frustrations about the perceived flaws of influencers, their shameless consumerism, or say, chronic brow blindness. I discovered snark pages when my publisher was featured in a group photo on r/nycinfluencersnark. The comments on the post were breathtaking in their specificity, each offering a mini critique on each person’s outfit and Botox regimen. Assholes, I thought, clicking off the page. But the comments on the page echoed through my head. An hour later, I returned. I scrolled through the evening, stunned, then subdued. I slept well that night. 

There was something soothing about riding an endless wave of critique. There was always another post. Another thread. Each snark subreddit has its own subject, tone, and flavor. Certain pages engage in what some cultural commentators argue is a “useful form of social critique,” a necessary check on the absurdities of social media and influencer culture. Other pages border on bullying. While each snark page could be viewed as its own genre with its own set of rules and norms, what unites them all is their devotion to critique as a way of life. In a think piece for The Guardian, author Katy Kelleher described their interest in snark pages as a kind of “schadenfreude,” or the experience of pleasure that comes from seeing another person struggle or embarrass themselves. Many other cultural commentators see snark pages as pure sadism, a “safe haven for haters.” For me, reading the pages was first and foremost a sensory experience. A hit of adrenaline giving way to relaxation. Snark pages felt like home. A return to a beloved mother tongue. One I thought I had forgotten how to speak.  

Despite the dazzle of snow outside the passenger window, my eyes stayed locked on the screen. I was submerged in my girl-world. Reddit snark pages are saturated with the words she, her, herself. Halle, Jazz, Briana, Hannah, Danielle were the names that circulated the most. If a man was mentioned at all, he was one of their boyfriends, brothers, or gay besties. In any given post, the use of she and her far eclipsed the use of I. This alone fascinated me. As a researcher and essayist, I was well versed in the totalizing pleasure of abandoning the I to think through her, her, her. To lose yourself in obsession about another woman felt like a rite of passage for girls and writers alike. It was freeing to not bear the burden of one's own selfhood for a few hours. 

I scrolled deeper into the heart of pure obsession. My head still ached, but I hardly noticed the pounding. I was mesmerized once again by the posters, their tenacious world building. Here was a true blue Herland. A world built almost entirely by women. The posters were far more captivating to me than the influencers who I saw mostly as screens onto which the posters projected their various feelings. Outside of Reddit, I didn’t know any of the influencers discussed on the pages. I did not view their content. In this way, reading Reddit felt like eavesdropping at a cafe. Guilt-free gossip. 

A southern cliche, I thrived on gossip even as a child. Every night my mother and grandmother talked on the phone for hours. When the conversation turned spicy, my mother would leave the kitchen and enter her bedroom, closing the door behind her. Often, the door was left cracked by accident, and I sat outside, savoring every bit of gossip I overheard about my sister, stepfather, and especially me. Sometimes it pained me to hear my mother’s unfiltered thoughts, especially about my own behavior and personality. But I also believed in the inherent usefulness of the commentary she offered. I turned her criticisms into a customized self-help roadmap. I did the same with friends at school. I listened deeply to their criticisms of other girls in hopes of avoiding the same fate. At my small high school, gossip was the connective tissue that held many friendships together. Shit-talking requires a degree of trust that the person you’re talking to feels the same way. It brings two people together through the mingling of vulnerability and judgment. The judgment part was key: shit-talking provided a running log of what people do and do not like about other people. I was grateful for every bit of gossip I swallowed.

Fortunately for me, gossip is having a moment. In recent years, feminists have begun to reexamine the practice, reimagining it as a form of soft power. From this lens, gossip is a potent form of communication, resistance, and community-building, especially in patriarchal cultures where women’s voices have historically been silenced or discredited. Gossip in this context could take the form of doxxing a man who sexually assaulted you on social media in an effort to warn potential victims. Some posters on Reddit snark pages might see themselves as performing similar useful work. Occasionally, posts call out influencers’ consumerism, racism, misogyny, and scams. More often than not, however, the posts are cruel cut downs designed to mock and embarrass the subject. Even so, snark pages aren’t merely sites of girl on girl crime. They’re also communities. But what happens when a tool of connection and resistance becomes indistinguishable from cruelty? When language becomes weaponized? Was this simply how the world worked?

For me, snark pages satisfyingly confirmed a world view I had long struggled to reject: people are constantly assessing other people along societal constraints. This world view taught me that criticism makes us better people. I clung to this myth even as therapists or lovers assured me that no one is thinking about anyone that critically. 

Reddit snark pages tell a different story. Strangers are in fact judging each other, often along classic hierarchies related to class, race, and degree of gender conformity. Reading through pages of comments felt like glimpsing how the world really worked. In this world, the ability to offer, accept, and incorporate criticism ensured social and economic success. Snark pages offered me what felt like a portal into the psyche of each poster and their myriad beliefs about how to be.

 “Imagine being this rich and keeping your designer sunglasses on a shelf above the toilet 🤮” reads one post about a wealthy fitness influencer’s bathroom mirror selfie. She is wearing cream yoga pants and a slicked back bun. Her skin and nails are manicured. The first ten comments were all variations of “gross,” “disgusting,” and “ can’t her mouth breathing husband build her a bigger closet?” The next post I scrolled past was titled: “How many Prada loafers does one person need? Didn’t she just buy a new pair last week?” My eyes widened as I read, taking it all in: the photos, the text, the unbridled judgment. While Reddit wasn’t my mother, it sounded like her. She might riff the same way about an ostentatious display of wealth by a church member back home. 

When I scrolled to the end of the last unread thread, I opened TikTok. We were still one hour from our hotel, and I wasn’t in the mood to daydream while staring out the window. As always my FYP was a mashup of comedy, impersonations, cooking, Sexyy Red fans, cats, and lesbian thirst traps. When a face I recognized from the snark pages appeared on my FYP, I scrolled past it out of habit then doubled back. The fitness influencer with the slicked back bun. I immediately became suspicious that TikTok was tracking my movements across apps, and I deleted Reddit. Back on TikTok, the influencer’s face filled my screen. 

I was startled to see her here, in motion. Reddit had flattened her to a punchline. On snark pages, the images people posted were typically screenshots from TikTok, not full videos. I had little interest in watching those. I was intrigued by the posters, not the influencers. What fascinated me was the tension: they devoured these women, then dissected them. Consumption and critique became indistinguishable. In the attention economy, critique almost felt like care. Noticing was a kind of love. Because my interest lay in the posters themselves, I had never thought to question the veracity of their critiques. Were they based in reality? Were the women they dogged really materialistic, out of touch, greedy, and bloated with botox? 

As I thumbed through the fitness influencer’s feed, I squinted to find a reason to rag on her beyond the baked-in cringe factor of being a content creator. The lack of obvious offense surprised me. There must be something awful about her, or at least the others. I scan her page for more evidence, but her apartment looked tidy. Her voice overs about her sunset walks and salmon bowls were so ordinary it was almost dull. I tapped on another DIML video but clicked off when we pulled into the hotel parking lot. 

I didn’t think about the woman with the bun at dinner or as I waded into the heated hotel pool after. It was late, but H. and I still wanted to swim. As we floated, we tried to make out Orion's Belt. Not until I was in bed, unable to sleep at 2am did I think about Halle, Jazz, Briana, Hannah, and Danielle. Blue light shining in my face, I downloaded the red icon with the robot face. As I scrolled, I found myself arguing with the snarkers in my head. Consuming the influencers’ content myself had made me suspicious of them and their judgment. Their criticism now struck me as overly idiosyncratic, influenced by personal biases. As I cruised various pages, it became harder and harder to convince myself that the posters were misguided truth tellers, offering relevant, if harsh, feedback. I turned off my phone and put it in the nightstand. 

In the morning, I sipped coffee between white sheets and tapped through the red app. I did this every morning on the seven day trip. The thrill of the scroll was gone. Though I still scrolled. Instead of pleasant distraction, I was plagued by the feeling that critique itself might be the problem. Critique can be a valid expression of love because it carries the belief that someone or something can change. A better person or world is possible. Critique once felt like an intimacy: my mother’s nightly commentary, the cold thrill of a workshop that cut right to the truth. But I had begun to wonder if my impulse to critique foreclosed more possibilities than it created. Increasingly, browsing Reddit annoyed me. The criticisms served as an unwelcome reminder that I had spent far too long believing that criticism was inherently helpful. I winced remembering dinner parties where I had bragged about my preference for mean fitness instructors, the kind who called you out mid-set for poor form. My first request from AI was to provide “critical feedback” on a Depop item description. Of course, the robot told me I was off to a great start, which frustrated me. I had wanted more viciousness, which I equated with honesty. The bot inadvertently revealed the inherent flaw in seeking unbiased critique. Criticism can offer valuable insights and perspectives, but it's always subjective. On its own, its usefulness as a tool for parsing the world is limited. 

Other tools I prefer: my mouth. I explore by eating bagels, sunchokes, and tomatoes, savoring without analyzing. My pores likewise guide me. Under their influence, the city is no longer only a product of developers' greed but also resplendent with sun, and today, wind, which feels nice against my skin. Storytelling, too. When I encounter a clip of a content creator unboxing six cases of probiotic sparkling water, I clock the crudeness of the spectacle, mentally riff on all the ways the consumption is problematic, but I don’t stop there. I think about how their skin felt while filming their content, if they were bored, what they did to prepare, and how they cleaned up, if they cleaned up. I let myself wonder about the landscape of their city, how the lakes, rivers, trees, or concrete that surrounds them changes their day to day experience of the world. I let my curiosity off leash. She wanders far and wide. 

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Elizabeth Hall is the author of Season of the Rat (Cash 4 Gold Books) and I Have Devoted My Life to the Clitoris, a Lambda Literary Award Finalist. Her nonfiction work has appeared in Bon Appétit, Black Warrior Review, Electric Literature, the Iowa Review, Pleiades Magazine, and elsewhere. You can find her on instagram at @badmoodbaby.