💡🐇 Naughty Thoughts

꩜⚤A Review of the Day

Natasha isn't sure what she wants to do after college. She's studying the things that interest her, but she doesn't have a real future in mind. All of her talents, and everything about her, seems to suggest she'll end up being one more person in a boring job that doesn't mean anything to her. She could be a successful accountant, but would that be anything to be proud of?

A few years before, in high school, Nat started making a video journal to share her life with old pen friends and people she had met through the school's foreign exchange programme. Now she has fifty people following the videos, where she talks about whatever's been bugging her during the day, or asks for advice. It's not something she takes too seriously, but likes to connect with people who aren't in the same situation as herself right now. Then one day, she realises that it might have been a good idea to listen to their advice; after she can't find the courage to say anything to a guy she's interested in, putting it off each day until he finds someone else.

She watches some of her own older videos, to see if any more people have left advice that she missed out on. And she finds that her life is boring. She's lively and energetic, but nothing ever happens, and it seems that a lot of the time she's talking about things she'd like to do instead of actually doing them. After a weekend marathon of her own channel, she sees nothing but a sequence of missed opportunities. Her neighbour, Gawain, says that it might be a good idea to start taking the advice of her fans more, but she's too nervous. Scared of being different; scared of being embarrassed; scared of putting herself forward.

He has a solution, which she would never have even considered. But she sees him jumping at chances, doing fun things. Better to regret doing something than never know, she realises. She's still nervous, but she asks her followers, and promises herself that if every comment tells her to go through with it, then she will. And much to her surprise, that happens. His idea was simple – use hypnosis to make her hesitate less when she wants to do something. But she needs to draw a line between doing crazy things, and missing out on things she might enjoy. So she decides to use her videos to change her life. If she asks people for advice in one of her videos, she has to do what the majority suggest. There's no reason to be embarrassed anymore, because she knows that the final choice isn't hers.

She doesn't tell her fans what the rules are; just that she's getting hypnosis to help her be braver and do more interesting things. But after a while it seems that some of her fans might have realised that she will do whatever they say. Especially when more people start subscribing. She does some outrageous things to test her limits, and draws in more and more fans. After a couple of months, she's participated in illegal street racing live on air, yelling to her fans about how she's both terrified and enjoying the thrill. She's started a second video channel on another site, where she can talk openly about her more erotic adventures. She's travelled to a foreign country with no plans, only her viewers guiding her to find something interesting there. And now she has a million subscribers, she's in danger of this little personal project turning into a career.

Her videos have taken over her life, but something about the helplessness is kind of addictive. She could always stop; she could go back to being the boring straight-A student who's going to become an accountant for some faceless corporation. She only has to do what she's told if she asks for advice, and she could probably break out of the suggestion anyway, if she really wanted to. But after all the fun she's had, why would she ever go back to that?

And sooner or later, she'll have to confront the mask that she wears. After everything she's done, she is more confident in front of her fans, and has no trouble saying what she really wants. But occasionally, with the few old friends she's still in touch with, she wonders about being an impostor: All the fun things she's done, all the things that people like her for, were just the actions given to her by her fans, like she's an actor following a script. Until Gawain comes back again and makes her realise that the mask isn't what she thought it was. For six months now, she's been skimming over tens of thousands of comments to see what people want her to do, and her estimates of what is the most popular answer haven't always been accurate. She's been using "hypnosis" as an excuse to do the things she really wants to do, imagining that other people are choosing when in reality she's noticing the comments that match her own desires.

She always wanted to live this life, but was scared to admit it to herself. She was playing the role of the shy, innocent girl at college, because she was afraid to confront her deepest desires. And now she has no reason to be afraid anymore.