This May Sound Crazy (8 page)

I am a product of the internet era. I have grown up with cell phones, Wi-Fi, and social media. I got my first phone when I was ten, a Virgin Mobile phone. My parents set it up so I could only make emergency calls—to 911 and to them. But I still found a way to text my cousin about
The O.C.
Yes, I have grown up in the time when everything I could possibly need was a click away. I'm so thankful for that. It makes life easy.

However, sometimes I wish I was born in, like, 1889. Technology, although brilliant, is terrifying. And daunting. And nerve-racking.

Social media has become a beast. Everyone has a voice. There're no filters. No editors. No adult in the room. It can be a horrifying outlet for angry people to vent their frustration on the world—anonymously.

Except, NO ONE is really anonymous.

In a world where your name can be anything you choose, you are still not an unknown entity.

Everyone is a celebrity, and anyone you know could be the paparazzi.

I know friends who have not gotten accepted to colleges because a photo of them ~schwasted~ at a bar was posted on Facebook. THIS IS REAL.

How does this happen, though? How does Surfcutie90's post get seen by a dean at Harvard? It's simple as this:

Type in ANY name you can think of. You are bound to see something you DON'T want to. It's bad for anyone. Whether you are
Angelina Jolie, or a middle school student in Iowa, you may be subject to unknown photos and misplaced quotes.

I have known this my whole life. But it only came to a head recently.

I woke up one morning while I was in London, and did what most people do when they first wake up. I reached over to my nightstand and picked up my phone. I scrolled through Facebook posts with blurry eyes, semiconsciously liking some cousin of mine's best friend's wife who got engaged to some guy who works at Bank of America! MAZEL TOV!

Then I switched to Twitter, scrolled through, favorited some relatable tweets about what it feels like to see your crush flirting with another girl, and also saw that my friend Timothy had retweeted my pic of an otter playing with a Frisbee. #TOOREAL

THENNNN I switched to Instagram, liked a bunch of my friends' pictures, mostly selfies toasting with chai lattes or the occasional OOTD post. CUTE.

Then I checked my texts—nothing. Okay. MOVING ON.

This was all standard routine for me. And the final part of the routine: The Underground.

The Underground is a place some of my friends and I have created as a sort of “safe social media space.” A lot of my friends are known to some degree whether they are actors/singers/YouTubers. And sometimes we can't say everything we want to say on our public Twitters because our publicists would murder us. We create dumb names for our usernames and post about everything openly. When I first got on the Underground, I thought it was so fun but after a while I realized how toxic it was. Instead
of being a place where we could, idk, say the F-word (gasp) and feel cool and edgy, it became a place where we could gossip about one another in a way we couldn't publicly. It became less and less fun and more and more cliquey and catty.

Anyway . . . I went onto the Underground and was immediately bombarded by a plethora of tweets. Before being able to read them coherently, all I could make out was “DID ABBIE KNOW?”

Joel started calling my phone. I answered and he said, voice shaky, “Have you been on the Underground yet?”

To silence, he added,

“Don't do it.”

I hung up and scrolled through as many tweets as I could possibly find. All I could figure out was that Summer had hung out with someone, and I would be mad about it.

Who on earth could she have hung out with,
I thought. I'm pretty chill about most things. And I definitely wouldn't tell someone they aren't allowed to hang out with someone.

THAT IS . . .

until I came across THE PHOTO.

The pic was of Summer with my ex. YEAH. It was weird. They had their arms around each other; it was really strange. I didn't understand why this was happening. And because I was in London again, I couldn't even reach her for a comment on it. All I knew then was everyone was talking about it.

“I heard they hooked up in the bathroom.”

“I HEARD he proposed to her, and she said hell nah.”

“I SAW THEM TALKING IN THE CORRIDOR REALLLLLLY CLOSE TO EACH
OTHER.”

“I heard he was gonna take her to Vegas!!!!!!”

My stomach was turning. How could Summer do this to me? HOW? She's supposed to be my friend!

I was confused and angry and ultimately told Summer, “We are done. You have broken The Friend Code.”

You know the friend code. Things friends just don't do to friends. BIG things. Fundamental things. Things that once broken cannot be fixed.

These are not the she's ALWAYS ten minutes late, or she flaked out on plans last minute, or that she's overdramatic, or she forgets to bring back that T-shirt she borrowed after she accidentally spilled green boba tea all over her own shirt . . . Those are little things that, for a real friend, you let slide. But then
there are bigger issues. Issues that are inherently wrong. And for me, one of those was . . . Look. You're a pretty girl, you can make out with any guy you want. Why do you have to choose the ONE person that you knew would hurt me the most? Obviously, I'm all about “you can't fight how you feel,” but this was deeper. Can't you fight liking the ONE person in the whole world I would beg you NOT to like?

They didn't hook up. Okay, yes, I wasn't there. I cannot say for 100 percent certain what exactly happened. BUT . . . I choose to believe in the good in people. Call me crazy.

After seeing Summer again for the first time since that whole fiasco, I remembered that I know as well as anyone how words and
pictures can be taken out of context. Turns out, Summer was at a party and he was there. He was actually asking her about me. They took a group selfie with each other and posted it on Twitter. The lovely kids on the Underground decided to crop it to make it look very “cuddly.”

She assured me she would never ever do that—and neither would he.

I've always said to people, “You can't believe everything you read,” and I've always meant that about the gossip pages and professional media. But, after this happened, I realized you can't even believe everything that's said—even when you know the people saying it. A picture on Facebook doesn't PROVE anything. Things can be misunderstood or manipulated. People make assumptions. And the story winds up SOOOOO far away from what actually happened. And the best thing to do if something like this happens, if you hear about something that feels absolutely
UNBELIEVABLE, is go to the source RIGHT AWAY. Tell your friend what you've heard, show her the evidence, and let her explain herself. Then take some time and really carefully think about what you read and what she said—and make up your own mind.

Summer and I ended up talking everything through and now are back to being twin flames again.

In short, kids, decide what you can
and can't handle in a friendship,
don't believe everything
you read on Twitter, and
eat your vegetables.

Have you ever lied?

And the truth is: We've all lied. All of us. Sometimes it's just a little white lie, like when your friend tries on a really awful pair of shoes that don't necessarily make HER look bad but it's just . . . personally . . . nah.

If you don't like them you are allowed to say, “Yeah, they're great!” And it's not necessarily a lie. HOWEVER. If they make HER look bad, it is your friend duty to tell her, “Wellllll, I think you can find something more flattering.”

But sometimes, that's hard. You don't want to hurt her feelings. And sometimes your good intentions end up making things worse.

But if telling a friend her boots aren't cute is hard, imagine what it's like when something serious comes up.

I consider myself an honest person. Given the choice, I'll tell the truth. But I've had serious instances when telling the truth felt like the worst thing ever. Once, I was told by a good friend of mine, someone I really trusted, let's call her Charlotte, that my friend Mandy's boyfriend was cheating on her.

My head was spinning, my stomach turning. It brought up bad memories. I've been cheated on in the past—and it sucked. I hated thinking that Mandy would suffer the same agony. It didn't seem right or fair—and I didn't want it to be true.

But after hearing from a bunch of people different tales of his “indiscretions,” I went with Charlotte and met Mandy at Starbucks. Charlotte and I were totally over-caffeinated and immediately began rambling on, maybe
not as gently as we should have, about what we had heard. Mandy took it all in; her face was stoic and still. When our hyper-ness wore off and we had told her all there was to tell, Mandy burst into tears. Not sobs, just tears. Which was almost worse than her screaming at us and cursing us out.

To be fair, I get it. I honestly was so freaked out by the whole situation that I didn't take the time I should have to break it to her slowly. It's like when you get home late from a party and your parents start yelling at you, “DO YOU GET HOW WORRIED I WAS? DO YOU UNDERSTAND? YOU'RE GROUNDED.” But they aren't really mad; they're just worried. Worry can come off as really aggressive even when you don't mean it to be. Not saying this is exactly the same, but I was really worried and I didn't handle it as well as I could have.

She stood up and stared at us both. She said it simply wasn't true and then just left. I felt SO bad. Was I too honest or was it just the
way I'd delivered the news? All I'd wanted to do was protect Mandy from the hurt I had felt when I found out I was cheated on and now it seemed like I had hurt her even worse.

I tried all day to call her but she wasn't answering. Finally, we met up again a couple days later, and she explained to me there was a part of the story that I had swept under the rug. For her, that secret had been most hurtful.

Ya see, what I didn't tell you (or her, at first) was that once Charlotte and I heard that Mandy's bae may have been fooling around, we went on a mission.

WE BECAME
SPIES.

Okay. So not literally, obvs, cuz that'd take like a ton of training and work, BUT we did
go to his favorite hangout spot and wore all black and watched from another table and . . . yeah. Nothing happened. No secret rendezvous with a raven-haired vixen. Just him. With his bros. Drinkin' lattes.

But still, we had heard SO many stories. I guess Mandy just felt betrayed that we'd sink to that level of stalkerness without even telling her first. But honestly, I was just trying to figure these things out on my own. I didn't want to just take someone else's word for it if I could find out for myself. I don't know. I guess I can be a tad controlling at times, but I honestly was trying to do the right thing. She told me that a lot of the things we heard were just rumors. Nothing more.

It happened about two years ago. I was sort of seeing this guy. It wasn't a super-intense relationship, but it felt meaningful to me.

He was living in LA, and I live in NYC, so it was kind of hard but not the worst long-distance thing considering how often I'm in LA for work. I had point-blank asked him if we were boyfriend and girlfriend, and he said, “I don't want to put labels on it, but I promise you I'm not seeing anyone else.” Yet another case of a Non-relationship Relationship. I was younger then so I didn't know this wasn't really an acceptable arrangement for me. A lot of people are fine with just casually dating, and that's cool, but for me at that time, it wasn't. And I should've told him that. But I liked him SO much and didn't want to seem clingy.

That relationship came to a head when my friend Mara called me and asked me to meet her for lunch in NYC. I did, and as soon as I sat down, she told me that my non-boyfriend boyfriend was hooking up with one of her friends. At first I didn't believe it, even though Mara is a trustworthy friend. I guess it was denial. But then a ton of other people
confirmed it, including the girl Mara had told me about. It sucked, and it made me feel really bad about myself for a long time. To be honest, I still have trust issues from time to time as a result. It's one of those things you never want to have to live through.

SO KIDS . . . HERE'S THE LESSON: There are always rumors. I mean, sometimes mine are in magazines and I need to call my grandma and tell her to NOT read
Us Weekly
this week. (TRUE STORY.) But at the end of the day, rumors are rumors. If you hear something from enough people that you feel you need to tell your friend, you should do it. But maybe don't treat it like it's actual evidence unless you have evidence. And maybe you should really think first about how you should tell your friend this news. Probably rambling on over coffee as if it's juicy gossip is not the best way. I learned that lesson the hard way for sure. Maybe starting out with something like, “Hey, I've been hearing things from a bunch of our friends about
your boyfriend maybe not being totally faithful to you. I don't know for sure if it's true, but the sources are legit. Again, I don't wanna spread rumors if they aren't true, but I had to tell you because you're my friend and I want to make sure you're being treated the way you should be. Wanna meet for coffee and talk about it?”

That way you aren't bombarding your friend with this intense news in an alarmed manner. They'll be more willing to accept the conversation and listen and think it through clearly if they don't feel they're being attacked.

As an actor I can confidently say, it's all in the delivery!

Okay. Well. Maybe not everything. But.
Yeah.
You get the point.

#actorjokefail?