Gone Fishing: An Exploration of Identities and Digital Selves

Working in 2020 means having to have some sort of presence online, a necessity exacerbated by a global pandemic that complicates the safety of offline work. The trap of being online, however, is that to maintain a presence is to feed the system more content; to be alive is to be posting.

On August 17th, 4 days before I was set to perform at E-Viction, I received two Instagram DMs from two separate people alerting me that someone had set up a profile using my professional photos under the alias Maria Adukinas. On “her” profile, I noticed Maria was steadily gaining followers by the day, using hashtags such as #footfetish #footfetishnation #sexy #sugarbaby, and more. Loads of accounts responded, some of them counterscammers, others simply horny.

I did what any sane person would do: I messaged her from another account, pretending to be a submissive, using the language that had been used with me thousands of times before.

We began a love affair over the next few days. I acquired her phone number and began to text her. I blocked her from my professional Instagram, but posted all the things I was saying to her so people could keep up with our developing relationship and make suggestions of their own.

In an odd way, Maria feels appropriate as an alternate universe identity; Maria is a shortened version of a government name I never use, and when pressed for her interests, she listed several fetishistic interests which I share and several which don’t particularly excite me.

I felt like I had created a digital self so precise that it detached from me and gained its own autonomy, a sort of Pygmalion miracle if Pygmalion had crafted his sculpture after his own image. It felt like that scene from Annihilation in which Natalie Portman confronts an alien that adopts her face. Here, I was roleplaying as the very archetype of a client not yet ready to book but very ready to waste time, fishing for proof that this entity was “the real deal” and having my own face sent back to me.

It was quite surreal. And to be honest, after the initial cycle of shock > frustration > annoyance was able to fade, I felt a sense of excitement and curiosity take its place. How often does a lay person get to converse with their doppelganger? How many hours had I, a Gemini, fantasized about having my own clone; those fantasies ranged from fucking them, to testing out cosmetic surgeries on them, to making them do all the administrative tasks that I found tedious. And here she was taking on marketing my image, one of the most exhausting tasks. The voice wasn’t quite my own, but I was sure it wouldn’t be too difficult to train an approximation.

The timing could not have been more perfect. E-Viction was 4 days away, presenting the perfect opportunity to get opinions, suggestions, and contributions on what to say to my doppelganger. In this way, I turned myself simply into a conduit, a vessel through which we all got to speak to her. I was simply a delivery system.

Gone Fishing is the collectively sourced letter that I eventually sent to her. Over the course of an hour, 20-30 people participated in the construction of this letter in a public google document, which I shared to my private room. At the top of the document was a recent photo of me that anyone could take for themselves to set as their background or profile photo, allowing them the opportunity to catfish me as well. The form and settings allowed them to suggest in the document, to highlight and comment on others’ contributions, or simply to voyeur anonymously if they so chose.

At the end of the performance, I requested that everyone in my audience send Maria a single dollar via Cashapp, with the memo “Catfish labor”. She accepted all of their gifts, then requested $100 in return.

The letter reads as follows:

Subject line: Mirror Me
Dear Alter Ego faux-tegé?
Copy-kitty
Dear Dupe-ster
Dear Photo-filcher
Dear Sexy-Xerox
Dear Tether
to whom it may concern
To whom is unconcerned,
You do not know how astounding the impact is of what you have done. Thank you.
You have brought me together with 28 of my closest loved ones
And we are all talking about you/about us
These are my deepest fantasies:
Pulling out teeth
hypnotism
Catfishing Empress Wu (myself)
Abduction
To be treated like a client (yet I am also a provider)
Wanting to be danced on, to have a show put on for me
Group sex
Trying on a different body
Consensual non-consent
Being out-topped
Rollercoaster sex
Clone death match
Getting raw-dogged by rum-tum-tugger
Tentacles in every orifice
You bring up some interesting phenomenological inquiries
Is it masturbatory to have sex with yourself, even a false one?
Is it exploitative to use someone else’s photos, even if those photos were created to seduce?
For a digital persona, who is the catfish and who is the real one?
Are digital personas even real?
Is there some way for us to work together
Can I hire someone to be a better me than me?
Can you be your own unpaid intern?
What is the fantasy that people are paying for when they pay you? Is it double fantasy? Do you charge twice?
I wonder what would have happened if we had met. Myself and my friends are under the impression that a bespoke catfish experience is the next ayahuasca
Here are the other things that I would like for you to take responsibility for:
Speaking to my republican grandfather on the phone
Get a boob job
Do my job; I am a remote worker so it literally does not require my body
Reject all my suitors for me
Do the dishes, do my chores, clean the shower curtain
Act out the possible selves that I’m not
Provide an alibi for my crimes
Film a Parent Trap remake together
I think that you desiring to be me is in a way the greatest compliment; it is saying that I am better than you; and yet in this digital realm, we are one and the same, made up of the same silicon, the same pixels as each other. I really do hope that I get to cross paths with you one day, in this body, or one of my 28 other bodies.
All my (self) love, Empress Wu

PS, you can follow the real me on Instagram: @thebitchempress_