Fritzie on Vine, Caring vs. Not Caring, and Growing Up Online

Words: Lauren O’Neill | Photographer: Winter Browne | Makeup Artist: Nikia Antoniou | Stylist: Madeline Kevelson | Talent: Fritzie | Photo Assist Evan McCormick | Set Designer: Ruby Hartman

Make it stand out

Content creator, model, stylist and general Internet Person Fritzie knows what it is like to have grown up online much better than most users of the world wide web. From the age of 15, they’ve been an internet celebrity, having amassed over a million followers on Vine making viral skits, before moving onto other platforms (right now, they like Instagram best). 

These days, instead of comedy, Fritzie’s followers know them for distinctive fashion looks and thought-provoking shoots, from someone who intimately understands exactly the types of visuals that stop people in their algorithm-determined tracks. They’ve been through many of the internet’s phases right alongside it – from the wide-eyed wonder of Tumblr to the vitriol of Twitter-turned-X - so there are few better people to chat to about how it’s evolved, how you can use it to express yourself even now, and, especially, why it’s very, very important to get offline. Read our interview with Fritzie below, alongside an editorial starring them, shot by Winter Browne, called “To Wish on an Eyelash”.

Hi Fritzie! I wonder if I could first ask you about what it means to you to have sort of grown up on the internet and to have evolved as a person under the eyes of so many people. How do you think that has affected you?

The one thing I've been thinking about a lot is that most people, when they are put into the public eye for like their creative work or like their career or anything, it's usually like, when they have honed their craft, after years and years of like, bombing on stage or like trying things that didn't work. Those are all things that the public usually doesn't see because it's only when they have reached their peak that they will gain notoriety for their thing. And I feel like being like a 15 year old who was kind of thrust into that position, I was still changing so much as a person and I wasn't really sure what I wanted in my life. And so I definitely felt like, especially at the end of my high school years and beginning of my college years, that any experimentation that I ended up not sticking with, that was all very public. 

The other thing I've been thinking about is like, I'm a person who has changed so much over the course of being a 15, 16 year old making comedy on Vine from my suburban Midwestern bedroom to now like working more in like the fashion side of things. Comments that I've gotten have been like, “Oh, every time I see this girl, she's different.” I think some people think that consistency or repetition equals identity and I think for a long time, I did too. And so I would try to force myself into these categories that I had in my mind. I was like, “Okay, I like rave culture. So now I'm a rave girl. Or like, I love fantasy culture. So I'm a cosplay girl, that's my vibe.” What makes me happy is the ability to wake up on any given day and be like, “Okay, I'm going to do this today. I'm going to do that today.” I love the playtime of morphing myself into different things because the truth is that I'm interested in all of that. And I think it's really interesting, like, when you're an internet person, people really expect you to be like one thing, deliver one thing and stay consistent with that. 

“we've kind of gone back to medieval times where everyone is going on witch hunts for each other and stoning each other in the town square. It's a very individualised society versus the whole point of the internet in the first place, which was to bring people together”

Obviously a big part of what you do online now is about fashion and clothes and self-expression, and I wonder what about fashion as sort of like a visual medium is so fun and interesting to you when it comes to expressing yourself like in this way via the internet?

I grew up feeling very trapped. I lived in a suburb, which was very basic, normal, normal lifestyle, but the people around me all dressed the same way, and like, I genuinely didn't have a basis or context that there are other ways to dress in the world until I got on Tumblr when I was 13. But before that, I always felt very like confused because the things that I was wearing were just like what the other people were wearing at school and like, I wasn't comfortable and I wasn't happy. When I got on Tumblr, it kind of opened my door to like, “Oh, there are all these different types of ways you can dress and there are people around the world dressing in a different way.” I think being able to experiment with that was really liberating for me. And so I think now, I say it's like a spiritual practice because it's something that opens me up emotionally where it's this idea that anything you want for yourself or any type of person you want to be can be created by you, and you're never trapped in one way of being. There's no self-criticism involved. I think my best work comes from moments where I'm like, “Okay, I have 6 hours where I'm just going to put on whatever I feel I want to wear and like, and just use my body to move in ways that I feel comfortable moving.”

I also just love images. Shapes and things like, that I'm constantly inspired by everything that I see. Like, a lot of food inspires me. I’ll go to a dinner and get a beautiful dessert and I'm like, “Okay, I want to make an outfit that looks like this dessert.” Like, “I want to wear this cake as a skirt.” I want the energy of this delicious cake that I'm eating to be something that I can give off. 

It’s interesting because when you're spending 6 hours in your room, just allowing your tastes or whatever to guide you into whatever outfit and whatever poses that you want, that's kind of a very offline activity, but ultimately, it will be shared online. So I was wondering, are there any other things that you like to do to fully get offline?

Oh, I'm a huge gamer. Huge video gamer. Honestly, video games were kind of the way that I got into the internet. I was a very homebody child growing up and didn't have a lot of friends. I played a lot of massive multiplayer online games, like, Club Penguin, Toon Town, things like that. That’s how I learned to socialise. And I do think that, honestly, is like a huge part of why I love fashion so much is because all of those games had, like, my favourite part of it was like customising the avatar, and I feel like that's kind of how I treat myself now - like, “Oh, I'm an avatar that I can customise. I'm my own doll.” But yeah, huge gamer. I literally built a computer to game. Also justc rafting, like making stuff with my hands. I've been painting recently. I have a big canvas in my backyard. I'm painting something for above my bed. 

Could you talk a little about your shoot with Winter?

It was truly all special. Honestly, I don't really often remember the clothes or the brands that I'm wearing on set often. It's more about the people on set and the energy that you share. There are sometimes these shoots where everybody is so on the same page that it feels like, I don't know, it's electric. Like the whole time we were all giggling and super excited.

In the time that you’ve been online, what has been the biggest change, I suppose?

There's been two that I've been really seeing. And one is like the way that people interact with each other has become a lot more negative. I remember like back on Vine, I had, almost a million followers and I had a lot of friends who had a similar follower count and we've talked about it where like, you would get maybe one or two hate comments on everything that you made, and it was very easy to ignore. 

I think back then the social norm of the internet was like, you know, if you're a hater, that's annoying and like there were only a couple of internet trolls who would do that. And it wasn't like something that everybody felt comfortable doing. I think at the time there was still this idea that how you behave online is equivalent to how you behave in person and it's kind of evolved into now people understand the anonymity that they have. 

Back on Vine, it was like, we're making jokes to make people laugh. And the joke is like a very classic joke or like something silly, something goofy, or like a situation that's relatable, you know? I'm not on Twitter anymore, but like one of the reasons I got off was because there's this sense of darkness, a kind of energy that people really encourage in each other, because I think what people found out is like, it feels good to be mean and I guess there's like this primal desire to put people down, like the medieval ages when we would like stone someone in the public square. Where it's like, yeah, that might have felt good for them, but then we progressed as a society and realised that that was really detrimental, that wasn't a way to connect with each other and it became like a police state where everyone's like watching each other and I do feel like that's kind of happened with the internet. Like, we've kind of gone back to medieval times where everyone is going on witch hunts for each other and stoning each other in the town square. It's a very individualised society versus the whole point of the internet in the first place, which was to bring people together. 

Do you have a favourite internet era? Or a favourite platform that you used?

Probably Tumblr. Before they sold. I love Tumblr. That was where I discovered a lot about myself. And it's kind of what opened the door for me creatively where I was like, “Oh, I connect more with these things than what's in my world around me right now.” I also met a lot of people who had similar interests. 

I used spend like hours and hours scrolling on that thing. I loved it so much. Do you have a current internet rabbit hole? What are you obsessed with at the minute?

Oh my gosh, that's a good question. I mean, I think online shopping is always the thing that I spend the most I'm doing on the internet, but truly, I do think I am a little bit more detached from the internet than I've ever been. Other than Instagram. I love Instagram. I've really tailored my algorithm to only show me artists and designers and stylists and photographers that I really, really like. 

I wonder from being, I suppose, a self-described internet person, what do you think you've learned from that and how do you think it has ultimately influenced how you go about things?

F: Oh, probably not caring. I mean, I've definitely had to be hardened over time. Being a child reading comments or people just saying lies online about me. I've had multiple times where someone will like make something up about me and it goes viral and then people believe that for the rest of their lives. I can say that that's not true, but if someone sees that tweet and they don't see me saying that's not true, then that's just a person out there who believes that about me I think that's kind of taught me just to not care, which is both sad and liberating. Not caring and caring, knowing what to care about. Making sure that you care about what you're posting and being intentional and thinking about it versus not caring what people think or say because they're going to do whatever.

Thanks Fritzie!