Stacy's World

I can’t remember the first Stacy video I came across, but I can guess what happened in it. A middle-aged woman with wispy gray hair looks into the camera. She says “Hi it’s me Stacy Kennison” as though she’d been rehearsing it for hours. She then launches into one of a few lines of public service announcement-style rant, either concerning some nebulous evil cabal of witches who want to curse her, or listing off a group of celebrities who wish her and her family harm. Sandra Bullock makes regular appearances in these lists, as does Maria Shriver. Also, someone she refers to as “Bonna Donna DeNiro, Robert DeNiro’s ex-wife”, a person who I’m fairly certain does not exist. She often makes references to these (and other) people ‘attacking her in the holy spirit’, and trying to force her and/or her family to commit heinous acts of physical and/or sexual violence against her. Occasionally, she hints at the existence of a global conspiracy to keep her down due to her faith, which she identifies either as Judaism or Protestant Christianity, or sometimes both.

Stacy’s videos have become a mainstay of my Instagram reels experience. The first few times I saw them I wanted to scroll away, but found myself strangely compelled to watch. Like people who slow down as they pass a car accident.

The things that stand out, that separate a genuine Stacy Kennison video from the many others making up the loosely-networked phenomenon dubbed schizogram, are the specificity and the single-mindedness. Where on another account, one video might be about government surveillance and the next about black vans, when you stumble upon a Stacy video, you know what you’re getting. Intro (Hi it’s me Stacy Kennison), thesis (someone needs to tell the police to make Sandra Bullock stop using witchcraft to blaspheme my holy spirit it’s really not okay). Message discipline.

I sometimes tell myself that Stacy is actually doing a long-term bit, and really is just an actress. Sometimes I even believe it. But on the whole, I think that’s unlikely.

The comments section of a Stacy reel attracts a unique slice of America. It is composed as follows: approximately 1/2 people I have dubbed cosplayers. These are people who play into Stacy’s professed delusions, commenting “I told Sandra Bullock to use her dark magic to attack you” or similar. Another 1/4 are fourth-wall breakers, behaving as though Stacy is an actor and they’re in on the joke. Often these comments are along the lines of “Good one, Stacy, looking forward to your next vid”. And then there are the rarest type of commenter, the good Samaritan. They comment “Stacy, you should get on medication/take your medication/talk to a medical provider and get some help”. It is this last type of comment that makes me the saddest.

I suppose that’s the main thing I feel about the Stacy Kennison phenomenon- a profound sadness, that we live in a society which allows Stacy, and many like her, to live on the streets, in and out of shelters, aimlessly riding the bus to while away the days as she looks down the barrel of her phone camera and demands an end to her suffering. Is it any wonder that, in the face of such nebulous disinterest in her well-being, Stacy found a locus for her righteous anger?

As for the specifics, I think there is only one person who could say for sure why that locus happens to be Sandra Bullock who, at least to me, seems like a generally good person. Maybe she saw a Sandra Bullock movie at the wrong time in her life. Maybe some past wrongdoer bore a striking resemblance. Or, more likely than that, maybe she just picked a pop-culture figure at random. She looks to be about the age who would’ve been saturated by tabloids with Bullock’s face splashed across the covers at every grocery store checkout lane and newspaper stand.

I don’t really have a grand conclusion here. It just bums me out. I think the Stacy videos will keep popping into my feed, and I think I’ll keep watching them. At the end of the day, I suppose that’s an indictment of me. But at least I’m in good company.