Avery Star was born and raised into a wealthy family in Los Angeles, California. Since a young age, Avery had always enjoyed dressing up and doing makeup, and as she got older, she would see videos of other girls on social media who were sharing their looks. In 2019, Avery used apps like Instagram and TikTok to find her rise to fame. She would create "Get Ready With Me"' videos which consisted of her creating an outfit for that day and doing makeup to go along with it. While she is doing that, she would also tell stories about interesting things that happened to her recently. These videos gained a lot of traction and in a span of 7 months, Avery had blown up and gained around 5 million followers. She started to get noticed by companies who would then send her their products to show off in videos, and before you know it, she was sponsored by multiple fashion brands. Avery was on top of the world, she loved what she did, she was making lots of money, and had an amazing fan base who loved her videos and supported her throughout any unfair criticism she received. That is, until she and one of her friends were recently involved in a grooming scandal.
On November 20, 2023, two boys, who asked to be anonymous throughout this process, released screenshots from a couple years back of direct messages between them, Avery, and Chad, who was Avery's friend. In these screenshots, we can see messages sent from Avery including requests for pictures of the boys, asking to meet up with them, and lots of manipulative messages to get the boys to trust Avery. The boys said they felt very uncomfortable during these messages and now looking back at them feel that they were being groomed. Child grooming is the act of deliberately establishing an emotional connection with a minor to prepare them for sexual exploitation from either yourself or another person. At the time of these messages the boys were both 15 years old, and Avery and Chad were 25, which classifies this situation as child grooming. Avery was using her influential position to her advantage over these boys to get them to do things that she wanted. Once Avery had gained the boys trust with all the manipulative messages, she introduced them to her friend Chad who then also started to send messages to gain their trust. Similarly, to Avery, Chad eventually would ask to boys to do inappropriate things and send them to him. Both boys said that at the time they felt lucky to be able to have this closer relationship with someone as famous as Avery, but they were really uncomfortable at the same time and didn't want to do any of the things that Avery or Chad asked. When the boys showed signs of refusal for their requests, Avery started to show aggression and threatened both the boys saying things like, "I'll ruin your life if you tell anyone about this" or "Keep these messages to yourself or else" which made the boys keep this a secret for so long because they didn't want anything to happen to them. Eventually messages stopped being sent by both ends and everyone dropped the situation, until both boys realized that what they had gone through was not normal and had to be shared because they did not want other people to look up to Avery after seeing how horrible of a person she really was.
After the boys posted the screenshots on all social media apps, the images began trending instantly and gained millions of views. The authenticity of the images was questioned but the boys had enough evidence that people trusted them. Avery instantly began rapidly losing her followers, and an abundance of posts from supporters of the boys came out explanting what she did to the boys and how it was wrong. On November 21, Avery posted her response to the situation, trying to explain herself when there was nothing for her to explain. Everybody knew the situation and did not appreciate her video that she posted. There was no apology from her, there was no new facts, all she did in her video was talk about the screenshots and say she didn't know what she was doing was wrong. This made people even more mad which accelerated the amount of anti-Avery posts that were made. Avery continued losing more and more followers until it was confirmed that all her accounts across social media were deleted. Instead of apologizing for the situation, she ran from it which did nothing but make people even more mad. Avery is off the internet, never to return, and is officially cancelled.
Addendum
In Laclos's, Dangerous Liaisons, Merteuil was obsessed with her status and what other people thought of her. Ultimately, her mischievous actions caught up with her, her letters were released to the public, and her image was ruined, causing her to run away filled with embarrassment and shame. Mertueil had Cecile and Danceny look up to her, creating this position of power over them, and she decided to wrongly use that power and status. I decided to take this theme of status and responsibility that followed Merteuil and modernize it to follow a character in a scenario in 2023. Avery Star is Merteuil, Chad is Valmont, and the two boys could be Danceny, Cecile, or any of the characters whom she used her status to ruin. I decided to write this fake scenario from the point of view of a "trendy" news website who only reports on news that has something to do with social media influencers. These websites try and write their stories in such a way that it seems trendy and brings in the most viewers possible, which is why I decided to add two survey questions at the end. I want to make it clear that this story is entirely fictional and just an adaptation of a moment in the novel. Avery Star is not a real person, and this is not a real news story.