The Woman Behind Overly Attached Girlfriend
Laina Morris had gone to college more out of duty than desire. It’s where a twenty-year-old female was supposed to be, she reasoned, pursuing an education degree at the University of North Texas in her hometown of Denton, TX. Unfulfilled, she briefly switched to a journalism major before making a change. The change she wanted to make was to move to Los Angeles to follow a path to stardom, but with no connections and unclear talent she made a more pedestrian choice: she took a semester off and started working at Pack ’n’ Mail, which was about as exciting as it sounds.
Her date with destiny began the same as many nights before: she returned from her job, tossed her wrinkled work polo on the floor of her cluttered bedroom and put on a green tee. As many twenty-somethings did in 2012, Laina enjoyed listening to Justin Bieber, who had just released his Boyfriend album and had put out a challenge to fans to create an alt-version from a female perspective that could be called ‘Girlfriend’. She wasn’t infatuated with him, but his origin story of posting on Youtube and being discovered did captivate the young mind of someone who wanted something to break her out of Denton. That night she penned some lyrics to a parody of Boyfriend and began filming. The original song tells the perspective of a man who wants to talk to a girl, to persuade her to date him, and he knows if he could just have a week with her then he’d be with her forever, never letting her go. As she’d reflect years later, this obsessive behavior can seem sweet when coming from a guy but would be identified as creepy if from a girl. And, so, that’s the vibe she went with: creepy.
Laina’s parody received 52 comments the first evening, which already seemed like too many to her: “I don’t have 52 friends who are gonna take the time to comment on this. Who are these people?” By the time she woke up, the views would be approaching 1 million and by the time it was over it would top 20 million. Her video would end up getting second place, but meme culture had just taken root on the internet. A Reddit user took a frame of one scene in the video and added some text and just like that her face was circling the world. It can be easy to forget that the people in memes are real. Thankfully, Laina had something that many objects of memes do not: she was in on the joke. She was playing a role as the overly attached girlfriend and this character was now famous. Much different, of course, than someone who becomes famous because a friend digs up an awkward middle school picture to ridicule.
In the information age, fifteen minutes of fame can live much longer and Laina’s case was no exception. She was able to parlay the newfound attention into a massive following and some desirable gigs. Her videos (she has several including an equally popular Carly Rae Jepson parody) have amassed about 170 million views, she’s interviewed celebrities on the red carpet, had a staring contest with Jessica Alba, some commercial appearances with Delta and Kia, a Tonight Show skit and a handful of other appearances.
There were many opportunities that fame brought and Laina looks back on the video as one of the greatest things in her life. There were, however, some drawbacks. They ranged from annoying (constantly flagged down for pictures) to dangerous (stalkers and harassers migrating from the internet to the real world). Most difficult, though, was a struggle of identity. The truth that Laina was learning was that fans, commercials, acting gigs, etc., didn’t want Laina Morris, they wanted ‘Overly Attached Girlfriend’. This one character, this alter-ego, began to overshadow her own life. She wrestled with giving fans what they wanted and wanting to be herself. She would only be able to identify it in retrospect, but she began to descend into depression. Her reach was still growing and she was supposed to be happy that she was getting what she had wanted since her college dorm room, but there was an emptiness deep within her that she feared would swallow her up if left unchecked. She eventually sought out counseling and nine months later she decided to accept a prescription for the first time. She remembers crying in the parking lot of the pharmacy feeling weak and broken and like a lesser-woman because she had to rely on pills to get her through troubles that seemingly paled in comparison to the ‘real’ problems that so many had.
But, Laina wasn’t weak and wasn’t a victim. She made a decision to take back control of her life and focus on what mattered to her. She packed up and moved west like she had wanted to years earlier, this time stopping in Arizona. She posted on Youtube that the Overly Attached Girlfriend was breaking up with You…tube. She has not posted a video since. In an ironic twist, it took being fully immersed as a character for years to finally figure out who she is and what she wanted. She continues to advocate for mental health and occasionally will still participate in an occasional joke at her own expense, but for the most part now leads a relatively anonymous life. There’s something unsatisfying about this arc; it’s missing the fairytale ending, the happily ever after. But, what it does have is a twenty-nine-year-old who was able to experience more in five years than many will experience in a lifetime, a woman who went toe to toe with depression and emerged victorious, and most importantly someone who has chosen to author her own destiny rather than outsource the task to the comment section on social media. During a time where so many have addictions to the next shot of dopamine from seeing the ‘Like’ button light up, Overly Attached Girlfriend has logged off.
