I created a social media post, printed it out, and posted it around Los Angeles and the U.C.L.A. campus. Each post included a sheet of red heart stickers with which to “like” the image and a pencil with which to “comment.” Inside a café that I visit almost every day, I posted a special iteration with an auxiliary booklet called “My Story,” in which I wrote a continuously updating log of my life.

 

This was posted mainly on a college campus, so there were a variety of reactions, ranging from Instagram-esque validation or self-promotion to bizarre, sometimes sexual scrawlings that would have been at home on the underside of a seventh-grade desk.