E110 SCARY STORIES
Tiffany Bannister:How an Internet Addiction Spiraled into a Life of Porn
How a social media addiction easily took Tiffany from an Internet sweetheart to an ever-growing porn sensation, and was it all worth it for few likes.
Juliette Vitale
From just a quick Wikipedia search of the quite town of Medford, New Jersey one would scroll down the page and discover a few quick facts about the small town. The 40 square mile town is home to about 6,000 prominently white, fairly well off families with a very under whelming column of “notable people” listed, the most interesting being a few hockey players and a geologist. This list may be so bleak, however, because the one true breakout star from Medford did not quite make the cut, famous, self proclaimed “internet whore”, and newly successful porn star, Tiffany Bannister.
Internet whore, a term not widely understood by the older generation, but one as common as any standard vocabulary word to the younger one. For those who do not know its ever popular definition t can, according to Urban Dictionary, be defined as “A male or female that will…show himself or herself naked for no charge'”. Basically this is someone who will show some skin and talk a little dirty on the internet in return for some follows, likes, and a loyal entourage of fans, pervy or not. This seemingly benign bit of fun is actually a scary phenomenon plaguing our society. How easy is it for young girls posting pictures on their social media accounts to be sucked down a path of addiction that leads them to posting more and more of themselves to keep their likes and followers? The following essay is the truth on the matter and shows just how far a few pictures can go, because once you get addicted to the fame, it’s a hard path not many can get off of.
If the reader is anywhere between the ages of twenty-five to seventeen, lived somewhere along the east coast, and had access to the computer throughout high school than the name Tiffany Bannister probably brought up a half smile and a lot of memories. Tiffany Bannister was one of the first breakout stars of social media; She dazzled Facebook and many of its users by promoting herself via her body in 2011 while still just a teenager. Before Instagram had #ThighGap hastags and twitter had it @HotChicksDaily and @SexualGifs Tiffany was on Facebook showing her genetically gifted top for all to see, a practice that was much less wide spread in 2011 and brought her right to the top of the Facebook world.
Before the lovely world of the Internet where everything a person could ever want was a simple click away, people shockingly had to do certain things themselves. One of these things was find porn. Today over 12% of all websites on the Internet are porn sites, 90% of these websites being free, while in the pre-technology era days porn was a much more coveted find (The Week). Women in porn were their own sub-culture from the main stream, who had no active way to promote themselves. This is very different today with the world now being at everyone’s fingertips. Young girls in 2015 can post pictures of themselves with even less clothes on then adult magazines would feature a half century ago and no one bats an eye. In the popular Netflix documentary, Hot Girls Wanted, the amateur porn girls explain that twitter and social media are the true key to success in the porn business. Porn stars today post half naked pictures of themselves [like images 1,2, and 4] almost daily just to keep up their follow count and the steady influx of likes and favorites coming in. When I personally got to speak to Ms. Bannister I asked her how she initially got the idea to pioneer such an account that exposed her body and so easily boosted her to local stardom; She replied, “i kinda just started taking pics in bikinis and ppl like it”. The path for Tiffany, however, was not as easy as just a few snapshots that led her into the big league porn industry; it was riddled with bullies, self-doubt, hardships and even STD’s.
How did all this start for Tiffany, where does a porn stars life begin? Life in Medford was not all fun and games for the twenty three year old star. Tiffany grew up without parents and was raised by her great grandmother who raised her as a “spoiled brat lol”. One would imagine a future porn star would have quite the reputation in high school, but it was actually just the opposite for a shy Ms. Bannister. After receiving her first kiss sophomore year, where she admittedly kissed two boys in one night, vicious rumors and gossip left Tiffany labeled a ‘whore’. Soon after Tiffany took control of her sexual life, left her shyness behind and hopped into the technology world to let her chest out for all to see.
In today’s world you do not have to be a porn star or a model to strip down into a bikini or tight pair of shorts and post a few pictures for some instant popularity, but is this overwhelming need to be validated by a few likes healthy on teenagers? A recent study done at Harvard explains the science behind the addiction to social media saying, “During self-disclosure on social media, participants activated the Nucleus Accembens. This region of the brain is important in the development of addictions- it lights up when someone takes cocaine of other drugs” (Innovation Excellence). Harvard has proven that social media, and the yearning for validation from other users, can literally be a drug for certain people, meaning they would do anything to keep the attention and likes from stopping. A friend of mine, who is a freshman at University of South Carolina, claims she is a ‘recovering social media addict’ and states that deleting certain pictures of herself off of Instagram was a very hard process for her; she says, “Yeah, I never really thought it was a big deal to post pictures on my Instagram with a lot of cleavage in my swimsuit, but one day I started getting likes from strange older men that I didn’t even know and that’s when I started to worry that maybe showing off my body for everyone to see wasn’t the smartest or safest way to promote myself on social media”. After getting more than a few promiscuous chats from men on the internet my friend ended up deleting many of her pictures, and now that she has made her Instagram account more family-friendly she regrets having ever posted them in the first place saying, “It’s creepy to know that anyone out there could have screenshotted those pictures of me and I just really wish I had had the common sense to think before I posted. I just really wanted some more followers and likes”. The new generations need for likes and internet popularity is a craze completely taking over teenage lives, and although some come to the realization that there is more to life than likes, some in the fashion of any addict end up letting their addiction spiral out of control.
As the years went on and Tiffany took off more and more for her loyal Facebook fans she also kept close her dreams and plans to become a teacher in Philly. After graduating high school Tiffany dove into the next step to accomplishing her dream and started school again; This, however, was a large financial leap for Tiffany so she used her ever growing popularity to get a job at a private club, which specializes in specific fetishes and lap dances. This very club is where Tiffany met the man that would forever change her life, the man that told her he was an agent and sparked the idea in her head that it was time for her to take it to the biggest and badest social medias out there, pornography. Although Ms. Bannister claims that she decided to join the industry completely on her own coercion is not an uncommon practice in the world of porn, especially for those driven by the need for more fans and more likes. My first time speaking with Tiffany I asked her if she ever felt coerced into doing anything she did not feel comfortable with, she replied shortly and tensely saying, “I was not coerced”. This question apparently gave Tiffany a lot to think about, however, because a full three hours later Ms. Bannister speaks again, saying, “I forgot something i actually was coerced at one point to do girl girl which I wasnt comfortable [with]”. Although Tiffany’s start and coercion did not happen over the Internet most amateur porn stars today are being found on Craigslist and similar websites. In Hot Girls Wanted ex-Texas porn star Stella May remembers her start saying, “Without the internet I probably would have just looked for a job out of state, go to school” (Hot Girls Wanted). Coercion, pornography, and the internet are all known for going hand in hand in the industry because of all the easily influenced girls who are dying to leave behind their monotonous life and be a well followed and well renounced star, but little do they know the challenges and struggles that await them.
For Tiffany the arrival into the porn industry almost immediately shattered her bubble on what she expected her new life to entail. Not only was the industry cruel in regards to Tiffany’s looks but she also explains some companies in the industry assert their dominance over their actresses by “hitting the girls”, “calling them cunts on film”, “acting like their property”, and “facial abuse” which almost always ends in tears and throw up. The realities of porn were hard on Tiffany, she even suffered from an STD shortly after entering the business, leaving her in great pain and feeling fearful. She claims the days were long, the work exhausting, and the downside risk of contracting a sexual transmitted virus or making an irreversible bad reputation for yourself is high when making porn. When asked if it was all worth it for a few easy cash outs Tiffany replies “im not really sure honestly”, she has struggles with her decision to use her real name and claims her work ethic has been destroyed. After only about a year Tiffany decided the porn world just was not for her and left it all behind, but quitting did not stop her from still entertaining 186,000 twitter followers with a weekly nude or two.
How did this happen, how could a fun loving girl be so easily wrapped into a cruel industry that so easily took advantage of her and then left her to fend for herself with no ethics, family, or sense of self. Tiffany fell prey to an Internet addiction, a type of social validation it is often hard to get in the real world. Chawla, an internet programmer, explains what happens once normal every day people’s social media habits turn into addictions and starts to grow, saying, “I think people give too much value to the like, people are addicted. We experience withdrawals. We are so driven by this drug, getting just one hit elicits truly peculiar reactions.” For some the addiction stops at just a few close calls with an invasion of privacy, but for others, like Tiff, it spirals out of control until you end up with a lasting legacy of a few thousand twitter followers and some cheeky booty pictures.
Work Cited
Bannister, Tiffany. Personal Interview. 17 Nov 2015-10 Dec 2015.
Hot Girls Wanted. Dir. Jill Bauer, and Ronna Gradus. Perf. Tressa Silguero. Netflix. 2015. Film.
"Internet+slut." Urban Dictionary. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.
"Is Social Media Unhealthy?" Innovation Excellence Raquo. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.
O'Connor, Maureen. "Addicted to Likes: How Social Media Feeds Our Neediness." The Cut. N.p., 20 Feb. 2014. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.
"The Internet Porn 'epidemic': By the Numbers." The Internet Porn 'epidemic': By the Numbers. N.p., 17 June 2010. Web. 10 Dec. 2015.
