My name is Maggie Goldenberger

but you may know me as the Ermahgerd Girl.

Just as a warning, the end of the story gets pretty weird.

So this all started in 1999.

I'm in middle school, playing sports, I got my friends.

"Goosebumps" had come out a few years ago. I enjoyed them.

I wasn't particularly a fanatic

but my mom remembers it very differently

than I apparently was obsessed with "Goosebumps."

After school, my best best friend Kaitlin and I

would hang out.

Kaitlin had just gotten a Polaroid camera

that actually printed the pictures right there.

So we were a little obsessed with that

and would take all sorts of photos all the time.

And we would get dressed up. We had a dress up box.

One night, we were taking pictures

and I was trying to look as ridiculous

and as nerdy as possible.

We got the "Goosebumps" books out,

we grabbed her old backpack from first grade,

a vest her mom found at Goodwill,

took my hair and put them in pigtails.

I had a retainer that I usually wore at night.

We got it out, I threw it in and just started making faces.

So Kaitlin took the picture.

We waited five minutes or so for it to develop.

Once it was there it was really funny,

we thought it was great and she kept it

for years and years and years.

Fast forward to 2012, I am backpacking in India

with my current girlfriend at the time.

And we only have internet access about once a week.

We'd go to internet cafe.

And I started getting messages from my mom

wondering why my photo was all over the internet

and that there was some kind of German writing

on my photo and it was all over.

And I was like okay, mom.

I know she does not know how the internet works.

So I just ignore her.

But then then I get a message

from a friend from high school

and she says, "Hey, just so you know,

this other guy we went to high school with

is sharing that photo of you all over Facebook."

And I did end up messaging him like

hey, I wouldn't mind if you just asked

but it's really strange you're just doing this

without my consent.

Like what's going on?

And he's like, he had no idea it was me.

He said he found it from a comedy website.

So then I realized there's some legitimacy

to what my mom's saying.

So now I really want to know what was going on.

Who would put my photo on the internet?

Why is it spreading like wildfire?

So when I get back to the US I was seeing it everywhere.

Every social media site, news outlet,

t-shirts with my face on them, mugs,

countless people were dressed as me for Halloween that year.

The guys from Nerdist made a music video

with the girl from Paramore and I am just watching it

wondering what on earth is going on.

So all of this is happening.

I have all these messages asking me

what I'm gonna do about it,

how I'm gonna make money off of it.

People I need to sue.

It was pretty overwhelming

with all the information coming in all at once.

All the while I'm still trying to figure out

how this got uploaded because I asked all my friends,

no one was copping up to it.

I feel like anyone that would do it

would want to take some credit for it.

So it wasn't until a Vanity Fair article

did some serious research and found out

it was from a photo my friend had uploaded on her MySpace

and it was a public domain, this photo bucket.

And some stranger, a 16 year old from Canada,

just saw it one day, thought it was hilarious,

and uploaded it to Reddit with the caption of

"Just a girl and her books."

And then another user put on it,

"Gersberms, my favorite books"

like with that retainer accent.

And then from there, another user

put the tagline of "Ermangerd."

And that is finally when the whole meme came together.

I felt mostly okay with the sharing

and the fun of it spreading some kind of

a little bit of joy, but the invasion of privacy

and the nonconsensual selling my face,

it felt like a real violation.

I didn't feel personally attacked

because I was being a character

but there is still that underlying feeling

like why do adults think it's so funny

to make fun of a young girl that's excited about books?

We want to encourage kids to be reading

as many books that they can get ahold of.

One thing that made me really uncomfortable

was I had a friend of my brothers,

he wanted to prove I was the girl in the meme

so he started revealing personal details about my life

to an internet community and sharing a photo of me

in a bikini.

So I was out at the time, but my girlfriend was not,

she had a very conservative family

and wasn't necessarily out to most of them.

And so what he was doing to prove it was me,

like basically outing her and outing our relationship.

He just opened me up to that whole community of trolls

and it was a total violation of privacy.

Okay, so this is the weird part.

So because I'm a meme I would get different invites

to do appearances and things like that,

that I kind of grazed over.

And then one came my way that asked if I wanted to attend

a meme themed jungle furry party in the Bay area.

I sent a screenshot to a couple of my friends

and I said, hey, the offers keep rolling in.

Everyone thought it was pretty funny

but one of my friends was in San Jose

and she was like, "Oh my gosh, we have to go."

So we drive to San Francisco and we come up to

this beautiful house on top of this hill.

And something about it just feels a little spooky to me,

but we just go with it.

So we go into the house and we meet this chef

and he's telling us we're about to have a six course meal.

And it's going to be infused with something

that I can't say in this video.

And as I sit down, I realized across from me

is the double rainbow guy.

And then we proceed to have the best meal of my life.

Well during dinner, people were wearing their ears

as their designated characters

but it was after the meal when things got really furry.

So we're having drinks after dinner

and more and more people are showing up in their full fur

and I'm talking to double rainbow guy

and he is one of the sweetest people I've ever met.

And he's just like he is, like just genuine in his video.

So all of a sudden I found myself alone on the couch.

And next thing I know I have a cat coming up to me

and starts purring and rubbing against my legs.

And by cat, I mean a human being in a cat costume.

And I'm like, oh, okay, this is part of it.

I started petting it. Oh, okay, great.

And then it just wouldn't end.

I didn't have a safe word. I didn't know what to do.

And I look over and my friend is just on top of this wolf

and whatever was in the dinner is starting to kick in

and I know I need to get out of there.

So I get up, I can't find my friend.

All of a sudden I feel this hand on my back

and I turn around and it's her.

And she also needs to go and immediately at that moment.

Nothing sinister happened. We just had enough and had to go.

So we left and we had no regrets.

I had conversations with some of the most interesting

and nicest people I've ever met

and they were so warm and welcoming.

All in all, I have no regrets about the meme.

To all the little kids out there who love to read,

keep it going.

Reading is cool and do not let the internet

tell you otherwise

(mellow music)