Notes To My Selfie: Why I Deleted My Social Media Identity

My dad used to ask me in high school, "Who is Jill Levin?" I never knew how to answer that because, frankly, I didn’t know who Jill Levin was, and, honestly, I didn’t think I was supposed to. 

Not unlike Bob Zimmerman who changed his last name to Dylan, I always felt like I was born far away from home. And just like Bob Dylan, I needed to become something. Someone bolder. Someone louder. So, in my early twenties, I changed my name from Jill Levin to Jilly Hendrix. I thought this version of myself would be the one who could make her dreams come true.

I grew up at the beach, surrounded by people who seemed to embody everything I didn’t feel I could be—confident, self assured, skinny. I hated going to the beach because I hated my body. I’d sit sweltering in the hot sand, not going in the water, for fear of being fully seen. The ocean was the place everyone went to feel free, but for me, it felt like a place where I could only hide. So I stayed out of the water, not because I didn’t love the beach, but because I didn’t want to show the real me. I don’t know if my body made me hate where I grew up or if where I grew up made me hate my body. 

I joined Instagram in 2012. Imagine: Girls was on HBO, The Jane Rooftop was the Friday night spot, and you’d just had your first Sweetgreen. It was a time when Instagram wasn’t a highlight reel—only the cool kids posted, and you could still get blackout drunk without anyone filming you. There was only one social media platform— and since my generation was the first to have social media, everyone was in the same joke. We posted memes about navigating adulthood and discovering how to exist in the digital world. Gen Z hadn’t yet emerged, and no one but fashion bloggers knew how to monetize internet fame. You weren't getting invited to the Grammys, and no one was having serious political conversations. 

And it was during this time, for the first time, I finally felt like myself. I was 26, fully embracing the Jilly Hendrix persona—living in NYC, DJing with a residency at The Box. I thought, “This is it. I can finally be me.” If I had a dollar for every time I thought “This is it”... I quickly began documenting my quintessential New York millennial life—DJ gigs, bad dates and moments of coming-of-age—through text screenshots in my Notes app, which eventually became memes. I called it Notes to My Selfie and I loved watching the likes roll in. Quickly, "Notes to My Selfie" became its own identity.

I wasn’t just ‘Jilly Hendrix’ anymore—I was the ‘girl who made jokes about being hopeless in love, obsessed with kale and whose phone never had any battery. Making memes made me feel something for the first time in my life. I finally felt like I had a purpose. I could safely sit behind a screen and write 140 characters of something self-deprecating about my lackluster love life and the internet ate it up. For once, my value was defined by what I said, not what people saw. It wasn’t about how I looked, but about how clever I could be.

I’ll never forget my first viral meme, “I’m at that age where I want to get a dog, but I’m not sure who will take care of it.” Fuck Jerry reposted it and it took off. Trivial today. But back then? It was hot. I loved the validation. The comments—“That’s so me!”—made me feel like my existence mattered. 

People always ask you what you want to be when you grow up. I wanted to be Britney Spears, but I couldn’t sing or dance. I guess memes were the next best thing. 

On the outside, it looked like I was on top of the world. An introvert’s wet dream is a meme account with a million followers, which seems like where I was heading…but inside, I was unraveling. The self-deprecating humor I used to mask my pain—those one-liner jokes I’d toss out so casually—had spiraled into something far darker, something I couldn’t outrun anymore. The more I wrote, the more the lines blurred. My depression had always lived inside me but something about creating Notes To My Selfie made my depression come alive in a way I couldn’t control. 

Had I become my alter ego? Or deep down was this really who I am?

And soon, that persona bled into my real life. I was pitching my writing and acting, but showing up as a smaller version of myself. I was sleeping with a man who couldn’t care less if I lived or died, and letting friends walk all over me, always playing the butt of the joke. I wasn’t taking care of my body, my health, or my needs. They say the best comedy comes from the lowest common denominators. So as my digital “comedy” persona online skyrocketed, I couldn’t help but always be searching for the darkest common denominator, not just as social commentary but in my own life. My self deprecating humor turned into a nasty case of self loathing. On the internet, these self-hating choices were giving me positive reinforcement—the dopamine hit of virality; but in real life it was diminishing my self worth, like-by-like. 

I had always used my pain to fuel creativity. I was addicted to pain. And like many an addict, the thought of giving it up sent me into an existential spiral: Can you be happy and still be funny? Will anyone still laugh if you stop making jokes at your own expense? How do you evolve, grow, and still share your most vulnerable thoughts with the world? 

How do you reclaim your true self when your digital identity has become your real one?

The only way I knew how to move forward was to destroy Notes To My Selfie. 

So I did. 

I kept Jilly Hendrix because, well, it's a great name. 

And I guess that brings us to today. I’ve done a lot of work—and a lot, a lot of therapy—to move on from the darkest version of myself. But unlike Notes to My Selfie, I don’t want to throw her out. She’s part of my story, and I’m learning to love her. 

Just like I truly love the internet. It’s allowed me to connect with people, grow as a human and test out all of my entrepreneurial desires. I just wish I had the mental health tools when it all started that I have now to navigate it. I’ve gotten paid on instagram. I’ve fallen in love on instagram. And I’ve made some incredible friends. It’s been a life-defining platform for me. And now, I’m in the process of learning to live with the good parts of my old self, and the new parts. I’m in the act of becoming; learning how to become a person that is worthy of all the things that internet fame promises—a successful career, a stable relationship—and still write, “I’m so single I just rolled my eyes at a pack of condoms.”