Emotions are very mixed for me, after the release. I am reminded once again that I could not truly give my absolute best performance, and while I am still happy and very proud of myself I can’t help but feel a desire for time to pass faster, to return to the next round and show every social media hate commenter that I am a good performer. I don’t understand how people can see a teenager muster up the courage to go onto one of the largest productions in Romania, with a heartfelt message of love, acceptance and non-judging and get so angry at me. In order to make this media-studies-course related, I will say, Stuart Hall’s reception theory comes to mind. I guess it’s an oppositional reading. While people on platforms such as Facebook have mostly negative things to say, people on platforms traditionally used by the younger generation, such as Instagram and especially TikTok, have been very sweet. One video somebody posted about seeing my performance on TV got over 20,000 likes, and I have received dozens, maybe even hundreds of direct messages on the apps, about how brave I am to speak up about such issues, how inspiring it is that I went up there and expressed myself, non-palatable as I am and as I have always been. These kinds of words remind me of, deep down, why I actually went on the show. Things I couldn’t think to say when the question was asked during my interview, and I instead blurted something out about my fashion designs. I am really looking forward to the next round of the show, there’s not much time left until I have to go film again. This post-release experience shows me that my target audience is definitely younger people. I am also quite unsatisfied with the videos they ended up using for the interview, as they seem to have picked some clips from the Cluj filming sessions in which I look nothing like myself, and only bring out my most disliked features. Overall, I’m happy I went, I’m happy to go further on the show, I’m thankful for the thousands of people on social media that I have made a positive impact on. I apologize if there are no english language captions on the video.
Below are also some news articles I found, about myself. These might provide a few english descriptions of my interview, and what is happening in the show.
