Which Sad and 'Very Famous' Actress Is Seeking Life Advice on Reddit?

Today, from Reddit’s unreliable and rocky shores, someone claiming to be a “very famous” 26-year-old singer and actress posted in r/Relationships about how much she loathes being famous and how sad it’s making her. There is absolutely no way to know whether or not this is real or some Friday trolling, but nonetheless, here it is.

The poster calls herself Lonelydorknerd, and the original post was quickly deleted. We managed to copy the text. Here it is, in full:

Throwaway for obvious reasons.

I feel so whiny and ungrateful even writing this: I am a famous person. I sing and act for a living, make a huge amount of money and I’m in magazines and on TV every few days. It all began when I was 19 so it’s not something I’ve been doing my whole life and I’m still not used to it. I honestly don’t think I ever will be.

I grew up in a poor country. The only reason I didn’t grow up very poor were my mom’s awesome money skills. I’m an only child, so it was just mom, dad and I. They both worked shitty low paying jobs and if something unexpected came up that we’d need money for, they’d take additional jobs and work their butts off. At one point my mom had three jobs and dad had two. When my mom was 40 she even went to school again so she wouldn’t have to struggle forever. She graduated while working two jobs. I am beyond grateful for everything they did and love them more than anything.

I got into this thing kind of overnight. It’s something I dreamed of doing when I was a kid, but never really had faith anything would come out of it. When I got paid for the first time I calculated how much my parents would have to work for that kind of money and then sobbed like a lil bitch for 5 hours because I felt so guilty. I promised myself I’d do anything to make their lives easier. I bought them a house and 2 cars and send them on fancy vacations every once in a while. I tried to talk them into quitting their jobs so I can provide for them full time like they did for me for so many years, but they said no way. They were so humble about it I was ashamed for even suggesting it.

The problem: my job makes it impossible to maintain friendships, relationships or see my family more than 3-4 times a year. The guys either wanna date me because of the money/fame, or the pressure of being constantly followed by the paps/written about on the internet becomes too much and they bail.

My two absolute best friends live in another country so I don’t see them that much either. I flew them over two times while on tour so we could just hang, but they got freaked out by the paparazzi waiting in front of the hotel. Usually my only two choices are either to go out to do fun things while trying to hide, or just stay in the hotel. Hiding usually works for a while and even if someone recognizes me I don’t really mind, I’ll sign a few autographs, take photos with kids, thank them and that’s it. It’s the paparazzi that I hate with the fire of a thousand suns. They’re rude, inconsiderate and pushy, and they scare away everyone I love. Example: I was in mcdonald’s with my male best friend, I was dressed very casual with no makeup and I thought no one recognized me; a few hours later our picture is on the internet saying I got a new boyfriend; of course his boyfriend got pissed. When I went to dinner with my female best friend, they wrote something like “lonelydorknerd has a fat best friend” like she’s my charity case, and used an unflattering picture of her from the restaurant. I feel so bad, that shit hurts, and especially if you’re not used to it (and very few people are). They’re both very normal people with normal jobs. He’s in academia (a psychiatrist) so he’s kinda used to the attention, even though it’s the different kind, but he knows how to handle it. She is a full time nanny tho, a small town girl next door, and as much as she was fascinated by the whole thing at first, she got sick of it quite fast and I’m scared she might get sick of me too. She is already avoiding to meet in public and nowadays I only ever see her on skype or at my house when I’m not on tour or filming (which is rarely).

I dated my ex for 4 years (we were in college together). We broke up for reasons (at the time) unknown when I started getting more famous. He just stopped talking to me and went completely no contact. I was crushed for 2 years after that because he never let me know what the hell happened. He did contact me eventually. He said he was really sorry, how he had been jealous of my success and felt inadequate, everything felt too much and he didn’t know how to handle it. He said he knew I’d never make him feel inadequate on purpose and I was the perfect girlfriend and didn’t deserve to be treated the way he treated me. In the meantime he got a good paying job and got his shit together, said I was the love of his life and we dated for a while again. After a few more months he proposed, I said no because I couldn’t get over him disappearing on me, even though he said he’d never do it again. I miss him and regret saying no, although I’m not sure if it’s just my general loneliness speaking or we really were “meant to be”. I don’t think I’ll ever find out because after I rejected him he went no contact again, and he’ll just text me for birthdays etc.

I also dated a few other guys in the meantime, both famous and non-famous, but it just didn’t work out, for reasons I already mentioned.

Apart from the paparazzi/tabloids/fucking perez problem, there’s also the obvious I-don’t-have-time-for-anything problem. If I’m not touring or filming, I’m recording, doing interviews or events. I honestly don’t have time to poop. I see my therapist once a week and go to the gym twice a week and those are the only 2 things I do that are not work related. Days off usually make me even more depressed because they’re usually in the middle of the week so there’s no time to fly out to see my family or friends or fly them over, and I just stay home alone, throw myself a pity party and contemplate how fucking lonely I am. Easter is coming up and there will be a huge family gathering at my parents’ and it makes me so depressed to think it will be another one I’ll miss. At this point I just wanna be like fuck everything and just go home and hug my mom. I can’t though, because I am filming on location in fucking Croatia and can’t just bail.

I have no idea how my colleagues from the industry do it. How they date, see their families or start their own families. My manager says it’s normal and I should just suck it up because “this level of fame won’t last forever” and I should make the best of it. I don’t know if I can, tho.

I don’t know what my question is. I just needed to talk to someone I don’t pay to listen to me, and my friends are probably sick of hearing me whining over skype. What should I do? How do I stop feeling this way? Do I just drop everything and become an accountant or whatever?

tl;dr: I am very famous as dumb as that sounds and I miss my family, friends, and having a normal life. i don’t think I can do this anymore.

In response to follow-up questions from other Redditors, the alleged actress insisted the post was real: “[I]f some things don’t add up, it’s because I tried to change the details so no one can recognize me because I don’t want this post to end up in tabloids.” And she said she’s obsessed with thinking up “exit strategies” from the business:

Exit strategies are everything I’ve been thinking about lately. Everyone says I should suck it up for a while longer because I’m still young/there’s still money to be made/there are people who would kill to be in my position.

I talked about this with my friends, but I am scared shitless that I’m gonna sound ungrateful. They think I’m overreacting and should just enjoy it while it lasts, but they say they do miss me too.

My therapist is used to dealing with this because she worked with a few other famous people, and she says I should just do what I feel like is best for me, which isn’t very helpful lol.

As for the other girls in the industry I talked to, they either feel the same way and deal with it by self medicating with drugs and alcohol and constant partying, or they are legitimately very extroverted and actually enjoy the attention. The latter usually have friends in the industry they work with on the reg so I guess that helps with the loneliness.

Everyone in this industry is VERY extroverted, which kinda makes sense, but it doesn’t really help me with not feeling out of place. Like they really love going to parties and attending events, for me it’s just another part of my job. I browse reddit in bed and watch netflix for fun. I just wish I had someone to do it with me.

So we have someone claiming to be a 26-year-old actress, from a “very poor” country, who also sings, who says she was photographed in a McDonald’s (or, perhaps, a different fast food establishment — that part could’ve been fudged for anonymity’s sake) wearing no makeup.