When she was 11 years old, circa 1999, Maggie Goldenberger, now a nurse in Phoenix, decided to have a little fun. She cinched her hair into intentionally-ridiculous pigtails, put on the retainer she almost never wore otherwise, gathered up some of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books, and made a silly face while one of her friends snapped a Polaroid. Other than becoming a fixture on the Goldenbergers’ fridge, the picture was no big deal. Then, more than a decade later in 2012, a 16-year-old Canadian named Jeff Davis uploaded the goofy snapshot to Reddit. Still, it was no big deal until another Reddit user, who prefers to go by the screen name Plantlife, turned Goldenberger’s photo into one of the internet’s seemingly deathless memes by adding the fateful words “GERSBERMS. MAH FRAVRIT BERKS,” imitating the braces-impaired speech of the Shelley character from South Park. Now, as a movie based on Goosebumps finally reaches theaters, Vanity Fair’s Darryn King has investigated Goldenberger’s saga for a remarkable bit of internet-era journalism called “Ermahgerddon: The Untold Story Of The Erhmagerd Girl.”
King’s findings are largely comforting, as no one’s life seems to have been ruined by the online fad, but they might also be disillusioning for anyone who considers the infamous photograph to be an accurate depiction of an incredibly geeky bibliophile in an unguarded moment. Spoiler: It’s not. The picture was just a put on, Goldenberger explains, which is why she’s not terribly upset by the meme. Internet jokesters aren’t really laughing at her, after all, just the character she was playing in that long-ago Polaroid. The fact that Goldenberger is not actually much of Goosebumps fan in real life may be distressing to author R.L. Stine, who has never found the meme amusing. Plantlife, meanwhile, learned the tough lesson that starting an internet sensation does not exactly open doors in life, though he still wouldn’t mind a job as a comedy writer someday. For the most part, the “Ermahgerd” girl is philosophical about her place in the pantheon:
There’ll be a 30-minute session of [friends] looking at every single version of [the meme]. I have to fake-laugh as if I haven’t seen them all before. I just can’t believe this is my 15 minutes of fame—I was hoping it would come in another form. But I guess you have to take what you can get.