Who is Laina Morris? 'Overly Attached Girlfriend' talks about virality and the depression it brought her

Once a meme is adopted by people online, there’s really no going back. This sentiment may be particularly relevant in the case of Laina Morris, who went viral as the 'Overly Attached Girlfriend’ and has continued to experience the consequences of her internet fame.

Morris went viral in 2012 when a screenshot of her face from a Justin Bieber parody video was turned into a meme. The meme’s rapid spread brought Morris widespread recognition, but she later revealed that the experience had a significant emotional impact. Let’s take a closer look at how Laina Morris got here and how she feels about her journey to internet fame.

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Laina Morris at a glance

The entire saga began in 2012 when Justin Bieber held an online contest to promote his newly launched Girlfriend perfume. Morris’ entry, titled “JB Fanvideo,” was a parody of the singer’s “Boyfriend,” with lyrics that made clingy sound like a compliment:

“If I was your girlfriend, I’d never let you leave without a small recording device taped under your sleeve. And you’ll only look your best and shave your face for me. Don’t hide secrets in your house, cuz boy I stole the key”

Even though the entire premise of her submission was to joke about behaviours anybody would call concerning, the internet took it out of context and ran with it — as evidenced by how quickly it became a phenomenon on Reddit. When speaking exclusively to PEOPLE, she detailed her experience:

“I remember waking up, going out to my living room and my roommates were already awake on their computers and they were like, ‘You're a meme,’ and showed it to me, “And then I just spent all day looking at these memes online.”

She continued,

“It's been so long that I'm not 100 percent sure on the numbers, but… at least the first couple days it was at like a quarter of a million views, which at the time was quite a bit for having just posted it. So that's when I knew. I remember calling my dad and being like, ‘Do you know what a viral video is? I think I might have one.’ "

What made Morris viral wasn’t the video in its entirety, but rather just a screenshot where she stares directly down the barrel of the camera. The photo was widely shared online and commonly used with captions that exaggerated possessive or obsessive behavior. The original video submission even has more than 22 million views. In the same PEOPLE exclusive, Morris remembers:

“It was crazy. It was in the hands of the internet almost immediately, I didn't name this character Overly Attached Girlfriend, I didn't make any of these memes — it was kind of like I was in on the joke, but also, I don't know, I was just following along with everyone else as well at the same time.”

At a time when content creation was still gaining mainstream traction, Morris’s viral video drew significant online attention.

“I knew I wasn't doing well, and it was hard for me to know that everyone else could also see I wasn't doing well, And I mean, at the end of the day, everyone else probably didn't care, but of course I just assumed like, oh, everyone can see I'm doing terribly and whatever. I was in my head about it.”

She continued,

“Starting around 2014 ... I landed myself in a real deep depression, and I was keeping it a real deep secret from everyone around me. I felt ashamed and I felt guilt for being stressed and overwhelmed in a world and with the job and opportunities that were so great. I didn't understand why I couldn't handle it for years,"

Eventually, Morris spoke publicly about her viral fame and how she processed the experience. While she has expressed regret over not being fully present in the moment at the time, she reflects:

“I am where I am because of [Overly Attached Girlfriend], but I do think if I could go back and just tell myself to chill a little bit,” Morris reflects. “I think I let myself get really overwhelmed. It was a lot of eyes on me very quickly. There are opportunities I had that I didn't take and that I sort of regret or I feel like because I was so overwhelmed, I didn't fully take advantage of those opportunities and enjoy the really cool, good parts.”

In today’s culture, where viral content is often highly sought after, it may not always live up to expectations. Morris’s experience highlights the complexities of internet fame and the potential psychological effects of going viral.