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Today, Monica Moore Smith is about to 86,000 followers on Instagram a two on TikTok. But a few years ago, Smith was about as social media as you could get. “Nowadays people grow up wanting to be social media stars,” says Smith. “But when social media first became popular, I wasn’t on it.”
His parents did not allow him to create a MySpace account, and when Facebook began to have a strong influence on the platform, the idea was already strong. “Social media was introduced to me as a place to sell sex and porn,” she says. “I hear these stories all the time—’a kid who wasn’t old enough to get Facebook created an account and it ended up in the hands of a hacker.'”
For Smith, there is no “good” part of the internet. “I didn’t see the device,” he says. “You can use it for yourself and it’s useless, or it can be harmful.”
Smith carried this idea into adulthood—until a Vine star changed his mind. He began acting professionally in high school after a casting director saw him performing in talent shows. After a few commercials and small movie parts, he got a chance to recreate “Saturday’s Warrior,” a Utah cult classic.
“The leader has never worked in his life,” he said. “I worked in the industry for a while before I got that part, so in the beginning, when I saw that someone on Vine was the lead… my ‘real artist’ mindset was really messed up. I was surprised that you could have such a good time without my level of experience.
That was back in 2015, before TikTokers is a TV series a employment record. Still, Smith sees a trend. “I knew if I had a passion for acting, social media was the right thing to do,” he says. “So, but the important thing now is, if you don’t follow up, the agencies won’t look at your tests.”
Doubtless, Smith’s first message was very casual—he started on Instagram, which he says was mostly about “good news and random career aspirations, kind of… talk.”
His complete 180 happened when the man talked back. “When my students started to become my true friends, I realized that I had set the wrong example,” he said. “I was very opposed, looking at social media as this big crime and everything in black and white, when it’s all really like this.”
He began to build a following, being “very into algorithms and research” and going “very nerdy” into data science. His Instagram and TikTok accounts continue to grow, and with each performance he finds new fans. As he settled into his new vision for the internet, Smith’s breakup became public.
“In the beginning, I wanted to keep quiet about my experience,” she said. “But my ex had other ideas.”
According to Smith, her ex-husband started DMing his followers, spreading rumors about their marriage. “At that time, my audience was mostly women from Utah,” she said. “My stories are small, magical, hopeful, everything about my life as a young woman in love. It was so scary, because he was sending a message to my people teenager
Then her own messengers started flooding in with questions about her divorce. “I decided to just open up,” he said. “Like, by all means—I talked to the internet about my bad relationship and how and why I got divorced.”
Not surface level. “Most survivors want to leave the story,” he says. “But to identify an abusive relationship, I’ve learned that you have to know what to look for. That’s why I go into specifics. There are many situations where abuse occurs, and we have to talk about the situations.”
When he started talking about his abuse, the audience turned. At first, he pushed back. “I didn’t like the idea of pivoting,” he said. “It’s scary, because I built an audience looking for love stories. But all of that doesn’t happen to me anymore.
Now, Smith says he’s glad he made the choice for the audience. “A lot of people went down when I changed my story,” he said. “But I found that I had students who were dealing with the same things, which made their lives difficult. There were also some people who had not followed me before that time, two years later they encountered the same situation or accepted the true nature of their situations.”
Every day, Smith emanates love from the community he has built. “People tell me I saved their lives,” he said. “It’s inspiring to me. They’ll come up to me and tell me ‘I was suicidal until I found your content’ and I’m always there. It seems like there’s a reason for it. I’m sorry for the pain I caused. I’m sorry I didn’t shut up.
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