Tier 2: Glitchgirl Core

Everyone wants to be Tier 1 until they get the welcome kit.

Mine arrived in a champagne-scented box shaped like a pill. When I opened it, a voice that sounded like my old guidance counselor chirped: “Congratulations! Your Value Has Been Updated.”

Inside: bone-white contact lenses with auto-shimmer, a MoodRegulator™ chip to “balance emotions for optimal likeability,” and a printed Tier 1 schedule. No weekends. No privacy. No time to think.

By noon, my wardrobe had been reprogrammed to “Celestial Chic.” By 3PM, I’d been assigned a stylist, a life coach, and a handler named Pascal who called me “the next soft disruptor.”

No one asked if I wanted it.

But I didn’t ask questions either—because I had spent my entire life being the girl right before the one who got chosen.

Second best in every friend group. Second best in every job interview. Second best in every almost-relationship that wanted a little muse magic but not a real damn person.

The algorithm had always rated me “Above Average, Potential Pending.” Like I was a tech demo. A beta version of someone more marketable.

So when the glitch came—when I opened the app and saw that pulsing gold banner saying YOU’VE BEEN UPGRADED—I didn’t hesitate.

I just smiled like I’d earned it.

Because I had.

The skyline hadn’t changed. LA was still a palm tree graveyard wrapped in smog and cinematic ambition. The sunsets were still gorgeous—algorithmically enhanced now, of course. Tier 1 residents paid extra for pink-light filters in their skyfeeds.

Below, in Tier 2, the air was browner. The smog wasn’t aesthetic—it was real. People in Tier 2 didn’t get curated daylight. They just hoped for cloud cover.

I moved into a Tier 1 building in West Hollywood. On the surface, it looked the same—coffee shops, yoga studios, vintage neon. But nothing was real.

The coffee was printed. The yoga mats came with built-in livestreams. And the vintage signs were AI-generated replicas of places that had been bulldozed during the Rezoning.

I passed a flower stand with no scent. When I picked up a lily, it projected a QR code in my palm.

“Choose grief intensity,” the vendor said. “Tier 1 florals are interactive now.”

By Day Three, I had already learned the first rule: never speak unless you’re being filmed.

The ContentNet hovered everywhere—tiny, floating camera drones disguised as perfume mist, contact lenses that blinked on when your heart rate spiked, mirrors that streamed live with flattering filters and pre-approved hashtags. Tier 1s didn’t talk unless they were selling something.

And they were always selling something.

My neighbors were all Tier 1 Creators: a body-mod influencer who documented her daily injections, a fashion “prophet” who only wore pixelated fabrics, a self-help oracle who never blinked. Every hallway smelled like lemon balm, social anxiety, and desperately-repackaged originality.

Our building had no trash chute. Tier 1s don’t make waste, the concierge AI told me. Everything was up-cycled, recycled, or recycled into someone else’s trauma for content.

I tried to write a poem that night. The line came to me mid-shower, as droplets formed perfect lines on my skin:

“I was almost chosen once. She picked the prettier girl.”

The smart-tile floor blinked red.

UNMONITORED LANGUAGE DETECTED. SELF-CENSORSHIP RECOMMENDED.

My shower cut off. Cold.

The next day, I met my handler.

“Victoria, hi!” said a man in a chrome suit and skin that glitched slightly when he moved. “I’m Pascal. Love your Value Arc. I’ll be your narrative coordinator.”

“My what?” I asked.

He blinked, confused. “You’re Tier 1 now. You need a brand arc. Don’t worry, we’ll start with a trauma dump. Just something digestible. Childhood rejection? Sexual ambiguity? Soft betrayal?”

“I’ve never been interesting enough to get betrayed.”

Pascal beamed. “Perfect. You’re relatable. We love that in Tier 1 right now.”

I started filming content. That was the only way to get food credits. I posed in my algorithm-assigned outfits, spoke softly into headsets about rising above, and tagged everything with #ReclaimingMyValue. It was fake. It worked.

The views came fast. Faster than I expected.

But the comments?

“You’re like… if someone described a more interesting person.”

“Mid-core girlie finding her sparkle, I guess.”

“She’s giving second choice energy but in a cute way.”

And suddenly it was all back:

The callbacks where I was the reader, not the lead.

The girl I loved who said, “You’re safe. But she’s electric.”

The jobs where I trained the person who replaced me.

I had spent so long aching to be seen, to be chosen, to finally matter in a city that only remembered you if you were loud or lucky.

But being seen here felt more like being dissected. They didn’t want me. They wanted the idea of me—smoothed and sobbing, lighting a candle made by someone in Tier 3 and calling it healing.

I smiled into the camera and whispered, “I’ll give you chaos, then.”

At the Tier 1 coffee lounge, a man slid a chip under a saucer—a custom data capsule. The barista pocketed it like a tip. The next day, the man’s engagement stats quadrupled.

At the rooftop pool, I overheard two creators arguing:

“You’re using stolen edits.”

“So are you.”

“Yeah, but I steal from Tier 3. You steal from Tier 2. It’s tacky.”

Tier 1 was hollow. No one made anything here.

They just stole it and sold it back—repurposed poems, aestheticized trauma, stolen slang that came sanitized with pastel filters and influencer discounts.

Late one night, I found the archives.

They were buried in the Value App’s backend, disguised as “expired media.” A glitch in the system let me in—a real one this time. Or maybe it wasn’t. Maybe someone wanted me to see.

Inside were thousands of files:

A video diary from a Tier 2 girl who invented the “unbothered sad girl” trend.

Sketches of a streetwear line, now seen on every billboard.

Raw audio of someone singing heartbreak into a cracked mic—the same melody that launched a Tier 1 boy band.

All uncredited. All erased.

I saved everything and started coding.

I embedded QR codes in my videos—just barely visible in the corner, like a beauty mark. When viewers scanned them, they were led to anonymous accounts: raw poems, messy rants, unfiltered brilliance.

I looped old Tier 2 voices into Tier 1 podcasts.

I rewrote captions with reversed code that redirected likes to the original creators.

No one noticed. Not at first. But the shadows got louder.

One night, I got a message:

You’re not second best anymore. You’re the glitch.

I smiled.

By Week Six, my followers had tripled.

Not because of my outfits or my vibe. It was the static.

Quick flashes. Hidden images. Codes embedded in eyelashes. They called it “glitchcore.” They didn’t realize they were downloading rebellion.

The algorithm didn’t flag me. It liked me. Tier 1 with a mysterious, subversive edge? They boosted that kind of girl.

I was playing the role of a lifetime. And this time, I had the lead.

The quiet rebellion bloomed:

A Tier 2 stylist went viral for a look she didn’t design — but viewers traced it back to her

A coffee shop in Mid-City started handing out zines instead of receipts

A Tier 1 creator tried to delete their feed. It reuploaded itself. Annotated.

The middle ranks were waking up.

And the top? They were glitching.

It wasn’t enough.

I didn’t want to be famous. I wanted to matter. I didn’t want a following. I wanted someone to look at me and see a first choice.

So I did the one thing no Tier 1 had done since the beginning of the Value System:

I demoted myself. Publicly.

During a livestream, I wore no makeup. My real voice trembled.

“I wasn’t born with a spotlight. I’ve always been second best. The placeholder. But everything Tier 1 has? It was built by us. They took your poems. Your heartbreak. Your slang. You’re not unchosen. You’re the source. You’re the spark. And I’m done being seen if it means being stolen.”

Then I looked into the camera, smiled, and tapped the app.

“I rescind my rank.”

The system panicked.

The Value App crashed. Billboards blinked. My image—no filter—froze mid-sentence.

My profile vanished.

But the glitch didn’t.

Feeds overflowed with content tagged:

#FromTheMiddle

#Tier2Rising

#SecondBestRebellion

Zines printed themselves. Poets were credited. Artists were unmuted. I wasn’t trending. I was multiplying.

I moved back to Echo Park.

No one recognized me. Good.

I got my old job back. BrewSynk still smelled like burnt espresso and broken dreams.

I still wrote—on walls, receipts, napkins. Lines that couldn’t be measured.

Sometimes, when I saw a Tier 2 girl walking home late from a shift, I slipped a folded note in her pocket.

Always handwritten. Always signed with a V.

“You are not second best. You are the source. They only shine because you burned first.”

The city kept glitching.

But the middle was glowing.

DEDICATION

For the real Victoria: My favorite rebellion in girl-shaped form, who’s always reminded me that being overlooked doesn’t mean being outmatched.