Welcome To Instagram’s Museum Of Bad Behavior

Alissa Bennett has always gravitated towards the most sordid, discarded corners of the internet — to the obscure message boards and comment sections where people offer anonymous confessions. “I'm attracted to them because it seems like when you plumb the depths, you really get to the essence of what it means to be a person,” says Bennett, who hosts The C-Word podcast alongside Lena Dunham. “The best one is gone, this website Topix. It was a regional message board and they were like slam books,” she tells Bustle of the early-aughts forum that shuttered in 2018. It engaged her morbid curiosity, especially when the topics of conversation included people at the center of major crimes like Michelle Carter and Shayna Hubers.

In early 2020, Bennett launched a confessional all her own: the Instagram account @regret_counter_, which offers glimpses into various unnamed participants’ last hard night out. (Think PostSecret, but all about blacking out.) Displayed as lists — Bennett will share either a Notes App-style screenshot of someone’s submission or write it out by hand — the posts are as entertaining as they are shocking. One list details an evening that includes, “Truly, Truly, LSD, White Claw, White Claw, MDMA, MDMA, Truly, Coke, MDMA, Coke, Truly.” Another simply reads, “3 to 5 tabs of acid every day for 14 months (no regrets).”

For Bennett, a self-proclaimed “historian of bad behavior” to her account’s “museum of bad behavior,” the point is to offer a space on the internet for people to revel in their debauchery without judgment. “I think that when people find a neutral space, it's incredibly liberating,” she explains. Whether you get lost in a porta potty or rack up an uncertain $56.65 blackout Taco Bell tab, “If something humiliating happens to you in a Regret Counter, it's even better.”

Below, Bennett talks True Life, Jenna Jameson, and hanging out with Lena Dunham in Connecticut.

The Fast Follow With @regret_counter_

What’s the last Wikipedia hole you went down?

I went down one today, actually. I've been recording at Lena's house in Connecticut and she lives very close to Dudleytown, which is a New England ghost town that is completely gated off. You can't go there. It's like a notoriously haunted piece of poisonous property. There’s a whole mythology around it — that it's haunted and that everyone that lived there died — but the more you discover you realize that [the problem was] they built this settlement in a valley. So by noon there was no sunlight and the ground was very rocky. So they couldn't grow any food and then everyone got typhoid fever and died.

What’s the strangest thing you currently have written in your Notes App?

I have an entire essay that I wrote on my phone about an episode of True Life called, “I'm a Clubber.” [I wrote], “Explain the appeal of a place that always seems to me as though its floors must be sticky with Red Bull, its bathrooms a graveyard of carelessly discarded angel wings and miniature Ziploc bags.”

What’s the best thing you’ve purchased on the internet lately?

I bought this book from 1936 that's called No More Alibis! by Sylvia of Hollywood. She was basically an early diet and fitness guru. All these starlets would go to her and her technique was not only a rigorous diet and prescription for calisthenics, but she would also do this massage technique where she would beat people and pinch the fat off. She believed she could pinch the fat off their bodies. But it’s strangely compelling. Like, it's a very good read.

What tabs do you currently have open on your laptop?

I'm writing a Jenna Jameson episode [for the podcast], so I have a Jenna Jameson 1996 interview, a Jenna Jameson Opie & Anthony interview, and a bunch of tax shit. Oh, and Dateline. I watched a really fucking good Dateline: Secrets Uncovered three times this weekend. It's about a kind of love square, I guess. There's one man, who's not that incredible, and he had these two ex-girlfriends and one woman who he was kind of seeing. The woman that he was kind of seeing disappeared off the face of the Earth, but then started to send this series of increasingly threatening texts and emails. Not only to him, but also to both of his exes. I don't want to ruin it for you, just watch it.

Who is the person who followed you that you were most excited by?

I was really excited when Ashley Benson followed Regret Counter. I [messaged her] like, “You can always submit!” She said, "I love this account.” But she didn't send me anything.

What's the weirdest DM slide you've ever received?

No offense, world, but you got to send me a list of how much you drank last night or I don't want to read your DM.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.