In 1998 Ann Hirsch was twelve years old, and she frequented an AOL chat room called Twelve. As she got to know the regulars, she got to know the way they chatted, the words they used, the usernames they picked, the kinds of relationships they made. The remote community of the chat room lived by its own set of rules, like any social group, and policing was loose, limited to the snitcher’s arbitrary application of AOL’s Terms of Service. Under these conditions Ann developed a long-distance romance with a frequent user of Twelve who was more than twice her age.

"My point with telling this story is just to be honest and convey both the benefits I got from this relationship (intimacy, sexual knowledge) but also show the manipulation and exploitation that was involved in a relationship like this as well."

Twelve was originally released as an interactive e-book in 2013 on iTunes but after receiving some press for the work, iTunes banned the book. Now, Ann Hirsch has worked with Molly Soda to recreate the original e-book in physical form, maintaining the chatroom feel of the original by using an AOL simulator to recreate the conversations. It creates an immersive experience while keeping the reader outside the story; you feel the disorienting effect of entering a chat room full of strangers in the middle of a conversation, then gradually come to recognize their handles and follow their relationships. But the only perspective is the one peering over Ann’s shoulder; it grants access to a private world, but with limits.