Hu Cares | the lies we tell ourselves
There are some things that I love that I’m a little embarrassed by. Some are things that I thought I’d never like, but enjoy now, like the Bachelor franchise. Others fall into a related category: things I feel like I shouldn’t like, because the idealized version of myself is better than the stereotypical “person who would like X.” (This, also, is an embarrassing admission for me.) I’d like to think I’m more sophisticated than the average Taylor Swift stan, or smarter than whoever gets suckered into reading whichever celebrity’s clearly ghostwritten “autobiography,” or kinder and more mature than the kind of person who gets sucked into ephemeral internet drama. But I’m not, because all of these things are a part of me. And this week, I can’t stop thinking about — and I’m a little sorry, even though this is my newsletter and I get to write about whatever I want — Caroline Calloway.
Around 80% of people I’ve talked to in the last 48 hours about this have no clue who she is, and there is really no good reason anyone needs to know about her. But by way of brief introduction, she’s a fallen Instagram star who started posting long stories about her travels and relationships in the platform’s earliest days, back when oversaturating all your photos was still somewhat acceptable, and everyone was relentlessly positive. After a failed book deal, a series of failed “creativity workshops,” and, earlier this week, a “tell-all” from her ex-best friend Natalie, the online hordes are gawking.
She’s been called a scammer, a one-woman Fyre Festival, but I get the sense that the person she wants to fool the most is herself. I started reading about Caroline when her workshop “scam” made the news, and I got curious about her so I scrolled a few years back in her feed to read her early work. When I reemerged, I’d lost an hour and found myself wanting to know more about her shiny life: European castles! Sicilian princes! Fancy foods and places and people I’ve never really given a shit about, but that were fascinating because of how she wrote about them: she was always the outsider, astounded by the strange serendipity that led her into these ridiculous situations. How did little old me wind up surrounded by wealth, fun, and beautiful Italian men? It makes you feel like it could all happen to you, if only you just got out there and let life happen.
There’s a thrilling power in self-mythologizing. I’m no Caroline Calloway, but I grew up on Livejournal and learned how to wield words to build myself into the kind of girl I wanted to be. Or maybe I’m mythologizing now — it was more like stumbling around, trying to act cool on the internet. But I was painfully shy before I started writing online; it was where I could try on a new suit of confidence and chill, spouting inside jokes with friends and telling stories about the “random,” wild stuff I got up to on the weekend to see how people reacted. I’m looking at two posts made a day apart: one is private and absolutely maudlin, about my “boy problems” and how a friend joking about how I was single made me “truly insecure,” and the other is an irreverent post full of pictures of my friends and I skipping first period, ironically going to a free Hanson concert, trying on terrible denim dresses at Charlotte Russe, and swimming in fountains. I wanted so badly for that online persona to be the actual me, and writing about my own life like it was something worth reading made me feel like I might actually be cool and fun and interesting.
(Actual screenshot of my old Livejournal circa 2004, where I’m skipping first period to grill breakfast outside an all-boys Catholic school I didn’t attend.)
A predictable revelation in Natalie’s essay was the fact that Caroline’s actual life wasn’t so perfect: she struggled in school, saw few friends, and, at one point, teetered on the edge of a breakdown. I can’t know how much of her posts were true, but I wonder if they were true to her, a way to see her own life that could convince her it was good after all. Two thousand likes can’t be wrong, after all.
In Jia Tolentino’s first essay in her new book Trick Mirror, she writes about why the internet sucks now, a thing I have thought about a lot, and I found myself coming back to it after getting sucked into the Caroline story. Tolentino mentions sociology Erving Goffman’s theory that we are constantly performing. “To communicate an identity requires some degree of self-delusion,” she writes. “A performer might be fully taken in by his own performance—he might actually believe that his biggest flaw is ‘perfectionism’—or he might know his act is a sham.” We tailor our performances to our audience; you might play Leslie Knope around your boss, while your best friend gets more of a Cher Horowitz, and your parents, a Beth March. We are the sum of these performances, writes Tolentino. “The self is not a fixed, organic thing, but a dramatic effect that emerges from a performance.”
I don’t know Caroline’s real life, though I get a strong impression that she spends a lot of it crafting her online performance. If there’s anything noteworthy about her whole saga, it’s how readily we consume the lives of these women — and it is mostly women — who perform for us (and themselves), and how much we hate them when we learn that it was all just an act.
A delightful bit of trivia:
My best friend from high school and her husband came to visit recently, and at some point, the topic turned to 90s movies. Clem, who’s French, mentioned Sex Intentions, and we were like, Excuse me? Is this a French movie?
Turns out Cruel Intentions was released in France as Sexe Intentions.
Other French translation gems:
The Hangover became Very Bad Trip
Edward Scissorhands became Edward Silverhands, which sounds delightfully innocuous
“A Whole New World” from Aladdin is “Ce Rêve Bleu” (“This Blue Dream”)
And, my favorite: Home Alone became Maman, J’ai Raté L’avion (Mom, I Missed the Plane)
Hey, what are you doing Saturday, September 28? I’m going to be at Town Hall in Seattle (after more than a year of renovations, they’re doing a grand re-opening this month!) talking with dog cognition researcher Alexandra Horowitz. If you know me, you know it’s hard to find two things I love more than psychology and dogs, so I’m really looking forward to it.
Tickets are $5 and you can get them here! (Upon clicking on that link, I also discovered that this is going to be livestreamed which doesn’t make me nervous at all, nope.)
Unsolicited recommendations
The Overstory by Richard Powers. I am desperate to talk about this with anybody and everybody. It won a Pulitzer for a reason, folks!
This somewhat niche Nic Cage x Lizzo meme, courtesy of my friend Laura, which my friend Kai then turned into the masterpiece “Cage Hurts,” which deserves to go viral
You Don’t Have To Be, a gorgeous piece of art my friend Sarah Gilman made for the Last Word On Nothing. Sarah is so talented! She also sells her art and you should buy it!
Things I’ve written lately
Two words: SPACE. CRIME. (Slate)
The National Science Foundation’s graduate research fellowship disproportionately goes to students at well-funded universities, something that’s been called the worst-kept secret in academia. I looked at some of the reasons why this could be happening, and what researchers think might help diversify the pool of winners. (Science)
Keep your unsolicited dick pics to yourself, but @ShowYoDiq is soliciting dick pics…for science. (Slate)
Architects are looking to nature for inspiration for buildings that cool themselves. (Grist)
Brands like Merriam Webster, Denny’s, and Steak-umm are hilarious on Twitter, and some government agencies, like DARPA, are also turning on the humor to be more ~~relatable~~. (Slate)
I talked with the founder of the Version Museum, a digital museum devoted to cataloguing how the internet used to look. (Slate)