Althouse: "I'm afraid I'm still not quite following what happened or who she is or why this is news"/"I think you are a member of an ever-expanding club"/"Count me in too"/"And me. I have now read three articles in WaPo..."

September 15, 2019

"I'm afraid I'm still not quite following what happened or who she is or why this is news"/"I think you are a member of an ever-expanding club"/"Count me in too"/"And me. I have now read three articles in WaPo..."

"... about this person. And although this was the better written of the lot, I'm still struggling with why anyone above middle school would care about Mason jar gardens and flower crowns"/"After reading this article I feel like I'm a dog chasing it's own tail. Why, why, why, for the love of humanity?!?!?"/"This is the second article I've seen in the last few days of Caroline Calloway, and I've never heard of her. I can't seem to glean from either this or the other article who she is or why I should care."

Comments on the WaPo article by Monica Hesse, "The messiness and meaning of Caroline Calloway." I keep seeing these articles about Caroline Calloway and half skimming them. It's like some kind of joke about the meaninglessness of everything.

We're told the story is "like boiling six seasons of HBO’s 'Girls' into a teaspoon, and injecting it into your veins." Yeah, okay, I'm going to just say no to that drug.

34 comments:

whitney said...: I knew I recognized that name and it appears that everyone copied Stacy McCain

https://theothermccain.com/2019/09/12/caroline-calloway-instagram-influencer-scam/; 9/15/19, 9:01 AM
rehajm said...: So I took a look expecting her to be a new Lena Dunham, a girl with the proper political virtues and the killer family connections and the PR to back it all up. Instead she's the new Chelsea Clinton, a girl with no talent and the killer family connections and the PR to back it all up. Then something bad happened and she didn't turn it all off. And apparently for some women that's all fun to watch...; 9/15/19, 9:12 AM
Sebastian said...: "It's like some kind of joke about the meaninglessness of everything."

Umm, no. This reflects the actual meaning of the actual feminist moment.

Women rule media, especially social media. Since women rule, media cater to soap opera women. Caroline C., formerly Gotschall, is the perfect chick chick-bait for chicks: post-modern soap opera 24/7.

Of course, her fleeting success comes with resentment: as always, the It Girl provokes the envy of her sisters. Which is part of the soap opera: participatory bitching makes it that much more enjoyable.

But men! Remember the hot/crazy matrix!

I think Althouse would enjoy the Natalie Breach piece in The Cut: it says a lot, though most of it unwittingly.

CC's wikipedia entry is also fun:

"Caroline Gotschall Calloway (born December 5, 1991) is an American Instagram personality with 795,000 followers as of September 2019. Known for posting photos with lengthy captions, she has been criticized for not delivering a book for which she received a $375,000 advance, for not completing a performance tour she had announced, and for allowing much of her prose to be ghost-written by a friend. Born in Falls Church, Virginia, Calloway now lives in New York. She is an alumna of Phillips Exeter Academy and a graduate of the University of Cambridge, where she studied history of art at St Edmund's College."

She even finished a "dissertation" as an undergraduate, "Artworks or Preliminaries? An Evaluation of Cecil Beaton's Scrapbooks."

Althouse! Another NYU art student who makes it big online! This calls for comment.; 9/15/19, 9:24 AM
Michael K said...: Whitney, that article explains this. She sounds like a dull normal version of Elizabeth Holmes who is the Theranos CEO headed to prison. The same intense ambition linked to inadequate ability, or in the case of this girl, no skill.; 9/15/19, 9:48 AM
John henry said...: Another drug/speed/amphetamine/Adderall addict.

Boring.

John Henry; 9/15/19, 11:03 AM
Clark said...: I was going to explain how just a few days ago I spent a bit of my precious time trying to figure out who this person was, but I decided it wasn't worth any more of my time — or yours, dear Althouse reader.; 9/15/19, 11:28 AM
Saint Croix said...: I think her "crime" was that she paid for followers on Instagram. I imagine there are any number of celebrities who are guilty of doing that. Anyway, I read this which was interesting, in a train wreck kind of way.; 9/15/19, 11:36 AM
Howard said...: scam is redundant when describing an influencer eg, Trump is an influencer; 9/15/19, 12:21 PM
narciso said...: Wasnt that obama, prep school and top university educated, doing community organizing, and failing to deliver on his memoir, until ayers ghosted it.; 9/15/19, 1:08 PM
BUMBLE BEE said...: Two below the waterline for narciso... good job!; 9/15/19, 1:41 PM
Iman said...: Good decision, the grease and trans fat from one dose would be enough to take 15 people out...; 9/15/19, 4:02 PM
narciso said...: or she could be rowan farrow, till the Weinstein revelations,; 9/15/19, 4:21 PM
Will Cate said...: It's hard to jin up a whole lot of sympathy for Ms. Calloway... she should gather up what she has and move on. I am reminded of a moment in "Mad Men" when Don Draper's father appears to him in a dream, and tells him "You make bullshit." That's more-or-less how I feel about these social media influencers -- they make bullshit.; 9/15/19, 4:41 PM
wildswan said...: This Caroline-who-the-hell-is-she-story goes with the George Packer story in the Atlantic in that both are about people striving desperately to crack the code of success of today and utterly on edge that by missing some little action the good life will move out of their reach. (not up at 4:30 to enroll your child in preschool leads to a bad kindergarten and then it's bad schools all the way through college till your kid falls out the other end of the education system heavily in debt on welfare in Staten Island; failing to anticipate a trend and thereby becoming shunned on social media- should I know about this Caroline or should I not know?)

Here's fact - if you take science or engineering or IT it hardly matters where you go to school in terms of future earnings. And I'll bet the same is true in terms of nursing and teaching (not university adjuncts who should rise up and unionize.) And by moving off the ACELA corridor you can have the good life even on the East Coast even if you are making 60 or 70 percent of what they make in New York. But within New York and similar thought-domes there's just Master of the Universe (as they see themselves) or the Troglodyte. So they writhe and scream like alcoholics seeing rats coming for them unless they are sure they are on the top rungs of the Meritocratic ladder and also have with the right Wokie Attytude.; 9/15/19, 4:53 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: It is super nice, that poontang, but also super ubiquitous if you know where to look.

And most teenagers know more than there folks.

Twain ain't spinning in no grave however, proggies are.

Death throes of incompetent assholes.

I just watched me some Burn After Reading again.

People know people who know these fucks are all ass and shit.

I heard of a guy smoking some weed with Hick a few months back. That explains a lot.

I may have my problems with Ted Cruz, but I would never think he brought a drug habit to the job, unlike Beto (duh, a walkin' meth head) and most others in the Democratic party.; 9/15/19, 5:33 PM
Paco Wové said...: "And by moving off the ACELA corridor..."

That struck me also. I kept suppressing the urge to shout, "Dude, just get the hell out of New York!" at the screen. Almost entirely self-inflicted pain.; 9/15/19, 5:51 PM
Kelly said...: My sister lived next door to a social media influencer in home decor. The woman was a mess although on social media she appeared put together. When her father died my sister heard walling and thought someone was being murdered. It went on for several hours. Her post announcing his death was accompanied by a picture of her living room. The clicks of sympathy also gained her money for what she was advertising in the photo. It’s a bizarre world in social media influencer land.; 9/15/19, 6:04 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: No data is not good, no metrics never help understand things unless the metrics would have been essentially flawed, like anything my fucking tax dollars pay for to include climate and health and especially economic success studies. And law.

Repetition is not all, but more important than almost anything else human-wise.

That is one separation from man and God.

We may all seek to simplify and label for our ease an understanding not beyond our capability.; 9/15/19, 6:06 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: UPDATE: Just bought some drummies at WalMart. Discounted, Not out of date. Started to cook them thrree house aveter I bouth tehm.

Rancid.

Fucking rancid meat.

Wal Mart.

This is why I spend so much more at Kroger's King Soopers, 'cause they don't seel fucking rancid meat.

Disgusting.

I smelt it 3 seconds after opening the package (discounted but not out of date) three hours after I got home. I spent a total of 30 minutes max from when I removed it from the store to when it went in my fridge. Then three hours later (and my fridge dig says 37 fridge and 3 freezer and I trust it) I go to shake and bake (no joke, it adds $1.50 but is worth it) my drummies and smell outdated rancid horridness bathroom-wise.; 9/15/19, 6:12 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: I intended "there" to refer to folks "over there" or distant from their, if such a thing conceptually is able to exit.

But if I were a gambler, like M****** M********, then I'd bet Wisconsin to crush the formerly successful Michigan team, in fact I'd bet it all.

Like LLR's fake their way into the conversation, MI faked its way into relevance.

"Ooh ooh my daddy was potUS...

Yeah, and Justin Beiber is like so stupid and old.

Yeah, like, whatever!"

I lower to my level of expression.; 9/15/19, 6:19 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Hey those bears need to win otherwise we don't cover.

Bears win.; 9/15/19, 6:33 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Atlthouse was smart from the start to distrust the NFL.

What the NFL has done to its brand is very intriguing.

Roger Roger get paid....

Buwaya, with courage and truth and facts, speaks.

How could they destroy the brand?

The reasons echo hate for Tony Robbins. It has worked. Shit. That would mean the reason they LOVE Tony Robbins.

All college athletes, especially at UW, ought be paid minimum 3 times the professor salary according to revenue/goodwill earned.

And no pension no more: if you are there for truth then you honor every single dollar before you letting you proclaim whilst on giant's shoulders "I am better than you and all before me because I see farther than those mysoginyst ass bigots coulded have ever contempmlated."; 9/15/19, 6:42 PM
narciso said...: Looks like discount claire daines, i mean whats the point?; 9/15/19, 7:13 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: It all makes sense: If you follow any sport without having gained billions from said sport you are a loser.

Does anyone feel the scions of sports franchises are their buddy?; 9/15/19, 7:13 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: It is very, almost comically, easy to convince Gramsci's generations.; 9/15/19, 7:14 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: What we the few but proud do is different from what Cory Booker did or will do, same as LPete.; 9/15/19, 7:15 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: LPropane P3353 Mayor of .. Where???

You rememver thn scend from Caddyshack>?; 9/15/19, 7:16 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: Propane Pete: Ready to lite it all up because he knows God better than anyone.; 9/15/19, 7:17 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: If it weren't for Mike Pence and discriminatory hatred, Fucking MAYOR PETE WOULDA BEEN potUS ALREADY BIGOTS!; 9/15/19, 7:20 PM
Baldanders said...: People need something to aspire to, I suppose. Aspiring to greatness is inevitably disappointing, and damaging to the ego. My aspirational figure is, perhaps, Newton. But of course I will never be a Newton- the best mind of my generation will not be a Newton, and I am not conceited enough to think I am very close to being that. I can only hope to leave a small mark on some relatively small problems. I think I might have the capacity to do that much, but even doing that much requires both talent and a lifetime of frustrating work, full of inevitable failures that might or might not lead to relatively modest results.

How much easier it must be to aspire to utter mediocrity, to have an aspirational figure who is as mediocre as you are, but who somehow hit the Instagram jackpot. As little as I think of Lena Dunham (and I think very little of her,) she can at least finish a manuscript, something 90% of her fans would not be able to do.

Calloway seems able to accept a half-million dollar advance, but not able to hire a ghost-writer to deliver a manuscript. My childhood was paid for with a never-ending series of small advances, between 2k and 10k, that would have had to have been paid back (after having been been spent on food and rent) had no manuscript been forthcoming. Deadlines are sometimes negotiable, but advances are unbreakable commitments, at least if you need the money.

How easy to aspire to be this girl. I'm as good as her, a young woman might think, with some justice. She got lucky, or at most was canny about social media at exactly the right time. But I could be her, could have been her, still might be her, with a little luck and a bit of pluck.; 9/15/19, 7:25 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: This is a link I respecct.; 9/15/19, 7:26 PM
Michael K said...: But I could be her, could have been her, still might be her, with a little luck and a bit of pluck.

We droive back from CA to Tucson today listening to "Bad Blood" on the audio book. It is is just riveting.

When my kids were younger, I drove back from Spokane listening to a tape of "Clan of the Cave Bear." The kids were so into the book that, after we pulled up to the house in OC, the kids ran into the house to listen to the last 1/2 hour of the book. This book was that good. We still had a half a chapter left when we got home.; 9/15/19, 7:57 PM
narciso said...: Oh she did hire a ghost, will anyone take responsibility for the drek monica hesse puts out?; 9/15/19, 9:01 PM
Guildofcannonballs said...: From the great William Frank Buckley, Jr., aka WFB, I hereby quote to the best of my ability:

I

icon Object or person attracting worshipful attention.
Sally was slightyly withdrawn, indomitably independent in spirit, dazzling to look at if you began by disregarding as irrelevant most of the competition in icons of the day---she didn't look like Rita Hayworth or Marilyn Monroe.; 9/15/19, 10:01 PM