Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Thursday, January 24, 2019

O

ver the recent holiday, 
I attended an event 
as part of the 2019 

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King 
Jr. Day Symposium at the 
University of Michigan. I heard 
about the harsh experiences 
three women faced as they 
participated in a student-led 
committee to confront racism 
in the South during the 1960s. 
Someone asked how the civil 
rights movement became as 
powerful as it was, and one 
woman reasoned that the might 
of 
those 
oppressed 
during 

that time period was aligned 
with the spirit of the youth. 
In other words, these women 
claimed part of the reason why 
the movement began to peak 
in the ‘60s was because of how 
relentless and driven they, as 
young individuals at the time, 
had to be not only to gain their 
freedoms and their rights but 
more importantly to survive 
in a setting that favored white 
terrorism.

Today, 
there 
have 
been 

strides that mirror those of 
past movements in terms of 
collaboration among youth and 
the drastic nature of change 
necessary to find solutions 
to improve the quality of the 
environment. 
Since 
Speaker 

Nancy Pelosi announced the 
House 
of 
Representatives 

committee on climate change 
would 
be 
revived, 
newly-

elected U.S. Rep. Alexandria 
Ocasio-Cortez, 
D-N.Y., 
has 

made 
known 
her 
adamant 

support for the Green New Deal 
as a plan this committee can 
pursue to create an economy.

Driven by the stories and the 

mentality of people in America’s 
working class, Ocasio-Cortez 
has demonstrated herself as 
the standard bearer of this 
mentality for radical social and 
economic change. Referencing 
the New Deal pursued during 
the Great Depression and other 
major revolutionary plans that 
have been implemented during 
our history, she rationalizes the 
magnitude of this change to the 
economy towards improving 

the environment is necessary: 
“The only way we are going to 
get out of this situation is by 
choosing to be courageous. 
(The Green New Deal) is 
going to be the Great Society, 
the moonshot, the civil rights 
movement of our generation. 
That is the scale of the 
ambition that this movement 
is going to require.”

Ocasio-Cortez and other 

politicians 
have 
presented 

themselves 
as 
a 
beacon 

of 
inspiration 
for 
youth, 

while also contributing to 
the growth of the Sunrise 
Movement. 
Following 
the 

2018 
midterm 
elections, 

Sunrise 
activists 
made 

themselves 
visible 
to 
the 

public by occupying Speaker 
Pelosi’s office and demanding 
newly-elected congressional 
representatives 
begin 
to 

discuss and work on the 
logistics 
of 
the 
Green 

New Deal. In essence, the 
spirit of this organization 
encompasses the idea that 
everyday people are the ones 
affected 
by 
the 
decisions 

of 
their 
authorities 
and 

lawmakers 
and, 
therefore, 

are the ones who can validate 
their demands for appropriate 
actions from the government. 
As these activists assume the 
position of demanding better 
from the government in terms 
of environmental health, fair 
economic activity and just 
social standards, they are 
undoubtedly inspiring more 
youth to join them and more 
adults to gear their decision-
making 
towards 
pleasing 

the majority that has become 
composed of youths.

In other words, the Sunrise 

Movement is working to collect 
supporters and make climate 
change a deciding factor in the 
2020 Democratic presidential 
primaries, 
in 
addition 
to 

strides they have already made 
for 
awareness 
towards 
the 

necessity for the improvement 
of our environment. 

Past and present movements 

show that the spirit of the 

times during any era is carried 
and propelled by its young 
people. 
Today, 
the 
Sunrise 

Movement and their supporters 
are 
educated, 
level-headed 

and capable of addressing the 
concerns that we have about the 
world we are living in. We are 
the ones who are realizing that 
something has to be done to 
make a better future possible. 
We are the ones who are willing 
to work to make it happen. Just 
as 
Ocasio-Cortez 
mentioned 

in her contribution to Bernie 
Sanders’s national town hall 
on climate change, it is natural 
to fear change and to believe 
change on such a massive scale 
is impossible. However, today 
will be another example of 
the benefits that result from 
showing 
persistence 
and 

resilience in the fight for the 
life we want and the fight for 
demanding our authorities do 
what is right. 

As a youth today, my 

commitment 
to 
advocating 

for the improvement of our 
environment is exemplary of 
the spirit of the times. While 
I 
am 
constantly 
thinking 

about the purpose I will serve 
in this world as an engineer 
after 
graduation, 
I 
also 

think about the thousands of 
students here who will have 
an equally significant purpose 
to serve after graduation. 
Whether their majors direct 
them towards the medical 
field, public health, criminal 
justice, the natural sciences, 
mathematics, 
history, 

political science or even the 
realm of art, every student 
will have the advantage of 
belonging to a community 
that values progress in all 
sectors of our society. Because 
I know we and people like us 
across the nation and around 
the world will ensure history 
favors the bold, I have hope for 
the future of our society.

Why I have hope for the future of our environment

Kianna Marquez can be reached at 

kmarquez@umich.edu

Emma Chang
Joel Danilewitz

Samantha Goldstein

Elena Hubbell
Emily Huhman
Tara Jayaram

Jeremy Kaplan

Sarah Khan

Lucas Maiman

Magdalena Mihaylova

Ellery Rosenzweig

Jason Rowland

Anu Roy-Chaudhury

Alex Satola
Ali Safawi

 Ashley Zhang
Sam Weinberger

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EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBERS

The ethics of scamming in the millenial age

T

he 
art 
of 
scamming 

has been fascinating to 

me ever since the term 

“influencer” came to light. A scam 

can take many forms: It can be as 

simple as knowing how to get a 

free drink at a bar or as complex 

as manipulating financiers and 

loan companies into lending you 

money that doesn’t exist and 

buying Macaulay Culkin dinner to 

convince him that you’re German 

royalty. We live in a time when the 

internet provides anonymity at 

extreme consequences. Identities 

are stolen, music festivals are lied 

about and learning the secret to 

making an orchid crown is priced 

at a remarkable $165.

Recently, reporters have begun 

to pick up pieces on scams large 

and small, and it’s drawing a lot 

of attention. With the release of 

the Fyre Festival documentaries 

on Netflix and Hulu, a TV show 

dedicated to Anna Delvey (the 

German woman who convinced 

New York’s elite crowds she was a 

European heiress) in the works, and 

a recent Twitter thread exposing 

the scams of Instagram influencer 

Caroline 
Calloway 
(whose 

Instagram bio reads, horrifyingly, 

“No not that writer, the one you 

love!!!”) it’s safe to say that scams 

are very in. Each of these scammers 

has been white, middle class and 

undeniably privileged. But does 

who their scams target matter?

I started following Caroline 

Calloway on Instagram about three 

years ago. My interest in her at 

the time was mostly fascination. 

I didn’t exactly like her, but I was 

curious about her. Her posts were 

less about her pictures and more 

focused on sharing long, detailed 

retellings of parties in castles and 

traveling abroad. Her Instagram 

stories 
depicted 
her 
beautiful 

life with her beautiful friends, 

accompanied by lengthy, and at 

times, TMI descriptions of her 

current life. This was not an account 

for purely visual inspiration, and the 

target demographic was not your 

average American teen. Calloway 

was an icon for the girls who read 

fairy tales later into adolescence 

than they’re probably willing to 

admit and who still hold onto the 

romantic notions found in “Notting 

Hill” or “The Princess Diaries” — 

an impressionable group of middle-

class white girls who wanted a life 

more exciting than their own. So 

when Calloway decided to produce 

“creativity workshops” in a national 

tour, it’s no wonder that her first 

event sold out in several hours — 

with tickets priced at $165.

Calloway differs from Delvey 

and Billy McFarland of Fyre 

Festival in a few distinct ways. 

Where Delvey and McFarland 

sought large-scale multimillion-

dollar scams, Calloway’s scams 

have been small and not blatantly 

manipulative. But where Delvey 

and 
McFarland 
exploited 
the 

wealthy, Calloway’s scams target 

her audience — mainly obsessed 

tweens, 
teens, 
and 
twenty-

somethings — and they’ve been 

going on for quite some time.

Part of Calloway’s pull has 

been her extreme commitment to 

honesty through detail. Following 

Calloway on Instagram is like 

following her in the literal sense. 

It’s as if you’re standing two steps 

behind her as she goes throughout 

her day. She shares everything: her 

wake up, breakfast, trips to the gym, 

flower shopping, (oddly frequent) 

thank 
you 
note 
writing 
and 

especially her salad dinner parties 

that she seems to have almost 

nightly with various successful and 

vaguely famous friends. She doesn’t 

have a job and she doesn’t seem 

to need one. She lives in a studio 

apartment somewhere in the West 

Village. So if Calloway is spending 

her days stretching, eating salad 

and wandering around New York, 

how is she making money?

Recently 
Calloway 
has 

denied her wealth (claiming salad 

ingredients are cheap and that she 

eats a lot of toast), but anyone who 

follows her knows she’s wealthy. 

Though Calloway claims total 

openness and honesty in her social 

media interactions, her followers 

aren’t tricked into thinking her life 

is perfect. They know she shows 

them what she chooses to: parties, 

boys, friends and orchids.

When Calloway chooses to 

show the more negative aspects of 

her life, these insights are carefully 

cultivated with a victim-based 

narrative. First, it was her fall-out 

with the publishing company and 

her lost book deal (which she used 

to later sell individual chapters 

of the book she never published 

for $5 a digital pop, totalling to 

a staggering $50 for a DIGITAL 

book). Then it was digging up 

nostalgia and sadness for her days 

at the University of Cambridge and 

her ex-boyfriend. Most recently 

the sob story has consisted of 

mysterious and vague photos of her 

father’s messy home in Virginia, 

his mental health problems and 

her recovery from these childhood 

traumas — from which she has 

gained inspiration to pursue her 

most recent endeavor of creativity 

workshops.

These creativity workshops 

have been Calloway’s breaking 

point. Having promised orchid 

crowns, professional photos and 

the “super salads” she shares with 

her friends, Calloway delivered 

very little. But Calloway did more 

than promise salads to her fans — 

she charged them $165 per ticket 

and planned a full American tour, 

one for which she never booked 

venues. Yes, Calloway got in over 

her head and planned very, very 

poorly. Yes, Calloway’s fans have 

mainly given positive reviews to 

the workshops Calloway has given 

so far. But is it right for Calloway to 

take money from her fans to list off 

cliches and life stories that they’ve 

already heard?

Meet and greets are sometimes 

ticketed events, and Calloway’s 

fans seem more than willing to pay 

the price to meet their icon. But 

Calloway isn’t exactly an influencer, 

and she isn’t exactly a celebrity. 

She’s a 27-year-old woman who 

probably read fairy tales much later 

into her adolescence than she’s 

willing to admit and who secretly 

views the fantasies of “Notting 

Hill” and “The Princess Diaries” 

as aspirational. Calloway’s fans 

love her because they know she’s 

essentially just like them (albeit 

a 
prettier, 
wealthier 
version). 

By charging these like-minded 

women nearly $200 to “be like 

her,” Calloway is manipulating her 

power to exploit a group of people 

who already hear her words as 

gospel.

Calloway is, of course, just 

one of many twenty-something 

influencers trying to make a living 

off of an abstract brand she’s built 

for herself, and she’s certainly 

received her taste of internet 

backlash over the past few weeks 

for her exploitative endeavors. 

Yes, Calloway is a product of the 

broken influencer system. Yes, 

Calloway is likely not trying to 

exploit her fans on any conscious 

level. But had Calloway taken this 

criticism to heart and apologized 

earnestly, I wouldn’t be writing 

this piece. Calloway’s apologies 

were half-hearted, self-serving and 

angry. I’ve continued to monitor 

Calloway’s stories and each day 

they become more despicable. 

Privilege lets people get away with 

a lot and Calloway is no exception. 

Her scams have hurt her fans and 

will continue to do so. Her denial of 

any and all wrongdoings are what 

makes her actions all the more 

horrifying. She’s gotten away with 

it so far — why not keep going?

Megan Burns is a senior studying 

philosophy and psychology.

MEGAN BURNS | OP-ED

KIANNA MARQUEZ | COLUMN

TARA JAYARAM | OP-ED

LENA SISKIND | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT LENASISK@UMICH.EDU

It’s never too early!

Hold on to the horizon

I 

used to think I was 
the only one. The only 
kid to spend their car 

rides tearing through books, 
replacing themselves with the 
protagonist, stretching and 
pinching the character until 
I recognized myself in the 
reflection. I was always sorely 
disappointed when the movie 
adaptations of my favorite 
novels came out, not only 
because the characters rarely 
looked the way I expected 
but 
because 
they 
didn’t 

carry the same experiences 
and histories I had molded 
for them in my mind. The 
specificity of a movie never 
afforded itself the kind of 
shapelessness I’d grown to 
love in novels.

I kept these behaviors 

hidden 
from 
most 
until 

I came to the realization 
I 
wasn’t 
alone 
during 

conversations with friends 
in my sophomore year of 
college. Someone mentioned 
they spent the larger part of 
their seventh grade staring 
out of the window of their 
bedroom at a grey brick wall 
as if there was a window with 
a “boy next door” to fall in 
love with, prompted by the 
music video for Taylor Swift’s 
ballad 
“You 
Belong 
With 

Me.” 
Assurances 
followed, 

and parallel stories flowed of 
instances where all of us had 
made insertions of ourselves 
in the gaps of stories. Each 
of us had cherry-picked the 
experiences of the characters 
which we identified with and 
skimmed past the ones we 
felt were foreign. They took 
their form in songs, TV or 
movie characters and many 
books — each as imaginative 
and ignorant of details as the 
next.

Lately, 
I’ve 
felt 
the 

impulse to focus my time 
and energy more on forward-
facing pursuits. I’ve switched 
out my fiction reading for 
academic journals and news 
publications. When I have 
free time during my walks 

to class, I gravitate towards 
podcasts instead of albums 
— avoiding the latent guilt 
I feel if I listen to music and 
daydream when I could be 
learning something new. I’m 
driven to pursue this constant 
search for information out 
of a romanticism I’ve tied 
to my incessant curiosity. I 
continue to hope that perhaps 
the next topic I’m exposed to 
will be “the one.” I’ll discover 
the statistic that changes my 
mind on what I want to do 
with my life, or maybe I’ll 
read the article that opens 
up a world I could see myself 
dedicating my future to.

But 
maybe, 
in 
these 

habits, 
I’ve 
lost 
sight 
of 

the 
things 
imagination 

affords to our lives. There’s 
an implicit hierarchy in my 
mind of the importance of 
consuming things that inform 
me about the world around 
me and those that fuel my 
daydreams. 
I 
forgot 
what 

imagination 
and 
mysticism 

taught me about myself, how 
I see myself and who I want 
to see in the mirror in my 
own future. All of that time I 
spent molding the characters 
in stories — highlighting the 
characteristics I appreciated 
— can serve as a sort of “word 
bank” when toying with the 
puzzle of who I want myself to 
be.

College is a time when we’re 

told to hunker down, ground 
ourselves and prepare for our 
futures. We’re given a vision 
of the “real world” that we’re 
on the cusp of experiencing 
—harder and harsher than 
the one we’re accustomed to. 
The pursuit of imagination 
and daydreaming in the view 
of a cold and “real” future 
seems foolish. But something 
beautiful happens when you 
experience something as if it 
was created for and about you. 
You are transformed into a 
distorted version of yourself, 
too far to see but close enough 
to feel.

At the beginning of this 

month, I was sitting on a 
flight back to Ann Arbor 
from my hometown, and, as I 
typically am on all modes of 
transportation, I was hit with 
a wave of introspection. It’s my 
last semester at the University 
of Michigan, and I ran myself 
through all of the things I 
needed to get done over the 
next few months. I made a 
mental to-do list with boxes 
for my job search, mapping 
out my future, saying goodbye 
to friends, making the most of 
a barrage of “lasts.” It felt as 
though I was drafting a will 
for my childhood, planning 
how I was going to change 
and what parts of myself I was 
going to leave or take with 
me. I considered letting go of 
these behaviors that felt like 
testaments to my youth: my 
spontaneity, juvenile curiosity 
and resilient imagination. I felt 
it was time to ground myself in 
reality and find a more logical 
structure for my impending 
future.

At that moment, I looked 

out the window of the plane 
and, in a scene that would 
prompt groans of cliché from 
readers, I saw a fierce and 
fiery 
sunset. 
Instinctively, 

my mind dropped all the 
preoccupied planning and I 
was overwhelmed with the 
sense that this was a sign. I 
realized I would never lose 
my imagination. I’d never stop 
playing the protagonist in my 
life, thinking of my world as 
if it was a story created for 
and about me. Every sunset 
is a sign, every character can 
teach me about myself, every 
song stuck in my head can be 
part of my soundtrack. Your 
imagination may not teach you 
about the realities of the world, 
but it can teach you about the 
role you’d like to play in it. So 
maybe it’s time to “unground” 
ourselves. And in your own 
lives, next time the sky is on 
fire, imagine it’s burning for 
you.

Tara Jayaram is a senior in LSA.

