At a certain point in 2019,
internet
users
in
both
the
drama-filled DeuxMoi and the
aspirational New York City-
esque digital spheres were once
again pulled towards Caroline
Calloway. She has lived through
multiple digital selves and has
survived multiple news cycles of
hatred and ridicule over the past
decade. The Cambridge blogger-
turned-scammer is now best
known for her confessional, often
chaotic Instagram presence —
but for better or worse, the chaos
is intentional. In a tweeted
response to a critique of her
behavior,
Calloway
summed
herself up with ease.
“I’m chaotic. I love my work.
My work is writing, painting,
photography, posting on social
media,
and
living
inside
a
Truman Show of my own making
— performance art. Most ppl do
not consider what I make to be
art. More chaos ensues.”
In
spite
of
the
hatred
associated with her name alone,
Calloway has found repeated
ways to rebrand herself into
a persona that thrives off of
whichever
news
cycle
she’s
currently a part of. Her life has
turned to chaos for one thing:
a life of falsities worthy of a
memoir.
Act One: The creation of
Caroline Calloway, Cambridge
According to Calloway, she
first joined Instagram in 2012.
At the time, the social media
app seemed revolutionary: a
photo-based platform promising
connection
and
marketing
towards young, hip users. The
app was unique in its ability to
create curated images, filtered
vignettes
and
distinct
user
brands. From the very beginning,
the app was made to commodify
and create followings. Influencer
culture on Instagram has stayed
relatively married to the same
principles since its creation —
dominate the attention economy
and build a brand worthy of
advertisement partnerships —
with the only notable difference
being the extremes that are
now required to stay relevant.
Instagram influencers have been
running in this rat race since the
beginning — Calloway included.
Calloway’s
Instagram
origins
aren’t
particularly
unique
—
her
page,
titled
AdventureGrams,
was
a
conglomeration of aesthetically
pleasing travel photos, selfies
and documentation of a deeply
curated life abroad. Photographs
in Sicily, Venice and other
European tourist traps during
the summer of 2012 brought
in her first audience. Then
in 2013, she accomplished a
life-long
dream:
transferring
to Cambridge to finish her
undergraduate
degree.
Her
platform faced a harsh pivot
here, and soon her page became
dedicated to the academic life of
lavishness she lived alongside
her wealthy, beautiful, British
peers. Calloway was not born —
she was created and recreated.
Calloway, however, had one
unique quality that shifted the
way Instagram users connect to
their audience and commodify
their life stories: long, personal
Instagram captions. In an article
by The Cut, Calloway’s college
friend and frequent collaborator
Natalie Beach wrote “… the
internet felt like the future of
writing … Instagram is memoir
in real time. It’s memoir without
the act of remembering. It’s
collapsing the distance between
writer and reader and critic.”
Her
page
became
more
of a series of diary entries
accompanied by a photo of a
beautiful Cambridge student,
living a life of deeply curated
beauty
and
adventure.
This
was an early predecessor of the
“radical vulnerability” approach
to garnering Instagram fame,
and it successfully launched
Calloway
into
being
the
aspirational
and
vaguely
literary influencer she had been
attempting to become since the
beginning.
Act
Two:
book
deals,
workshops, NYC party girl
The decision to create this
account
would
ultimately
change
Calloway’s
entire
future, just as she intended
it to. She amassed a cult-like
following through her digital
diary and quickly became one of
the first influencers to acquire
a book deal. This, largely, was a
result of her careful branding:
adventurous, intellectual and
effortlessly perfect. At age 23,
her book deal was accepted —
only three years after she joined
Instagram — as she amassed over
300,000
followers.
Calloway
had finally nabbed her dream
project through an accepted
proposal with Flatiron Books
reportedly worth $375,000; of
course, it was a memoir. True
to brand, this process was
documented through a careful
lens of updates, snippets and
behind-the-scenes images being
shared online. But Calloway
quickly lost interest in writing
the book — she claimed that
publishers didn’t want her life
story, and that she instead sold a
story of her life that was purely
defined by the men she dated.
Her book deal was dropped in
2017, and she was hundreds of
thousands of dollars in debt. The
first echoes of hatred, ridicule
and “scammer” criticism began
in this era — the vaguely literary
brand she had made for herself
was strewn in artifice.
After the book deal dissolved,
Calloway still had her following
despite
a
new,
negative
connotation attached to her
name. During this point she
became
increasingly
candid
online:
A
new
brand
was
created, but this time it relied
on being beautifully artistic in
a deeply unhinged manner. Her
online life showed two, deeply
interwoven sides: her life as a
party-filled, fun and beautiful
New York creative; and being
emotionally candid online, to
the point of deep oversharing
of
her
mental
struggles,
judgment-worthy
anecdotes
and hourly Instagram story-
posting. This branding became
what she was ultimately known
for, and garnered nearly as
much ridicule as her failed
book deal did. Additionally,
this era marked her sharing
her deeply personal story of
Adderall addiction. Throughout
the writing process and her
final
years
at
Cambridge,
Calloway shared her reliance
on the stimulant and her overall
mental decline during what
was perceived as the best years
of her life. Her previous image
had shattered, but Calloway
still rode the momentum of the
attention she was receiving.
A comprehensive history of Caroline Calloway
HUNTER BISHOP
Senior Arts Editor
AVA BURZYCKI
Senior Arts Editor
Desgn by Avery Nelson
Read more at MichiganDaily.com
4 — Wednesday, March 22, 2023
Arts
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Do you ever feel as though nothing is real anymore? Do you
find yourself looking for something natural, only to discover
that everything has become a copy of a copy of a copy of what
came before it? Do you fear a future of Artificial Intelligence
and androids and losing ourselves in our technological
advances? If so, welcome to the Artificial B-side.
puzzle by sudokusnydictation.com
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
SUDOKU
WHISPER
“One day ~~~
Day one…….
You decide.”
“March Mad-
ness.”
WHISPER