Caroline Calloway Isn’t a Scammer

Let us begin with the 45 servings of eggplant salad made in the tiny kitchen of a studio apartment in Greenwich Village, transported to a Brooklyn loft, and served as a homemade lunch to ticketed guests. It was so tasty that many people asked for—and were generously given, at no extra cost—second helpings. And let us acknowledge that if this labor-intensive, potentially money-losing endeavor were part of a “scam”—as many people insist that it was—its architect may not be suited to the life. If you are running a short con that involves driving eggplant salad to another borough, you might as well find honest work, because you lack the grifter mentality.

Now let’s back up.

Caroline Calloway came crashing into my awareness, and maybe into yours, this month when a former friend of hers, Natalie Beach, published a revenge essay in The Cut titled “I Was Caroline Calloway.” It was a sensation, as there are only two possible positions vis-à-vis this young woman: You’ve never heard of her, or you possess a nearly encyclopedic amount of information about her. She is an Instagram “influencer” with close to 800,000 followers, and it seemed as though within 24 hours every single one of them had blazed through the piece and made some kind of comment about it on social media. The majority of her followers are young white women, a demographic not underrepresented in the world of media, and so—improbably enough—this micro-event was covered just about everywhere, including in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NBC, you name it.

Natalie chose her moment wisely and kicked Caroline when she was down: First, Caroline had sold a book proposal for a large sum of money, then failed to deliver the manuscript and had to pay back the portion of the advance she’d been given. In January, she’d had the idea to host a series of “creativity workshops” for her fans, offering to spend time with them; giving them gifts, some of them handmade; and serving lunch—including that eggplant salad. But the organizational skills required to manage these events overwhelmed her. She ended up canceling most of the workshops, and the ticketing agency Eventbrite refunded everyone. For this, she has become known as an internet scammer, on a par with the men who organized the notorious Fyre Festival. Any time investors or ticket holders are given a prompt, full refund, you are not anywhere near the land of the scam, but the internet didn’t care.

[Read: Why people paid thousands of dollars to attend a doomed music festival]

All influencers live on the knife’s edge. To display the details of an appealing life is to gather fans and jealous toads at about a 5-to-1 ratio. Get big enough, and then make a mistake, and the toads will rise