When I was a sophomore in college, I took a creative-nonfiction workshop and met a girl who was everything I wasn’t. The point of the class was to learn to write your own story, but from the moment we met, I focused instead on helping her tell her own, first in notes after workshop, then later editing her Instagram captions and co-writing a book proposal she sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. It seems obvious now, the way the story would end, but when I first met Caroline Calloway, all I saw was the beginning of something extraordinary. ....
more at the link.
For some reason this story haunts me and it seems to change with every time I read it. There must be a takeaway, I keep telling myself. What's your take Miss Fishtits?
Proud Member International Brotherhood of Bullfighters, Rodeo Clowns, and Barrelmen, Local 17
What the hell is Instagram? Anybody else ever hear of it?
After the first paragraph, the story falls into the meh category.
Imagining yourself as you wish you really were, working at projecting that image, and imagining that other people care what you think of yourself and them...... we needed the internet for that? Weren't we doing that already? I mean, do we really have a choice?
While we are in true confessions mode, I shoulda done a better job creating Napster and noddy. But seeing as I'm basically lazy, I think they came out pretty well.
Cyberspace is a great place to store one's multiple personality disorder projections. (tm).
Its also a great place for us shut-ins to meet. (tm)
I found the story oddly relatable, though I have almost nothing in common with her. I know what it feels like to have others take credit for my own work, though. Really nothing new in that or in anything she revealed, but I enjoyed the way she spun the narrative. At this point I'd put the author's chances for success above her subject's.