(Over a month, the total comes close to $50,000.) She tells me she celebrated by putting her phone down, pouring herself a glass of bubbly and eating two entire jars of caviar – “like a Russian oligarch”.īut as she goes on to speak about her experience of cancel culture – the pain of having her drug addiction turned into popcorn-fodder for the internet by her former friend, the vitriolic trolls she describes as “crusading for justice” against her – it becomes clear that her sense of achievement is tempered by frustration. My call finds Calloway ebullient after having raised $20,000, or more than €18,000, for the front-line medical organisation Direct Relief from the first instalment. I am reminded of how Calloway began her long-awaited “Natalie response”, her own take on the harms done during their friendship that also highlights Beach’s part in building Calloway’s public profile.Īn online publication (she declines to say which) had offered her a “really big sum” for the essay: “It’s bankable clicks, whatever I wrote.” But in response to the worsening pandemic, she pulled out to self-publish the piece as a fundraiser for charity.Īs she speaks about the pain of having her drug addiction turned into popcorn-fodder, and of the vitriolic trolling, it becomes clear that no matter what she does, she can’t win When I first reach Calloway by phone, I find her engrossed in making “internet art” from a snapshot of her and Beach – scrambling their faces, she explains breathlessly, for her Instagram grid: “I’m very excited about it!” Her social-media output, always prolific, has reached new heights. If anything, Calloway’s “real life” is on the internet – especially now, a few weeks into isolating alone in her grandmother’s condo in Florida. Her fans love her willingness to draw them into her intimacy, her prettiness and her pluckiness. Her critics hate her self-absorption, her privilege, her perceived attention-seeking and her questionable cash-grabs. Even seven months on from the publication of the Cut’s essay about her, the 28-year-old continues to captivate corners of social media.
There are now 1.7 million Google results for her name. Who is Caroline Calloway, went several headlines, and why can’t the internet stop talking about her? When both went viral last year, Calloway was transformed from an aspiring memoirist who overshared on Instagram to a one-woman soap opera the entire internet seemed to love to hate-watch. Her fans love her intimacy, her prettiness and her pluckiness. Her critics hate her self-absorption, her privilege and her questionable cash-grabs. You may recognise her from her disastrous creativity workshops, for which she charged $165, or more than €150, a head and was branded a “scammer” or from the tell-all essay her former friend Natalie Beach wrote about their turbulent relationship – a she-said/she-said that is still ongoing. I’d be living my truth.”Ĭalloway is arguably the world’s most infamous influencer. It would be a nightmare – mainly for the other villagers. I’d be in the town square with a stack of pamphlets about what I ate for breakfast, being like ‘Hear ye, hear ye’. “Oh my God, are you kidding me? Caroline Calloway born in medieval Europe would be so f**king screwed.
It is hard to imagine Caroline Calloway being of any time before the internet – like picturing a present-day Joan of Arc.