Caroline Calloway: the infamous influencer on scamming, revenge and surviving scandal

We are SO excited to introduce you to this week’s utterly fascinating and highly controversial guest: Caroline Calloway, one of the very first internet celebrities, a self- anointed ‘scammer’ and perhaps our first guest who has been publicly shamed. 

If you haven’t heard of her before, don’t worry, we give you the complete lowdown in our intro, but in a nutshell: Caroline moved from New York to the University of Cambridge in 2013 and swiftly became famous as one of the first Instagram influencers, then was commissioned aged just 23 by a major British publisher to write a memoir. 

But by 2019 her life had fallen to pieces. The book was never finished, she was $100k in debt to her publisher, and her former best friend had written a viral, tell-all piece claiming all her fame and success was a scam. She was attacked from all corners of the internet as an emblem of everything wrong with influencer culture, while her ex-friendship became a sordid topic of public fascination. 

Now, she’s finally written a self-published memoir, Scammer (which is actually fab!) has built an incredibly successful personal brand off her own controversies, and has become a kind of anti-hero with a cult following. Her life rights have even been bought by Lena Dunham!!

So we got her on Zoom to chat all about her insane and unusual experience of fame, the catharsis of rage, making ‘chaos’ her brand, how she dealt with an overwhelming online pile-on, her complicated feelings around friendship, and MUCH more. She was incredibly eloquent, charming and thoughtful, and we have to say, she very much won us over. But what do you think? Let us know!

Buy Caroline's book Scammers via carolinecalloway.com and find her on Insta @carolinecalloway.

Please leave us a review on Apple or Spotify, and find us on Insta @straightuppod. We'd love to hear from you, especially if you have a topic suggestion for future episodes.

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