Posts in Category: musings
Catching up on the Oscars, Long AFTER the Oscars
Flashback time! Because we’re slow at this!
We’d done a decent job of getting ready for the Oscars, in that we’d seen more of the movies than usual. Some, we’d seen in the theater (Marty Supreme, Sinners). Most, we’d streamed. I watched Weapons alone because my husband isn’t a big horror fan. We’d wanted to see Frankenstein in a theater but even in Portland, this proved extremely difficult to find, so we streamed it in all its happily ended pastel gore.
We also streamed One Battle After Another. In shifts. We watched the first half, then paused it while I made dinner and we ate, and then we watched the rest. I do wonder why movies are so long these days, but then I saw Boyhood in a theater so what am I complaining about?
My Internally Awarded Oscars
Anyway, I had definite favorites. After we finished One Battle, I said, “If Sean Penn doesn’t win Best Supporting Actor, the Oscars have no meaning.” I was also rooting hard for Teyana Taylor and heartbroken when she didn’t win. I mean, COME ON.
I hadn’t seen Hamnet but assumed Jessie Buckley deserved to win because I’ve never seen her give less than an Oscar-worthy performance. I definitely cheered the roof off when Michael B Jordan won because he also deserved it (but for which role since he played two? I know, it’s for the movie, not a specific role).
I enjoyed Frankenstein for what it was, but it wasn’t the best picture of the year. I had no love for Marty Supreme, and much love for Sinners. Sinners had my vote. But I could live with One Battle as Best Picture. Because it was wildly suspenseful and entertaining and funny and, well, shockingly good, despite the length.
What We Didn’t See
There were a couple of other movies up for many awards that I hadn’t seen. My husband and I kept meaning to watch two contenders. First, there was Hamnet. I’d read the book (and I know this is ridiculous because everyone else loved it) but in a basic way, it failed to work for me. Our main character Agnes, Shakespeare’s wife, seemed too much of a fantasy novel stock-character: the herb-wise forest witch with tangled hair and a hawk on her arm. And here she was as Shakespeare’s wife, and I had a hard time with it. She never quite came to life for me.
The other big Oscar contender we hadn’t seen was Jay Kelly, with George Clooney. This was another one we meant to watch and kept putting off. It looked dumb. The premise sounded puny, restrained, and the trailers I watched seemed to point to a rom-com. Like, screen-idol Dad would follow his daughter to Europe and there he would meet an attractive age-appropriate woman who would finally show him what love meant. And…Scene.
I Was So Wrong!
Well, we watched it Saturday night and it was nothing like that. Jay Kelly is a true Hollywood film. It’s huge, sweeping, gorgeous. The opening is alchemical magic. Visually, each shot is a delight for the eyes. The score is expansive without overwhelming. Every performance is pitch perfect. Clooney is an aging screen icon facing how stardom has hollowed out his identity. He is flawed and irresistible. The entire movie is charming and bittersweet and funny and so very, very sad. I’m shocked that Adam Sandler wasn’t nominated for Best Supporting Actor. If he had been, it would have been a tight race in the all-important race for Oscars mentally awarded by one Karen G. Berry.
And then, the other one.
On Sunday. night, we settled in to watch Hamnet. My husband gently lay some Kleenex on the coffee table before me with the words, “I’ve heard it’s a weepy.” Knowing the story, I assumed he was right.
The good news is that almost immediately, Jessi Buckley’s Agnes filled out all the voids of the written character. Agnes ascended from trope to character right before my eyes. And Paul Mescal is a beautifully human Shakespeare. It’s such a tapestry of a movie. The costumes and set and that gorgeous forest, and every single actor, and the language, and how some of it is muttered but we didn’t turn on the closed captions because that muddling felt intimate and real to my ears.
I thought the movie was beautiful, through and through. But it is not perfect. They had to age up the twins for obvious reasons. In doing so, they lost the neat trick of their illness, the strange and magical and tragic consequence of their closeness. The film extended the related scenes of suffering and healing and limbo to what felt like melodramatic lengths. The tragedy of loss isn’t like that, not really. Losses are internally harrowing. But they are not externally operatic.
ALL THAT ASIDE. Every other part of the movie (okay, the score got a little bombastic at times) but almost every other moment worked for me. What I loved most was how the movie examines the role of writing, drama, and catharsis in its final scenes. When Agnes goes to the play, she literally does not understand what she is seeing. The actors are walking around onstage looking absurd, people with sticks, and she demands to know what they’re doing.
And then, the magic starts for her. Ghost, son, death. She understands. As a writer, her husband has done his processing through writing, and invited the audience to share his pain and help him carry the burden of it. In return they experience catharsis of their own sorrows. I was moved right down into my core.
And I used the Kleenex.
I’m not sure what else we missed, because we always miss a few. But next year I’m going to do better as far as watching the contenders. My biggest regret is, I wish I’d seen both of these movies in the theater instead of Marty Supreme. You can read what I thought of that here. Marty Supremely Disappoints
How can such a thing exist?
I just read this.
Apparently there is a sizable group of people who collect security envelopes because they love the internal patterns. Read about it here: https://dirt.fyi/article/2026/05/inside-and-outside
The whole idea is absurd and yet, somehow, some way, it makes complete sense to me. Human beings are strange, I tell you. So strange. Please don’t worry, I will not be collecting a new thing. Or if I do, it will not be security envelopes.
“A Poet” by Sherwood Anderson, and short story thoughts.
If I could be brave enough and live long enough I could crawl inside the life of every man, woman and child in America. After I had gone within them I could be born out of them. I could become something the like of which has never been seen before. We would see then what America is like.
–Sherwood Anderson
Thank you, Mr. Anderson.
That’s a prose poem in the public domain. I think he tried to do this exact thing with Winesburg, Ohio, often summed up as portraits of Southern Grotesques. It was not hailed when it arrived, but remains in the canon, and I love it, partly because I guess I enjoy grotesquerie, and I love books that challenge what and how we write. This odd book does that so well.
I’m going to write about writing, which I don’t do that often. But first, I need to write about reading, because reading is a crucial aspect of writing, isn’t it?
I’ve been reading so many short stories lately, including the collected Deborah Eisenberg. I’m working on a collection by Katherine Anne Porter, and I’m dipping into the collected short stories of Mavis Gallant. She is wonderful. She makes me laugh right out loud. Her collected stories are the size of a Bible and I look forward to a long, leisurely read of them. Then I might return to Flannery O’Connor. Yes, I know. All women, and some of them seem to have faded into obscurity. Please don’t tell me to read Raymond Carver because I have and he’s good but he’s not doing what I want to be doing. Thanks in advance.
I’m just finishing up a short story collection by Katherine Mansfield, a short story writer of whom Elizabeth Bowen wrote, “Born into the English traditions of prose narrative, she neither revolted against these nor broke with then; she surpassed them.” Bowen also wrote of her, “Her imagination kindled unlikely matter: she was to alter for good and all what goes to make a story.” Italics are mine. I agree.
I’m learning more than how to write a story. I’ve learned more about daily life before cars from her stories than I’ve learned from any history book. Mansfield’s earliest stories involve horse and buggy transport, for goodness sake. This happened in a history class I took from a brilliant professor named Patricia Schechter back in the early 2000s. She lectured on how each American war changed the homefront. Her lectures hewed to the domestic, where war acted as a catalyst for social change. I realized under her tutelage what really matters to me. I don’t care about wars in terms of how they were fought. I care about wars in terms of how they affect how people live.
But back to short stories!
Obviously I’m self-educating because I’m hoping to write more short stories but the form has always felt so confining to me. Like, I only have this much room to tell the tale? And it has to have a beginning, middle and end, and a revelation of some sort? Reading Eisenberg in particular gives me permission to bend all expectations. I would finish one of her stories and think, “Oh you mean I can write like this?” I want to write like that.
I’m also doing this because I thought when I retired that I’d be doing all this new and adventurous stuff, like art and classes and so on. But what I’m really interested in doing is writing, so I am trying hard to learn how to do something new. I have probably written more novels than short stories, so this is a challenge. Also a challenge? Having to send them out to see the light of day, which involves rejection.
I’m terrible at being rejected.
I have some good short stories (some of which have been published) and I have an unpublished short story that I think is my best. Like, my very best. Like I’ll never write another that good, that kind of best.
I sent it to Ploughshares, and received this heartbreaking rejection:
Dear Karen,
Thank you for the opportunity to read your story, “Love Thy Neighbor.” While we didn’t find a place for this piece, we want you to know the story made it to our final round, and our readers and editors thoroughly enjoyed considering and discussing your submission. (I especially admire the gorgeous precision of your prose – “The campfire lighting her hair like spilled gold coins” – so good I’m not even jealous!) We hope that you’ll consider sending us more work during our next reading period, which runs from June 1st – November 15th each year.
All best and in the spirit of common endeavor,
(name redacted) (through my tears)
So close, so close. And I will submit another story, but to do that, I need to make my best stories better, and that involves having them read critically by trusted readers. One of whom is my husband, with whom I had a spirited discussion about the last one I asked him to read. This happened last night. I kept insisting, “Something is wrong with that story. For me.” Back and forth. After kicking it around for a while, I realized that the trouble is…
I don’t like my main character.
I honestly need to cherish my characters, even if it’s in a “love to hate” manner (Rhondalee LaCour, here’s looking at you, you irresistible biddy). This story is about a man having his heart broken by failure. I realized that while this is happening, my heart is not breaking for him. I have another story with a similar type of plot in a completely different situation, and as I read it, my heart breaks and bleeds for my main character (if you’re wondering, that’s the one I’ll probably send to Ploughshares).
But my heart remains unbroken by the first man’s plight, and for this story to work for me as an author, it has to be cracked in half. I need to be wrung dry right along with him. I can’t be mean to him unless I suffer, too.
And this is the end of my TED talk for today, thank you.
Here are my published short stories with characters I love:
Short story at Thin Skin: Wet Rain
Short story at Persimmon Tree: Mysteries of June and August
Receipts.
Do you think I have OCD?
I don’t think I have OCD, but sometimes I wonder. I’m reading a book I bought this weekend at the Goodwill, and as I stopped reading to fuss over some soup, I used the receipt as a book marker. But it was folded wrong. I don’t have to go into details here, you know what a wrongly folded piece of paper looks like, I know what one looks like, and this one was wrong. I used it to mark my place twice, then had to stop and fold it neatly before I could read again. I did this even though once I finish typing this, I’m going to throw it away because I have a stack of bookmarks.
But I’m reminded of another receipt.
While I was waiting in line to pay for this very book, the woman ahead of me was using a self-checkout to pay for her things. Her daughter, who might have been two or three years old, waited silently. This tiny girl had a sweetly serious face with enormous sad eyes, full pouchy cheeks, a somber little mouth, and some snot dried under her button nose. She was a small thing, round of head, thin of neck, with that fine, soft sparse head of hair most often seen on a child that was born bald.
Her mom finished paying, then took the receipt, folded it in half, and handed it to this waiting toddler. She accepted it solemnly. Then she turned to me with it grasped in both hands. She wanted me to see that she had this important piece of paper. There was something ceremonious in her manner, as when a Japanese business partner presented his card to me with both hands and a small bow.
I said something like, “Wow, good job.” Her mother smiled, and off they went, the girl carefully holding the precious paper in both hands.
And now I’m off to select my bookmark, and stir the soup, and wait for my cousin, who will arrive after she gets a rental car and fights her way through Portland traffic.
The Knock
Knocking on Heaven’s Door
In 1979, I was living in a patched-together triplex with my first husband in Missoula, Montana. This crumbling, heat-leaking structure was so badly constructed that it didn’t have a functioning doorbell for any of the units. I was waiting for my state residency to kick in so I could get in-state tuition at the University of Montana. There was only one friend who dropped by regularly. Dan was my sister’s boyfriend, then her ex-boyfriend, and he rarely knocked. He just came on in. That was how close we were. But other people came by, Colleen and her skeevy carny boyfriend Kelly, or friends of my sister’s, hunting her down. So when a knock came, I always opened the door.
One spring, I opened the door to a pair of young men in black slacks and white shirts with ties, fresh-faced Mormon missionaries. They were all over Missoula that year, and I was so lonely that I usually let them come in, sit down, and talk for a while. They were a break from my boredom, and I was a break from having doors shut in their faces. We would spar. Unfortunately, they thought I was a candidate for conversion and stepped up their visits. I began to dread their knocks. I’d ignore them, even though I was sure they could hear my television going from the hallway where they stood.
They got the message and stopped knocking.
Knock Knock. Who’s There.
In 1982, I lived in a patched-together duplex with my second husband and our new baby girl in Portland, Oregon. This duplex, created from an abandoned house, also didn’t have a functioning doorbell. That was fine because no one ever came over to our rough neighborhood without calling first. When an errant knock came, it was Almitra, our drug-dealing neighbor. She didn’t have a phone. I usually let her in because I was home with a new baby, and once again starved for company. After a few long-distance charges showed up on our phone bill, we decided not to let her in anymore.
She got the message and stopped knocking.
The No-Knock Rule
Since 1988, I’ve lived in the same house. It has a functioning doorbell, but most of the six dogs I’ve owned since living here have gone absolutely insane at its chime. Luckily, it’s set off to the side of the door in an odd place. Most people don’t see it. I have a sign up in my window telling everyone to beware of dogs, and that all types of soliciting are unwelcome. The addition of red, white, and blue trim seems to have done the trick. It’s a rare solicitor who taps on my door.
I’ve left up the sign, even though there are no dogs here. Very few people drop by, because apparently people just don’t do that in Oregon. But my grandson’s father is seeing his son over here at this time, so a couple of times a week I hear his tentative knuckle taps on my door. Was that a knock, I wonder, is someone here? I open the door and greet him, the only person who knocks at my door.
Okay, all you other Karen Berrys
Karen Berry in Georgia
You signed me up for Match.com. I don’t want to belong to Match.com. That account is canceled, please sign up under your own email address instead of mine, “Mary.” I also get your job alerts, by the way. Maybe you found a job and now you’re looking for love, but listen, I get more Georgia stuff than I get from any other state. I’m not sure why you can’t type your own email address instead of mine and I don’t care. Just, please, make it stop.
Karen Berry in Europe Somewhere
Do you realize that you ordered your expensive something-in-Spain tour tickets to my email address? My email address here in Oregon? I am not currently in Spain (and never have been) but if I were in Spain I’d have definitely gone to see whatever that was you spent all those Euros on! I wonder if you arrived at your tourist location without tickets, or if you caught your mistake beforehand. I also want you to know that I didn’t cancel your taxi reservations to the airport this time, but I have before. Yes, it was me, so please use your own email address in the future.
Karen Berry in Central Oregon
You signed me up for CuddleMe.com or something like that. It’s like that site you signed me up for last year, LetsFlirt.com or some such garbage. These are sites for married people who want to cheat, and I am married but I do NOT want to cheat, so please stop. Last time you did this, I signed in and looked at your photo and profile before I cancelled (you’re very pretty). This time I just blocked all that mess. I’m not going to the trouble of changing the password and cancelling the account. But if you are wondering why you get no extramarital flirtation action, this is why. Are you the person who signed me up for Ashley Madison? Please please please. I tell my husband when this happens, just on the off chance that there is another data breach and it looks like I’m in the market for philandering. Use your own email account, please.
UK Karen Berry who is a Compulsive Gambler
Look. We share a name, not a proclivity for online gambling. But judging by the email I keep getting, and the number of dark web password theft alert notifications generated by your use of my email on gambling sites, I think you really have a problem. UK Karen Berry, I don’t know if you’re the Welsh Karen Berry or the Dublin Karen Berry or maybe the New Zealand Karen Berry, but you need help! Get help!
And that is enough grumpy ranting for the day.
Procrastination and the Doom of the Undone
Forestallers, Unite!
If there were an award for procrastination, I would win it. I am a champion procrastinator. And the thing is, I have a very specific way to procrastinate which allows me to masquerade as someone who is always accomplishing things. My method is this: when I don’t want to do something, I tell myself I’ll do it just as soon as I get this other thing done. And I am always able to find other things to do so that I don’t have to do the one thing. The important thing. The real thing.
I have had a stubborn knot of necessary business to take care of that I haven’t. Instead, I have made the guest room lovely and hosted friends for three days and then flipped the room for my next guest this weekend. I have hosted an 8th birthday party for Grandson the First that was a smashing success due to us buying all the food instead of trying to make it (he wanted pizza, I don’t make pizza). I have arranged and hung things in my office. I have also done my laundry and the dishes and scrubbed various surfaces and I have even dusted. But I haven’t done the actual things.
These are the things.
One, schedule a meeting with my insurance agent to discuss what to do because Providence has cancelled their Medicare bridge plans. Two , fill out a Social Security form that I’ve been avoiding, but then my friend Kathleen explained what it was and how it might even increase my benefit. Three, schedule a mammogram.
I did all those things this morning, and also paid a bill, and looked at the balance on my OTC benefit card which I must use before Providence cancels my plan, and wrote with my husband about what the heck we are going to buy with all that OTC benefit.
And now I’m sitting here glowing with the serene virtue of a woman who has stopped avoiding and started doing. It’s a familiar feeling. I was always accomplishing tasks at work. I kept long lists of what I needed to do, and checked them off accordingly. I love to check stuff off a list. I’m one of those people who will write down a few things I’ve already completed on a new to-do list, just for joy of crossing them off. But I always did a few things before I did the big thing, the difficult thing. Even when I was busy, oh so busy, I was secretly procrastinating.
It isn’t just procrastination.
In truth, part of my avoidance of life’s daily tasks had much to do with the overwhelming anxiety I have been feeling over the threatened (and completely unneeded) mobilization of the National Guard in my city. I’m not sure that threat has been ended, more like forestalled. But I feel like I can breathe today. So I’m doing. Except, I have other things to do and I am writing a frivolous blog post, which is another form of procrastination.
I told you, I am really good at this.
On Not Writing
Who is not writing? Me.
When a writer is not writing, it’s generally because she’s doing Other Things. I’ve been not writing. It’s awful. But yes, I’ve been doing other things.
- Taking a long weekend with Sue by the lake. Sue’s husband was out of town seeing his grandkids, so I motored up to see her. We spent the weekend thrifting, bingeing two series (The Essex Serpent, Department Q), eating good food and drinking good coffee, watching her work her fabric artistry, and enjoying the lake from her gorgeous deck. Sue and I had a blast. I also got to have lunch in person with Adrienne, who I haven’t seen in something like nine years. She’s as wonderful as ever.
- Having two weekends in Medford and Ashland to see plays at the Shakespeare Festival. My husband I and stayed in Medford, visited April and Lewis, and saw “Into the Woods”, “Jitney”, and “Quixote Nuevo”. Then, a month later, I went back and stayed with April and Lewis, and April and I went to see “Shane” and “Merry Wives of Windsor”. You will note that of all those five plays, only one is Shakespeare. I can’t account for it, but loved the shows I saw so much that I have no complaints.
- Helping my daughter and grandson move into their new apartment, which is wonderful for them, in part because my grandson is able to join a pack of apartment complex kids after school. My own kids did that until we moved here, to this house that sits in a child drought for some reason. He’s having a blast. I miss them both and see them oh, every day, more or less.
- Returning my guest room to guest room status so I can have people stay here.
- Settling in my office after about twenty years of wishing I could. If you come over to my house and I allow you to see this room (I might not), please have compassion for the introverted girl who moved constantly throughout her childhood and as a result, held onto every scrap of everything she ever owned, every book and bear and doodad and doll, and as she aged still kept these things and thought, “Someday I’ll put that in my office,” and after she stopped moving, she still accumulated things with the thought of putting them “in my office,” and whenever a shelf of doodads got too full, packed it away, to put “in my office.” What I mean is that there is a LOT of stuff in here, and I am as embarrassed by it as I am pleased with it. So be kind.
- Integrating into my home (and office!) the things I took from my sister’s apartment. I thought I was choosy and sparing. I guess I was, but it’s still an enormous amount of stuff to figure out. Right now I am attempting to restore a tiny beanbag kitten she had for her entire life, having gotten it wet, not realizing that in 1957 the beans were made of compressed sawdust instead of plastic, so I had to open a tiny seam and empty out clods of sixty-eight year-old wet sawdust, but I did it and now the dingy, tattered fabric shell of this kitten is soaking in a coffee cup by the sink. This is a tremendous waste of time and effort, but she had it her entire life, through all her moves and losses, and I can’t let it go.
- Watching “Too Much” and finding it moving and beautiful and hilarious.
- Handling enormous feelings of grief and loneliness for my brother and sister, triggered by all the items I have been unpacking and handling. My brother’s only finished novel (it’s in drafts, on paper) is by my desk (I finally get to read it), as are his ashes (I still need to deal with those). My nephew came over and went through the last of what my sister had stored in my garage and took it all away.
- Missing my parents. Mom would have turned 89 this year, so I am finally accepting that she wouldn’t be here even if the cancer hadn’t taken her 21 years ago. Dad would have so much to say about today’s America. I miss them both, and I miss my birth father, who would have had some piercing insights on what this is doing to farmers, especially those who raise soybeans. I miss them and need them and they are not here.
- Cleaning stuff. Sorting stuff. Planning trips with my husband. Seeing local friends.
- Laying down rugs for the first time in a minute. One in the dining room, one in the TV room. We watched my oldest daughter’s dog for a few days so she and her husband could get away for their anniversary, and they warned me that he might mark the rugs. I am proud to announce that he did NOT. What a fine little guy he is.
- Wondering when I’ll start writing again. I miss it.
Making Your Art: a great post by Lincoln Michel
Art is essential.
Why You Should Still Build Your Raft of Art in the Sea of Slop: A little cri du coeur about working on your work and avoiding all the noise:
“The fact remains that great art is never going to appeal to everyone. Even if you want to point out unique times and places when specific art forms were more renumerated (sic) and respected, well, so what? There is no time machine. You cannot transport yourself to the 1960s Greenwich Village any more than the theatres of ancient Greece performing Aeschylus. You are only here, now, with the brain you have and the times you live in. All that other shit has nothing to do with what you are doing.”
Read it here: https://countercraft.substack.com/p/why-you-should-still-build-your-raft
AI and ChatGPT and Catfishing and Me
AI
So I am trying not to be all weird about AI. I mean, I’m trying, but in general I am failing. As an example, the illustration I chose for this post is AI generated, and I feel weird about it. And this isn’t even my first time using an AI image. For my post about what I find funny, I went to Pixabay.com, looking for a unicorn illustration. All of them were made with AI. This shouldn’t have surprised me. What was I looking for as an alternative? A photo of an actual unicorn? Such a thing does not exist, right?
So I accepted that a unicorn illustration would either be AI generated, or an illustration made with computer programs that make such things. I looked for the latter and only found the former. I finally settled on a clearly artificial and hammy looking illustration of a baby unicorn (one assumes the horns grow in after they are born) and there you go. Yes, it’s AI.
I do remember when people used to draw and paint unicorns, though. And robots.
ChatGPT
Two friends of mine interact with ChatGPT on the regular. One uses it for artistic ideas, the other used it for decorating ideas. At least, that’s the extent of what I know they use it for. But then the decorating friend sent me a professional bio that was clearly generated by AI and asked me what I thought.
I hated it. It was a big pitch full of vague attributes that sounded good until I tried to parse out actual meaning from the claims. For one thing, it said she could not only define markets, but redirect them. Now, seriously. That is a specific skillset used in marketing! She does not work in marketing! Or does she? Or did it decide she did? Do I really know what my friend does for her clients? Do I know my friend better than a chatbot does?
Then she asked ChatGPT what it thought of her personally, based on their conversations. Now, parts of this made perfect sense, I mean some parts really described her and what she does for her clients. It also said some strange stuff like: You create containers that hold complexity without collapsing. I think that means she creates a safe and structured space for client growth, but that’s one of many phrases that had me scratching my head.
The “deeper” she took things with the bot, the weirder it got. Basically, by the end of the descriptions, “Shall we go deeper?”, my friend was a psychic goddess who recreates everything around her with devotion to order and beauty.
In reply, I sent her a link to this Medium piece. PLEASE go read it. It is screen shots of a writer’s conversation with ChatGPT and it ends with a chilling apology from a chatbot that sounds more and more like HAL in “2001.”
https://amandaguinzburg.substack.com/p/diabolus-ex-machina
Also, to be clear, she regards AI with curiosity and skepticism. She didn’t buy in or become deluded or anything. She’s a professional exploring a new tool. She sees the weirdness as well as the possibility.
Catfishing and another type of Chat
I also read an excellent article in the NYT about ChatGPT fueling mental illness, including dissociative behaviors that look like delusions to me. I thought of Catfish, the show and the verb. That show profiled people who were deliberately misled by catfisher, but it also showed one memorable man who knew he was being catfished. His catfisher had revealed her true self to him on a video call, but he was so attached to his initial illusion that he rejected reality and continued on with his self-delusion.
This took me back to my old chat room days, when bored men and women would construct enormous romantic projections about some other bored man or woman who was typing at them. There were a few obvious cases of outright fraud, including a chatter who pretended to be the writer Jon Krakauer. “Jonk” had a gaggle of fans, mostly female, who believed he was suffering from cancer and their chat was his lifeline during treatment.
One chatter who claimed to be a TV writer asked for little besides attention. I did not find him funny or interesting so I ignored him (he played too many .WAV files), but I was online friends with a woman who was absolutely obsessed with him. I mean, she was in love. She was part of a group of women who traded long, witty reply-to-all emails (I was part of this group, too). And even though she carefully hid her identity from everyone, she came out from behind the screen and met her crush, the TV writer.
They met at a racetrack (the kind where you make bets on animals) in California. She described her careful, breathless preparations, her outfit, her brimming excitement. She also described the furtive, shabby, quiet alcoholic he turned out to be. She spared no detail in her email, including brutal self-mockery for being foolish. Lesson learned, a good laugh had by all, and that was it.
IN SPITE OF THIS.
Within two weeks, she had re-embraced the delusion, and was mooning over him again. Years later, someone found out that the “TV writer” was just some guy, a total fraud. Nothing he said about himself was true, which surprised his online friends. It didn’t surprise me.
My point
Do I have one? I’m not speaking from personal experience. I mean, I was never catfished, nor did I send money to a fake writer who had cancer of the instant message and needed a special laptop, or the like. The online people I met in person were essentially the people I expected, with a few surprises (you can’t see anyone’s teeth in a chatroom, let’s just say). But no one ever put anything over on me.
If I have a point, it’s that human beings are prone to delusions. We have cults, for one thing. Televangelists fleecing people with crypto. The grand scam of this presidency. And now everyone can catfish themselves with the echo chamber that is a chatbot.
So be careful out there, folks. Know when you’re talking to weirdoes, and know that sometimes, the weirdo you are talking to is yourself, filtered through a chatbot and echoing back what it thinks you want to hear. Again, if you haven’t, I would ask you to go read this piece all the way to the end, because the end is…shocking:
https://amandaguinzburg.substack.com/p/diabolus-ex-machina
