How to Become a Scammer, à la Caroline Calloway

This past week, I had been scrolling innocuously through my Instagram feed when I came upon a familiar character: Caroline Calloway, an influencer who has been presented as all that’s wrong with millennial culture. According to the criticism she has come under over the past few days, Calloway, a former art history student at Cambridge University, is entitled, vain, pretentious, and prone to over-sharing. She, like Anna Delvey, Elizabeth Holmes, Billy McFarland, and many others before her, lied (or, at the least, exaggerated) her way to social prominence. However, I found Calloway and her conniving  peers to be, oddly enough, almost charming. The foolish, delusional determination (and, of course, privilege) it must take to fabricate entirely falsified identities, life-saving medical inventions, or music festivals is overwhelmingly absurd to me. But it’s so crazy it just might work!If you, like me, are sickeningly fascinated by these kooky creators, here are some tips on how to follow their lead and scam your way around Brown.When people ask how your summer was, breezily mention your “summer in New York” as a “really creative and invigorating time.” Yes, you should probably use those exact words. Keep your description brief to incite an air of mystery about yourself (always a must). Your rapt audience will assume that you either published a book of poetry or recorded a few folksy demos of some kind. Preferably both.Start rushing around campus while holding a sheaf of looseleaf paper. Always appear harried and check your watch at every possible crossroads. Offhandedly mention that you’re quickly approaching a deadline and glance haplessly at your papers for reference. People will hopefully think you’re working on some kind of manuscript. Again, keep the details vague.Take a page out of Caroline’s book and start publicizing a weekly creativity workshop you’ll hold in the Underground. What exactly a “creativity workshop” entails I could not tell you, but you won’t let that hold you back! Don’t sweat the specifics, because you obviously won’t actually ever follow through or show up. Charge a steep admission price, of course. Hopefully you can fund the creation of your manuscript this way.Start dressing in the boho-chic, drape-y way of an eccentric and alluring traveling socialite. If anyone asks you covetously where you bought your skirt, smile and tell them that you picked it up at a particularly raucous bazaar (make sure you’ve removed the Zara price tag before this convo). Now gaze wistfully off into the distance and reminisce over the many crazy travels you’ve definitely actually had!Ghost your friends in favor of focusing on your art. Don’t specify what your art exactly is. Your creativity spans all mediums!Good luck scamming, my fellow schemers. If Caroline can do it, so can we! Image via.