Caroline Calloway

Calloway joined Instagram in 2012, with the help of her NYU classmate Natalie Beach.[1] Calloway's Instagram account documented her life at Cambridge University and contained lengthy captions accompanied by photographs.[6] Calloway bought followers and purchased ads to grow her account.[7]

In September 2019, Natalie Beach wrote an essay for The Cut, titled "I Was Caroline Calloway," chronicling her friendship and collaborations with Calloway.[7][8] In her essay, Beach disclosed that she had ghost-written a number of the captions credited to Calloway, and that she had closely collaborated with her to produce a subsequent book proposal.[7] Calloway has since responded to this with a series of blog entries, titled "I Am Caroline Calloway," on her personal website.[9]

In 2016 it was announced that Calloway would publish a memoir titled And We Were Like about her time at Cambridge with Flatiron Books, an imprint of Macmillan Publishers, with the help of literary agent Byrd Leavell.[10][1] During her senior year at Cambridge, Calloway had hired Beach to co-write the book and proposal.[11] She then set up an initial meeting with Leavell by pretending to his secretary that she was already his client.[1] Leavell has since commented on his experience working with Calloway, stating that she was "deeply unwell, deeply dishonest" and that "It was more important to her to be seen as an author than it was to be an author. She didn’t know how to be an author."[12]

Calloway publicly announced that Flatiron Books had offered her a book deal to write a memoir for half a million dollars in 2015, of which sum she had received 30% as an advance.[13] Calloway announced via her Instagram stories in 2017 that she was withdrawing from her book deal after failing to fulfill her contract.[14] Following this, Calloway offered the book proposal with personal annotations for sale on Etsy.[14]

In December 2018, Calloway launched an international "Creativity Workshop Tour". Her original announcement indicated that the workshop would offer tutorials on building an Instagram brand, as well as developing ideas, and addressing "the emotional and spiritual dimensions of making art."[15] Participation in the tour was priced at $165 per person, and tickets were sold for events to be held in Boston, Denver, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Austin, Charlotte and Washington, DC.[14] This tour was subsequently cancelled due to Calloway failing to book venues for these events, with Calloway announcing that she would refund those who had already bought tickets.[7][14] Eventually, Calloway held two workshops in New York.[16] The cancellation of the workshops gained public attention when reporter Kayleigh Donaldson created a Twitter thread that gained news coverage comparing Calloway's tour to Fyre Festival, later publishing this as an article for the online publication, Pajiba.[15][14][17] Following the publication of Donaldson's article, Calloway briefly offered t-shirts for sale on Threadless, which bore the caption, 'Stop hate-following me, Kayleigh'.[18] Threadless suspended the sale of these t-shirts for violating their targeted harassment policy.[18]

In August 2019, Calloway held a second creativity workshop titled, 'The Scam' in New York.[19] Although press was not invited to the event, a reporter from Vice purchased a ticket, attended the event under a false name, and published an article about her experience.[19]

In April 2020, Calloway announced that she would be publishing a response to an essay written about her by her former ghost-writer, Natalie Beach.[20][9]

Calloway announced in January 2020 that she would be publishing a memoir titled Scammer in April 2020, which would be printed on demand and shipped in Spring 2020.[21] Calloway subsequently stated on her website that because of delays in production, she would instead be combining her blog, "I Am Caroline Calloway", with her manuscript for Scammer instead, allowing her to expand the essay into three parts.[22] In July 2020, Calloway announced that the book was estimated to ship by 31 August 2020.[23] Scammer did not ship on 31 August 2020, and the author has not provided any writing, publishing, or shipping updates.[24]

In April 2020, Calloway posted a picture of her nipples on her Twitter account as a "humble apology" for failing to meet her promised word count in the first post of her blog, 'I Am Caroline Calloway'.[25][26]

In 2020, Calloway created an OnlyFans account, promising video and photo content containing nudity.[27] Calloway alleged in interviews that her intention to enter the adult entertainment industry had been planned by Playboy, and that the magazine had commissioned a photo shoot of her dressed as a student in a library.[28] When asked, the magazine stated "Playboy does not have and did not have any photo shoot planned with Caroline Calloway."[28] Calloway has described her sex work as "emotionally poignant, softcore cerebral porn."[29] Her content includes cosplay of characters from children's movies such as Harry Potter, Matilda and Beauty and the Beast,[25] and partially-undressed photographs of herself captioned with details of her father's autopsy.[30][28]

She posted her projected income from sex work on her Twitter account in May 2020, leading to criticism about her failure to recognise difficulties faced by sex workers, as well as her attempts to distance herself from sex work.[31][25]