Anna Delvey, Simon “Tinder Swindler” Leviev, and Elizabeth Holmes are the most recent criminals to get the Hollywood treatment. Although this time, it feels different. These criminals are not killers but rather a new type. One who uses the power of social media and social climbing to scam. All three are scammers at a huge scale; stealing thousands or millions from your dates for personal gain, marketing a product that doesn’t even work, or telling all your rich friends, “my dad will wire you the money,” when you can’t pay for something. But these true crime stories raise a question for our broader generation: Are we all just scammers?
This idea came to me while watching The View. Yes, the classic female-lead talk show. Sometimes, daytime TV can be great. The woman of the infamous roundtable discussed the new media personification of Anna Delvey, The Tinder Swindler, and Elizabeth Holmes. As a child of the social media era, I would love to give my two cents on the topic. This segment made me really think introspectively about my social media posting and what I show to the world.
Now, I don’t think we are all Anna Delvey level scammers, but I feel like it has become commonplace for people in our generation to stretch the truth on social media. Posting a photo of a meal you didn’t eat, making everyone look like they are “having fun” just for one click of an Instagram story, and posting a gym selfie when you barely touched the treadmill. We have become social media-obsessed and some obsessions have led people to do illicit activities. It has just become so easy to show a lifestyle online that you do not live in real life.
As a slew of scammer shows arrive at our streaming services, I can’t help but wonder what effect this will have on our generation. Anna Delvey and Elizabeth Holmes have been blasted all over social media, with skits and memes galore. But some fans are taking it to the next level, making fan pages of Delvey’s former lifestyle, Holmes being praised as a “girlboss,” and users have said they want to recreate her style and infamous voice. While I am all for a good meme, I think putting these charlatans to deity status is damaging. While I love Inventing Anna and The Dropout, let us remember that these women are far from perfect.
Words by Tommy Drennan.
Graphic by Emily Tobias.