top of page

Caroline Calloway, Scammer, and Feline Virality - MEOW Literary Podcast Ep. 31



Known as the original social media provocateur, Caroline Calloway has spun a staggering media empire from her controversial Instagram presence. Praised and reviled in equal measure, her long-awaited Scammer belongs to the emerging canon of the "Paper Internet" -- reifications of Internet fame, printed, bound, and re-ingested into cyberspace in the form of "BookTok" content.


Author Caroline Calloway poses with her cat and her book, Scammer

What is it, exactly, that makes a physical book like Scammer resonate so well with the algorithm? While accusations of uncredited ghostwriting promulgated by her former friend and collaborator, Natalie Beach, have helped propel Scammer to infamy, The Meow Library's team of forensic linguists have detected an unmistakably feline rhythm to the book's opening chapters, leading us to question whether Calloway's cat, Matisse, may have imparted the intrinsic virality of cat-language to Scammer's pages. After nearly a year of analysis, we are presenting the book's first twenty pages in feline translation. Could Scammer's singular tone and self-published success be attributed to an invisible paw? Listen and judge for yourselves.


Closing comments supplied by BBC presenter Emma Millen's cat, ⁠Delia⁠.


Meow: A Literary Podcast For Cats is supported by sales of our debut cat-language tome, Meow: A Novel.


Visit Caroline Calloway's Bookstagram here.

Comments


  • Instagram
  • TikTok
  • Spotify
bottom of page