“I’m ghosting you”, wrote Cady Bonin in a text. She felt good. Quit him before he quits me. It would be fun to have a partner that understands me
and let’s me be me. But he’s not it.
This is not exactly how Giancarlo saw it. This betrayal was arguably worse than when he and Dee had a scream fest and threw things. He was thinking in English because that was the language they had used. This was some kind of how you say? chickenshit – but you know, she was worth it. He took it as the opposite of a loss.
Cady was still on her phone and switched to swiftgram. Her follower count was 750,000. She had bought 40,000 followers to put her over 500,000 so she could have let them go but it was easier just to keep them. She posted a picture of her little Yorkie dog. This was easier on a day before a big reveal: that G was out of the picture. For that post she was going to need help.
She had a stylist on retainer. Her photographer had his lights, softbox and so on in a closet at Cady’s house. This was going to be a ‘d.R.A.M.A.’ post. Her followers loved them and could tell one was coming just from the production values in the pic.
She thought. The lead-in -> Maybe: ‘My fairy tale might have a better or worse ending I dunno. But that’s Okay’. Good start, she would send it to her team in the Philippines. They would run it through an AI and then do a quick and dirty focus group. Then they would write the rest of the post. She would edit it and blam! maybe even a note in USA Today. “Why did G and C break up?” second lede: “Who cheated on Who?”
She was C. that is: Cady, not Katie or shudder Kathleen. Hey how about: ‘I’ll cry tomorrow. Not today with fresh makeup on.’ She liked that too and sent it on to the Phil team.
The next day things were coming together. The text of the post was great. Cady was styled demurely with a tiny hint of smudged mascara. She knew how skilled the photog was. This was going to be drunkmoneyawesome. Now which sponsored product would be featured in the following post? She handled that business herself – why pay an agent their fucking cut?
Like she had said to her mother, “Maybe if you had a fucking business you were passionate about, you’d know what it takes to run a fucking business, but you don’t. So don’t even act like you know what I’m talking about.”
Next up she needed a new boyfriend, a foil, some arm candy. Who?
A few weeks later Bruce was in every other post. No one better call her a ‘ho. The Phil team took care of comments like that.
Sometimes she had two sponsored products in a post at once. Until she got this message from the Filipino team:
Strange comment showed up three times: “Who is katiebee1990?” Usually if an odd one like this shows up it happens only once. The AI agrees this anomaly needs to be checked out.
Cady’s heart froze and she felt her throat tighten. She knew what it meant. She was katiebee1990. She had deleted that avatar and made sure no one could dredge it up again. Someone could not have hacked swiftgram but was there some other archive? Must be.
Cady had a few email accounts she used anonymously. She sent a message
“Re: katiebee1990/ how much do you want? bitcoin or some other crypto?”
No reply.
Then the reposts from her followers started. They went like this: Cady/Katie at seventeen with acne! and bad hair was talking about how she wasn’t ever going to do things to be famous. And this: Katie showing off her mall fashion. So bad.
And then worse: A pic of Cady in bed probably with a hangover and spit running down her cheek. Giancarlo! I’ll bet it was him thought Cady.
Then came the reposts that made Cady delete her account. They were deepfakes of young Katie talking in today’s Cady’s voice or the other way around, Katie talking in Cady’s voice. Everyone knew they were fake but they went explosively viral. Cady knew there was no recovery from this deep a hole. She was out of a job, her cash flow dipped negative.
She had enough money left to disappear so she did.
Some years later Cady said: “I know this is more house than you two had planned on, but if you think of the future this the house you’ll need. Always aspire that’s what I say.”
The young couple looked convinced.
Cady thought: “Cha-ching!” She was right.
Burn. Burned, burned down. Matthew 26:52. “… for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”
That’s Giancarlo in yellow towards the bottom of the video.