15 ms·

“Cat Person” and Me

191 points by jasonhansel 5y ago

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
civilized 5y ago
At the end of the day, I kinda don't think this is a big deal. Roupenian was careless not to scrub real-life personal details out of Cat Person, but I think what happened was a bit of a freak accident that she unfortunately failed to foresee, and she apologized. It does make you wonder how much you can trust supposedly slice-of-life fiction, if a friend of one of the "characters" finds the story a poor representation of the person they knew. I suspect some of the darkness in Roupenian's stories comes from a twist in her own perspective, not necessarily from the awfulness of men she's dated.
- bitwize 5y ago
  Roupenian kind of gave a sorry-not-sorry apology. There's a subtext of "I'm sorry I used your friend's personal details, but you're missing the point which is that the story is fake but accurate -- male anger escalates into threats and violence and by calling me out you're adding fuel to the incel fire I'm facing right now because I'm a woman who writes about the bad things men do." And a deeper subtext of "Remember, sister, I am not the villain here; the patriarchy is."
  - civilized 5y ago
    Maybe Roupenian actually, literally faces threats from men who didn't like her story. It... wouldn't be the first time people harassed a writer for a creative work they took to be offensive.
    - mlyle 5y ago
      Nothing justifies threats. But in this case, the reasons that this would offend people -- that it makes untrue and unfair accusations about a real-world case-- are true. Or even worse than one would assume, even, in that it's not autobiographical and does the same about identifiable third parties.
      - tptacek 5y ago
        It does not in fact make untrue and unfair accusations about a real world case. It is a work of fiction. Until this Slate article came out, there were, like, 4 people in the world that know about the story's inspiration.
        jollybean 5y ago
        It's not really about 'real world, individual people'. It's a #MeToo era-story which is used to narrate supposedly 'real world threats'. The reason that some might be upset, is because you have a real world story of a 'nice guy' - who was used as the basis to narrative a story about how 'men are bad' aka a warning about 'toxic masculinity' etc.. Here is 'The Atlantic's headline of the original 2017 publication: "The depiction of uncomfortable romance in "Cat Person" seems to resonate with countless women." [1] Here is NPR's headline: "'Cat Person' Author's New Book Evokes #MeToo Themes" [2] WaPo: "Opinion: ‘Cat Person’ is a next step in the #MeToo movement" [3] So that's literally the first three pieces that came up in the Google search - and those three publications are 'major, respected, institutions'. All three are using the 'creative fiction' to promote a narrative about men's supposed actions etc.. It's obviously not just about 'some random bit of fiction that happened to be about real people and those real people are upset'. If this was Stephen King, who used his 'Real Life Doctor' as the inspiration for some diabolical character - that would be the story. But there wouldn't be any elevation of the story into some kind of narrative in that case ... so it'd just be about a possibly upset Doctor. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/12/a-viral-short-story-for-the-metoo-moment/548009/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/12/a-vir... [2] https://www.npr.org/2019/01/13/684894872/cat-person-author-s-new-book-evokes-metoo-themes https://www.npr.org/2019/01/13/684894872/cat-person-author-s... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/12/11/why-cat-person-went-viral/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/1... Edit: Here's a gem [4] it's literally an academic publication using the original story as basis for describing narcissism in the role of the oppression of women. "I argue that Beauvoir’s notion of narcissism is an important tool for feminists today—well beyond the interpretation of Cat Person. It presses us to see systematic subordination not just as something done to women, but also as something women do to themselves. This in turn highlights the neglected role of self-transformation as a key aspect of feminist political resistance." This is pseudo-intellectual hyperbole (published!) over a story that amounts to a giant lie. It's intellectual bigotry. [4] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjE6eW61NfxAhUESN8KHazTCakQFjARegQIFhAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fphilarchive.org%2Farchive%2FMELHVH&usg=AOvVaw1gAKHoUWZ9U6C0lxUE_pS2 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
- jollybean 5y ago
  The issue has nothing to do with creative fiction. Nobody is bothered by stories that might use real life as a basis of inspiration. The issue is that these stories are latched onto as 'narrative basis' for some kind of populist ideal, which may frankly just be bigotry. The story was not picked up upon because it was just 'great writing' - it created buzz because it engendered a kind of bigoted fantasy among those that wanted to buy into the potential truthiness of it all. Like the 'Man Next Door Who Raped The White Girl' (i.e. Black man) from the 'Reader's Digest', 1952 etc. It's an issue because people can do whatever they want under the guise of creative fiction, and then try to use it as some kind of scare mongering re: 'This could happen! This is happening!' I'm Canadian, we had to read the Handmaid's Tale in school. Margaret Atwood is famous for saying 'all these things happened somewhere in history' - essentially she cherry picked the absolute worst bits of history and rolled them into a hyper-fascist theocracy. Which is 100% legitimate and interesting from a creative perspective ... but the TV series became a ridiculous point of reference for the fantastical ignorance of some populists who loved think of this as the interpretation of their political enemies. As a TV series it's great fun. But when it's used beyond that (or more poignantly, used by the studios to play into people's bigotry) then it's not good. Edit: please see my above comment for reference as to how most of the media picked up on this piece as the basis for a narrative. It's not some corner case conspiracy - it was used by NPR, RollingStone, Wapo, Medium, The Guardian etc. etc..
  - openandshut 5y ago
    How do I find more people that think like you to associate with? My circles either A. were totally ignorant of stuff like Cat Person because they don't read a whole lot of anything or B. latch on to stuff like Cat Person and engage with populist ideal narratives. I've basically isolated myself from most people I used to talk to and engage with because I couldn't take lying for politeness sake about how I perceive reality anymore.
- juliusmusseau 5y ago
  Good fiction is not usually judged for how true it depicts a real living person. Heck, even actual Biography (non fiction) isn't even judged that way. Cat Person succeeds because it captures a deeper truth. And boy does that story touch a nerve - a mirror that is hard to look at because of its truth.
  - scotty79 5y ago
    Is it a truth though? Seems more like a grim fantasy that's rather exception than the rule. The reality seems much richer and more interesting than the fiction in this case.
GauntletWizard 5y ago
I dated a girl seven years younger than me. We were both in our twenties at the time, and I assumed she was a few years older and she thought I was a few years younger and when it actually came up I struggled with it but went forward. She's got an interesting background, and has been horrifically abused, and once told me I was the first person she ever trusted after having sex. Not that the confession was after sex, though it was, but that I still seemed trustworthy after having sex with her. I read Cat Person... Right around the breakup, though I think it was before then and I saw myself in it. Scared the heck out of me. I don't think I was ever as creepy as the Robert of the story was. I spent a lot of time reexamining my actions and hers and trying to figure out how much I was looking in a mirror. I'm terrified that she'll write a "cat person", fictionalized or not. She was scared for good reasons of a ton of behaviors that I did not exhibit but her "friends" tried to accuse me of, the way a cheater always accuses first. On the other hand, I know that I'm accusing her of a whole host of behaviors that aren't true or maybe only have a grain of truth to them. They say hindsight is 20/20, but I think nothing could be further from the truth. They say you look on the bast with rose colored glasses, and that's not quite it either. You see patterns, and you try to make patterns, and sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong. Getting it wrong can be dangerous. Getting it right can be dangerous, too, particularly when the pattern is one you've been manipulated to see. I don't think I have any special insight or conclusions to draw here. I'm trying, like the author of both stories - the fictional account and the real one - to contextualize and understand and in many ways to "get past" whatever that was. All I can say is that there's dozens of "Cat Person" stories, and an awful lot of them actually do have a clear villain, one side or the other, but probably more have a set of shared mistakes and bitterness - That for ever Robert texting "Whore", there's a Margot in hysterics, and a set of bitter people who regret everything, but didn't do anything worth regretting.
- Aqueous 5y ago
  You dated a girl. She was in her twenties. You were in your twenties. You are both legally adults. Adults make their own decisions.
  - adjkant 5y ago
danso 5y ago
One of the most incredible essays I’ve read in a long time. The author describes a bizarre situation exacerbated by tragedy. There’s no clear remedy or villain for what she’s going through, and that’s just the way life is. I liked the “Cat Person” story when it came out, but I would much rather see this essay be made into a movie
- caslon 5y ago
  Isn't there a villain, though? A creepy internet stalker writes a story about her stalkee's life, monetizes it and gets critical acclaim (and, again, a seven-figure advance for a collection of short stories that only had value due to that story) for it, causing her strife? I can't help but feel that there's a clear villain here, and a villain that's trying to paint herself as the victim at that.
  - afavour 5y ago
    I dunno, if “looked through social media posts of my partner with their ex” is stalking then there are a lot of stalkers out there in the world in new relationships. Don’t get me wrong, turning that into a story with a few too many true-to-life details would absolutely weird me out too. But I’m not sure she’s a stalking villain.
    - bartread 5y ago
      > if “looked through social media posts of my partner with their ex” is stalking then there are a lot of stalkers out there in the world in new relationships. Most of them don't wildly profit from what their partners might possibly consider to be at least a slightly unsavoury activity though.
      - afavour 5y ago
        If she’d lifted photos from his profile and published them for profit I’d agree with you. But using the photos of their relationship as inspiration for a fictional story is a much more tenuous connection. And it’s not as if the author directly wrote it with the intention to profit, the story was a huge success in a way that surprised everyone. It isn’t the story of this woman’s relationship, she herself attests to that. It’s a story inspired by the evidence of her relationship. If asked I bet a lot of authors would say they base their stories on some kind of real world experience, does that mean they all owe royalties? IMO one of the really interesting parts of this essay is the ambiguity. She’s upset, and upset at the author, but isn’t entirely sure if what happened was actually wrong, or what any of it means. I find that a lot more powerful than trying to cast people as unambiguous heroes or villains.
hardwaresofton 5y ago
This was a good read but I was struck with something else… has anyone noticed on long form content the scrollbar being “stuck” at around 85% and never moving after a while? Is this a hack to keep people reading? Am I imagining it?
- dylan604 5y ago
  The fad of scroll jacking with JS is one of the worst. There has been little benefit of this that I have seen. Maybe there's some successful examples, but I have only seen a couple. It could be when they work well, nobody notices and only the bad examples are visible???
  - hardwaresofton 5y ago
    Yeah this wasn't a particularly bad example, I just noticed it that's all (it's not the first time either). The article was engaging, but it was jarring to look over and see the scrollbar not move. I just don't like the idea that someone somewhere had decided that to increase "engagement" they need to lie to me about how far into the article I am. I get that they're probably fighting the recent trend of declining attention spans but I don't know if I like the solution being subtle manipulation.
- dang 5y ago
  "Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - hardwaresofton 5y ago
    Apologies! Will not do that in the future
    - dang 5y ago
      Appreciated!
tejtm 5y ago
Alas I am apparently offline, Slate being able to inform me of such not withstanding. I do not need JavaScript to read.
zwieback 5y ago
I don't know what to think, I loved Cat Person when it came out, it felt like something new and fantastic writing. I didn't realize it went viral but not surprised. This article is also interesting and insightful, I wish the two of them could make something out of the situation that gets past the accusations and apologies. I don't think anything Roupenian wrote lived up to Cat Person so maybe she just lucked onto someone else's story.
causality0 5y ago
not explicitly harmful or abusive but toeing the line of consent and leaving Margot feeling repulsed afterward. This is where the story diverges completely from my reality. Roupenian spends a good portion of the story describing just how disgusting of a person he is. Of course, I know nothing about how Charles was with other women; I can only speak for myself. With me, at least, he was careful, patient, and gentle—it was the first time someone asked if they could kiss me instead of just doing it. What an incredible slur against this man. So Kristen Roupenian copied real events so exactly that readers who knew the real people immediately identified them, except the only thing she changed was to make it so the guy is a disgusting predator of the younger woman and near-rapes her. Kristen Roupenian is a scumbag.
- deleted 5y ago
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- deleted 5y ago
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- dang 5y ago
  Please don't take HN threads into lame gender flamewar. Not interesting, and not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
fdhfdjkfhdkj 5y ago
Plot twist Roupenian == Charles, he faked own death.. That plus this is a fluff piece of a story I have never heard about.
shp0ngle 5y ago
The original article: Even "nice" guys are secretly mean and will treat you horrible, if you don't listen to them. This article: Women will make up horrible things about guys online, even when it's not true, to get clicks. And not even properly apologize.
- truculent 5y ago
  I think your reading of both the original text and this follow-up are deeply flawed. Foremost, original text was a story, a work of fiction (not an "article") -- of course it was made up! The fictional character of Robert is not the real life person Charles. It is strange then, to claim that "Women will make up horrible things about guys online". Is the creation of any unpleasant fictional character a bigoted swipe at large sections of the populace? (There's an additional irony of you generalising this to _women_ and not the author.)
DoreenMichele 5y ago
To me, the most disturbing part of this is the following section: I made plans to rent an apartment with some girls from my econ class the following year, but they told me they’d changed their minds when they found out about my older boyfriend. I'm a woman and I blog. I have made a stab at writing fiction, often loosely based on my life. People tend to assume it is 100 percent true. When I was getting divorced, if I mentioned my future ex was blond, men who were blond would act like I had just announced "You are in like Flynn!" Brunets who were interested in me acted like kicked puppies, as if I had just announced "I am never, ever dating you -- yes, you -- in specific!!!!" I learned to scrub such details from my comments and signal as little as possible about my past relationships so as to have some hope of breaking whatever negative patterns were a part of my life. I didn't want men self selecting or self rejecting to pattern match to a past relationship when I was trying to sort out what actually worked. I dislike the general trend of vilifying men who are involved with younger women, often with no nuance at all. Often age difference alone is sufficient to assume the absolute worst. Although I absolutely support things like #MeToo -- support the idea that women should not be silenced about the bad things that have actually happened to them -- I am disturbed and concerned by the general trend that the world seems to think all heterosexual relationships are inherently abusive or something. We hear a great deal about the bad, the things gone wrong, the dark side and sometimes it seems like there are no good examples out there, no discourse on "This is what a good relationship look like." Being able to identify bad actors and protect oneself is a good thing. Being unable to identify something positive or pursue it because everyone around you assumes the worst and feels entitled to butt in is not a good thing. I wish we could take steps towards something more positive. That sometimes seems impossible in the current climate.
- AdrianB1 5y ago
  It does not matter what was the hair color of your ex; as most women are looking for men with a future, most men are looking for women without a past and not take serious one with a past. The hair color is just an excuse. The entire evolution of humankind built that into men, it is in the genes, it is what they are. Societal pressure to vilify relations between older men and young women comes mostly from women. Studies (please google it) show that man of all ages 18 to 60 are looking for women 18 to 24. It has a perfectly clear biologic explanation: health and fertility, key factors for healthy children and the viability of the species. But that puts women, especially over 30, at a huge disadvantage if they don't have already children and husbands, so they punish the young women in these relations for obvious reasons.
valyagolev 5y ago
The worst part is starting to believe in the stranger's outlook on things in one's life. Infatuation with "universal" and "objective" will turn any tenderness you were surprised by into unambiguous creepiness in the eyes of the people you allow judging it
ceilingcorner 5y ago
I just read the original article after reading this link. This situation is a perfect microcosm of how the media / contemporary culture at large will take a very human situation with complex personalities and shape it to fit the ideological narrative. The actual story (this link) is nuanced and filled with insights on modern dating culture, while the semifictional New Yorker piece is pretty one-dimensional. As far as I’m concerned, the only villain here is the author of Cat Person. She apparently got a million dollar book deal out of it, while Charles had his reputation ruined and “died suddenly” which sounds like code for suicide to me. The author of this Slate article even seems to be gaslighting herself into thinking the fictional piece was more true than her real experience.
- scotty79 5y ago
  I grew to hate literature for its inaccurate representation of reality that shapes and skews imagination of the readers and makes it aligned with one persons grim fantasy. People internalize that children left alone will reanact Lord of the flies and people reading this will internalize that every relation with significant age difference is an abusive relation filled with negative emotions and dynamics.
  - freshpots 5y ago
    Literature is not one-dimensioned like that.
    - scotty79 5y ago
      I think it's more of a rule than an exception. What makes a creation attractive is mixture of percieved veracity with addition of some oddity. So the most popular works of fiction mix some pretty accurate descriptions of reality with the oddity comming from the authors imagination. As such it attracts the reader with the promise of learning the truth about the world but instead it moves them away from the reality towards specific authors fantasies that are weird or gross enough to be interesting. What's more it draws more strongly the people who already share the same skew as the author and draws them even further from accurate understanding of reality. Cat Person is great illustration of this, where it borrows endearing details from true healthy relationship but then serves the reader the image of exploitative and abusive, repulsive older partner. Furthering prejudices some readers already had and pushing them further away from accurate description of reality which is really varied as the relationship that was basis of this story shows. Sometimes even though there's no repulsion, exploitation or abuse and older man just gets abandoned as the young girl finds new friends and there's just mature moving on without any abuse or retibution.
normac2 5y ago
The most obvious takeaway here is how she was wronged by Roupernian, but maybe a just-as-interesting takeaway is that the real Charles was a three-dimensional person with some good traits, and not just an avatar of all semi-neckbeardy creepy men. Of course, it's pretty clear the story wants to serve as some kind of stylized and boiled-down version of some of the disturbing stuff that women experience dating. But this kind of prompts you to stop and think about the real people on the other side, as well.
- Lio 5y ago
  I think we should be wary of anyone that tries to manipulate emotions against an "other" group. It's popular because it triggers existing prejudices about your so called "semi-neckbeardy creepy men". Even that phrase links appearance to bad behaviour. (I mean in general terms here and not specifically anything about your post, I should point out). However it's pure fantasy. The original story takes two people's perfectly ordinary relationship and twists it into a series of misandrist and ageist stereotypes. This is pretty normalised in current modern media. Attacking the currently unpopular out-group always sells well because the audience actively wants to believe the worst about people they already don't like. Truth be damned. Really though, we should see this for what it is. The original author of Cat Person was at one time romantically involved with this man. She wrote an unpleasant fictionalised story about him which is now clearly shown to be untrue. Many authors, male and female, do this all the time. e.g. Ian Flemming did it all the time in his Bond books. Her story is just a passive aggressive form of revenge for some imagined slight.
  - truculent 5y ago
    > It's popular because it triggers existing prejudices I think it was popular because it rang true to a lot of peoples' real-life experiences. It seems strange to dismiss this and assume it's all about baseless predjudices. > She wrote an unpleasant fictionalised story about him which is now clearly shown to be untrue. The story isn't about him though, is it? It's fiction (albeit with some details carelessly lifted from real peoples' lives). The story's merit does not lie in how well it reflects Charles and his relationship.
optimalsolver 5y ago
This is why I stick to science fiction!
schwartzworld 5y ago
I read the story a couple of years ago in a writing class and remember being shocked at the main character's actions. The guy in the story was so 2-dimensional and cringy, and I couldn't understand why she would sleep with him. It doesn't surprise me to hear that the real guy wasn't so awful.

191 points by jasonhansel 5y ago

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

At the end of the day, I kinda don't think this is a big deal. Roupenian was careless not to scrub real-life personal details out of Cat Person, but I think what happened was a bit of a freak accident that she unfortunately failed to foresee, and she apologized. It does make you wonder how much you can trust supposedly slice-of-life fiction, if a friend of one of the "characters" finds the story a poor representation of the person they knew. I suspect some of the darkness in Roupenian's stories comes from a twist in her own perspective, not necessarily from the awfulness of men she's dated.

bitwize 5y ago
Roupenian kind of gave a sorry-not-sorry apology. There's a subtext of "I'm sorry I used your friend's personal details, but you're missing the point which is that the story is fake but accurate -- male anger escalates into threats and violence and by calling me out you're adding fuel to the incel fire I'm facing right now because I'm a woman who writes about the bad things men do." And a deeper subtext of "Remember, sister, I am not the villain here; the patriarchy is."
- civilized 5y ago
  Maybe Roupenian actually, literally faces threats from men who didn't like her story. It... wouldn't be the first time people harassed a writer for a creative work they took to be offensive.
  - mlyle 5y ago
    Nothing justifies threats. But in this case, the reasons that this would offend people -- that it makes untrue and unfair accusations about a real-world case-- are true. Or even worse than one would assume, even, in that it's not autobiographical and does the same about identifiable third parties.
    - tptacek 5y ago
      It does not in fact make untrue and unfair accusations about a real world case. It is a work of fiction. Until this Slate article came out, there were, like, 4 people in the world that know about the story's inspiration.
      - jollybean 5y ago
        It's not really about 'real world, individual people'. It's a #MeToo era-story which is used to narrate supposedly 'real world threats'. The reason that some might be upset, is because you have a real world story of a 'nice guy' - who was used as the basis to narrative a story about how 'men are bad' aka a warning about 'toxic masculinity' etc.. Here is 'The Atlantic's headline of the original 2017 publication: "The depiction of uncomfortable romance in "Cat Person" seems to resonate with countless women." [1] Here is NPR's headline: "'Cat Person' Author's New Book Evokes #MeToo Themes" [2] WaPo: "Opinion: ‘Cat Person’ is a next step in the #MeToo movement" [3] So that's literally the first three pieces that came up in the Google search - and those three publications are 'major, respected, institutions'. All three are using the 'creative fiction' to promote a narrative about men's supposed actions etc.. It's obviously not just about 'some random bit of fiction that happened to be about real people and those real people are upset'. If this was Stephen King, who used his 'Real Life Doctor' as the inspiration for some diabolical character - that would be the story. But there wouldn't be any elevation of the story into some kind of narrative in that case ... so it'd just be about a possibly upset Doctor. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/12/a-viral-short-story-for-the-metoo-moment/548009/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/12/a-vir... [2] https://www.npr.org/2019/01/13/684894872/cat-person-author-s-new-book-evokes-metoo-themes https://www.npr.org/2019/01/13/684894872/cat-person-author-s... [3] https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/12/11/why-cat-person-went-viral/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/1... Edit: Here's a gem [4] it's literally an academic publication using the original story as basis for describing narcissism in the role of the oppression of women. "I argue that Beauvoir’s notion of narcissism is an important tool for feminists today—well beyond the interpretation of Cat Person. It presses us to see systematic subordination not just as something done to women, but also as something women do to themselves. This in turn highlights the neglected role of self-transformation as a key aspect of feminist political resistance." This is pseudo-intellectual hyperbole (published!) over a story that amounts to a giant lie. It's intellectual bigotry. [4] https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjE6eW61NfxAhUESN8KHazTCakQFjARegQIFhAD&url=https%3A%2F%2Fphilarchive.org%2Farchive%2FMELHVH&usg=AOvVaw1gAKHoUWZ9U6C0lxUE_pS2 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...
jollybean 5y ago
The issue has nothing to do with creative fiction. Nobody is bothered by stories that might use real life as a basis of inspiration. The issue is that these stories are latched onto as 'narrative basis' for some kind of populist ideal, which may frankly just be bigotry. The story was not picked up upon because it was just 'great writing' - it created buzz because it engendered a kind of bigoted fantasy among those that wanted to buy into the potential truthiness of it all. Like the 'Man Next Door Who Raped The White Girl' (i.e. Black man) from the 'Reader's Digest', 1952 etc. It's an issue because people can do whatever they want under the guise of creative fiction, and then try to use it as some kind of scare mongering re: 'This could happen! This is happening!' I'm Canadian, we had to read the Handmaid's Tale in school. Margaret Atwood is famous for saying 'all these things happened somewhere in history' - essentially she cherry picked the absolute worst bits of history and rolled them into a hyper-fascist theocracy. Which is 100% legitimate and interesting from a creative perspective ... but the TV series became a ridiculous point of reference for the fantastical ignorance of some populists who loved think of this as the interpretation of their political enemies. As a TV series it's great fun. But when it's used beyond that (or more poignantly, used by the studios to play into people's bigotry) then it's not good. Edit: please see my above comment for reference as to how most of the media picked up on this piece as the basis for a narrative. It's not some corner case conspiracy - it was used by NPR, RollingStone, Wapo, Medium, The Guardian etc. etc..
- openandshut 5y ago
  How do I find more people that think like you to associate with? My circles either A. were totally ignorant of stuff like Cat Person because they don't read a whole lot of anything or B. latch on to stuff like Cat Person and engage with populist ideal narratives. I've basically isolated myself from most people I used to talk to and engage with because I couldn't take lying for politeness sake about how I perceive reality anymore.
juliusmusseau 5y ago
Good fiction is not usually judged for how true it depicts a real living person. Heck, even actual Biography (non fiction) isn't even judged that way. Cat Person succeeds because it captures a deeper truth. And boy does that story touch a nerve - a mirror that is hard to look at because of its truth.
- scotty79 5y ago
  Is it a truth though? Seems more like a grim fantasy that's rather exception than the rule. The reality seems much richer and more interesting than the fiction in this case.

GauntletWizard 5y ago

I dated a girl seven years younger than me. We were both in our twenties at the time, and I assumed she was a few years older and she thought I was a few years younger and when it actually came up I struggled with it but went forward. She's got an interesting background, and has been horrifically abused, and once told me I was the first person she ever trusted after having sex. Not that the confession was after sex, though it was, but that I still seemed trustworthy after having sex with her. I read Cat Person... Right around the breakup, though I think it was before then and I saw myself in it. Scared the heck out of me. I don't think I was ever as creepy as the Robert of the story was. I spent a lot of time reexamining my actions and hers and trying to figure out how much I was looking in a mirror. I'm terrified that she'll write a "cat person", fictionalized or not. She was scared for good reasons of a ton of behaviors that I did not exhibit but her "friends" tried to accuse me of, the way a cheater always accuses first. On the other hand, I know that I'm accusing her of a whole host of behaviors that aren't true or maybe only have a grain of truth to them. They say hindsight is 20/20, but I think nothing could be further from the truth. They say you look on the bast with rose colored glasses, and that's not quite it either. You see patterns, and you try to make patterns, and sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong. Getting it wrong can be dangerous. Getting it right can be dangerous, too, particularly when the pattern is one you've been manipulated to see. I don't think I have any special insight or conclusions to draw here. I'm trying, like the author of both stories - the fictional account and the real one - to contextualize and understand and in many ways to "get past" whatever that was. All I can say is that there's dozens of "Cat Person" stories, and an awful lot of them actually do have a clear villain, one side or the other, but probably more have a set of shared mistakes and bitterness - That for ever Robert texting "Whore", there's a Margot in hysterics, and a set of bitter people who regret everything, but didn't do anything worth regretting.

Aqueous 5y ago
You dated a girl. She was in her twenties. You were in your twenties. You are both legally adults. Adults make their own decisions.
- adjkant 5y ago

danso 5y ago

One of the most incredible essays I’ve read in a long time. The author describes a bizarre situation exacerbated by tragedy. There’s no clear remedy or villain for what she’s going through, and that’s just the way life is. I liked the “Cat Person” story when it came out, but I would much rather see this essay be made into a movie

caslon 5y ago
Isn't there a villain, though? A creepy internet stalker writes a story about her stalkee's life, monetizes it and gets critical acclaim (and, again, a seven-figure advance for a collection of short stories that only had value due to that story) for it, causing her strife? I can't help but feel that there's a clear villain here, and a villain that's trying to paint herself as the victim at that.
- afavour 5y ago
  I dunno, if “looked through social media posts of my partner with their ex” is stalking then there are a lot of stalkers out there in the world in new relationships. Don’t get me wrong, turning that into a story with a few too many true-to-life details would absolutely weird me out too. But I’m not sure she’s a stalking villain.
  - bartread 5y ago
    > if “looked through social media posts of my partner with their ex” is stalking then there are a lot of stalkers out there in the world in new relationships. Most of them don't wildly profit from what their partners might possibly consider to be at least a slightly unsavoury activity though.
    - afavour 5y ago
      If she’d lifted photos from his profile and published them for profit I’d agree with you. But using the photos of their relationship as inspiration for a fictional story is a much more tenuous connection. And it’s not as if the author directly wrote it with the intention to profit, the story was a huge success in a way that surprised everyone. It isn’t the story of this woman’s relationship, she herself attests to that. It’s a story inspired by the evidence of her relationship. If asked I bet a lot of authors would say they base their stories on some kind of real world experience, does that mean they all owe royalties? IMO one of the really interesting parts of this essay is the ambiguity. She’s upset, and upset at the author, but isn’t entirely sure if what happened was actually wrong, or what any of it means. I find that a lot more powerful than trying to cast people as unambiguous heroes or villains.

hardwaresofton 5y ago

This was a good read but I was struck with something else… has anyone noticed on long form content the scrollbar being “stuck” at around 85% and never moving after a while? Is this a hack to keep people reading? Am I imagining it?

dylan604 5y ago
The fad of scroll jacking with JS is one of the worst. There has been little benefit of this that I have seen. Maybe there's some successful examples, but I have only seen a couple. It could be when they work well, nobody notices and only the bad examples are visible???
- hardwaresofton 5y ago
  Yeah this wasn't a particularly bad example, I just noticed it that's all (it's not the first time either). The article was engaging, but it was jarring to look over and see the scrollbar not move. I just don't like the idea that someone somewhere had decided that to increase "engagement" they need to lie to me about how far into the article I am. I get that they're probably fighting the recent trend of declining attention spans but I don't know if I like the solution being subtle manipulation.
dang 5y ago
"Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then friendly feedback might be helpful." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- hardwaresofton 5y ago
  Apologies! Will not do that in the future
  - dang 5y ago
    Appreciated!

tejtm 5y ago

Alas I am apparently offline, Slate being able to inform me of such not withstanding. I do not need JavaScript to read.

zwieback 5y ago

I don't know what to think, I loved Cat Person when it came out, it felt like something new and fantastic writing. I didn't realize it went viral but not surprised. This article is also interesting and insightful, I wish the two of them could make something out of the situation that gets past the accusations and apologies. I don't think anything Roupenian wrote lived up to Cat Person so maybe she just lucked onto someone else's story.

causality0 5y ago

not explicitly harmful or abusive but toeing the line of consent and leaving Margot feeling repulsed afterward. This is where the story diverges completely from my reality. Roupenian spends a good portion of the story describing just how disgusting of a person he is. Of course, I know nothing about how Charles was with other women; I can only speak for myself. With me, at least, he was careful, patient, and gentle—it was the first time someone asked if they could kiss me instead of just doing it. What an incredible slur against this man. So Kristen Roupenian copied real events so exactly that readers who knew the real people immediately identified them, except the only thing she changed was to make it so the guy is a disgusting predator of the younger woman and near-rapes her. Kristen Roupenian is a scumbag.

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dang 5y ago
Please don't take HN threads into lame gender flamewar. Not interesting, and not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

fdhfdjkfhdkj 5y ago

Plot twist Roupenian == Charles, he faked own death.. That plus this is a fluff piece of a story I have never heard about.

shp0ngle 5y ago

The original article: Even "nice" guys are secretly mean and will treat you horrible, if you don't listen to them. This article: Women will make up horrible things about guys online, even when it's not true, to get clicks. And not even properly apologize.

truculent 5y ago
I think your reading of both the original text and this follow-up are deeply flawed. Foremost, original text was a story, a work of fiction (not an "article") -- of course it was made up! The fictional character of Robert is not the real life person Charles. It is strange then, to claim that "Women will make up horrible things about guys online". Is the creation of any unpleasant fictional character a bigoted swipe at large sections of the populace? (There's an additional irony of you generalising this to _women_ and not the author.)

DoreenMichele 5y ago

To me, the most disturbing part of this is the following section: I made plans to rent an apartment with some girls from my econ class the following year, but they told me they’d changed their minds when they found out about my older boyfriend. I'm a woman and I blog. I have made a stab at writing fiction, often loosely based on my life. People tend to assume it is 100 percent true. When I was getting divorced, if I mentioned my future ex was blond, men who were blond would act like I had just announced "You are in like Flynn!" Brunets who were interested in me acted like kicked puppies, as if I had just announced "I am never, ever dating you -- yes, you -- in specific!!!!" I learned to scrub such details from my comments and signal as little as possible about my past relationships so as to have some hope of breaking whatever negative patterns were a part of my life. I didn't want men self selecting or self rejecting to pattern match to a past relationship when I was trying to sort out what actually worked. I dislike the general trend of vilifying men who are involved with younger women, often with no nuance at all. Often age difference alone is sufficient to assume the absolute worst. Although I absolutely support things like #MeToo -- support the idea that women should not be silenced about the bad things that have actually happened to them -- I am disturbed and concerned by the general trend that the world seems to think all heterosexual relationships are inherently abusive or something. We hear a great deal about the bad, the things gone wrong, the dark side and sometimes it seems like there are no good examples out there, no discourse on "This is what a good relationship look like." Being able to identify bad actors and protect oneself is a good thing. Being unable to identify something positive or pursue it because everyone around you assumes the worst and feels entitled to butt in is not a good thing. I wish we could take steps towards something more positive. That sometimes seems impossible in the current climate.

AdrianB1 5y ago
It does not matter what was the hair color of your ex; as most women are looking for men with a future, most men are looking for women without a past and not take serious one with a past. The hair color is just an excuse. The entire evolution of humankind built that into men, it is in the genes, it is what they are. Societal pressure to vilify relations between older men and young women comes mostly from women. Studies (please google it) show that man of all ages 18 to 60 are looking for women 18 to 24. It has a perfectly clear biologic explanation: health and fertility, key factors for healthy children and the viability of the species. But that puts women, especially over 30, at a huge disadvantage if they don't have already children and husbands, so they punish the young women in these relations for obvious reasons.

valyagolev 5y ago

The worst part is starting to believe in the stranger's outlook on things in one's life. Infatuation with "universal" and "objective" will turn any tenderness you were surprised by into unambiguous creepiness in the eyes of the people you allow judging it

ceilingcorner 5y ago

I just read the original article after reading this link. This situation is a perfect microcosm of how the media / contemporary culture at large will take a very human situation with complex personalities and shape it to fit the ideological narrative. The actual story (this link) is nuanced and filled with insights on modern dating culture, while the semifictional New Yorker piece is pretty one-dimensional. As far as I’m concerned, the only villain here is the author of Cat Person. She apparently got a million dollar book deal out of it, while Charles had his reputation ruined and “died suddenly” which sounds like code for suicide to me. The author of this Slate article even seems to be gaslighting herself into thinking the fictional piece was more true than her real experience.

scotty79 5y ago
I grew to hate literature for its inaccurate representation of reality that shapes and skews imagination of the readers and makes it aligned with one persons grim fantasy. People internalize that children left alone will reanact Lord of the flies and people reading this will internalize that every relation with significant age difference is an abusive relation filled with negative emotions and dynamics.
- freshpots 5y ago
  Literature is not one-dimensioned like that.
  - scotty79 5y ago
    I think it's more of a rule than an exception. What makes a creation attractive is mixture of percieved veracity with addition of some oddity. So the most popular works of fiction mix some pretty accurate descriptions of reality with the oddity comming from the authors imagination. As such it attracts the reader with the promise of learning the truth about the world but instead it moves them away from the reality towards specific authors fantasies that are weird or gross enough to be interesting. What's more it draws more strongly the people who already share the same skew as the author and draws them even further from accurate understanding of reality. Cat Person is great illustration of this, where it borrows endearing details from true healthy relationship but then serves the reader the image of exploitative and abusive, repulsive older partner. Furthering prejudices some readers already had and pushing them further away from accurate description of reality which is really varied as the relationship that was basis of this story shows. Sometimes even though there's no repulsion, exploitation or abuse and older man just gets abandoned as the young girl finds new friends and there's just mature moving on without any abuse or retibution.

normac2 5y ago

The most obvious takeaway here is how she was wronged by Roupernian, but maybe a just-as-interesting takeaway is that the real Charles was a three-dimensional person with some good traits, and not just an avatar of all semi-neckbeardy creepy men. Of course, it's pretty clear the story wants to serve as some kind of stylized and boiled-down version of some of the disturbing stuff that women experience dating. But this kind of prompts you to stop and think about the real people on the other side, as well.

Lio 5y ago
I think we should be wary of anyone that tries to manipulate emotions against an "other" group. It's popular because it triggers existing prejudices about your so called "semi-neckbeardy creepy men". Even that phrase links appearance to bad behaviour. (I mean in general terms here and not specifically anything about your post, I should point out). However it's pure fantasy. The original story takes two people's perfectly ordinary relationship and twists it into a series of misandrist and ageist stereotypes. This is pretty normalised in current modern media. Attacking the currently unpopular out-group always sells well because the audience actively wants to believe the worst about people they already don't like. Truth be damned. Really though, we should see this for what it is. The original author of Cat Person was at one time romantically involved with this man. She wrote an unpleasant fictionalised story about him which is now clearly shown to be untrue. Many authors, male and female, do this all the time. e.g. Ian Flemming did it all the time in his Bond books. Her story is just a passive aggressive form of revenge for some imagined slight.
- truculent 5y ago
  > It's popular because it triggers existing prejudices I think it was popular because it rang true to a lot of peoples' real-life experiences. It seems strange to dismiss this and assume it's all about baseless predjudices. > She wrote an unpleasant fictionalised story about him which is now clearly shown to be untrue. The story isn't about him though, is it? It's fiction (albeit with some details carelessly lifted from real peoples' lives). The story's merit does not lie in how well it reflects Charles and his relationship.

optimalsolver 5y ago

This is why I stick to science fiction!

schwartzworld 5y ago

I read the story a couple of years ago in a writing class and remember being shocked at the main character's actions. The guy in the story was so 2-dimensional and cringy, and I couldn't understand why she would sleep with him. It doesn't surprise me to hear that the real guy wasn't so awful.