cat person

the way she writes about reading "cat person" and having it possibly influence her own recollection / judgment of events etc was really nicely observed I thought

Apparently she is a publicist at FS&G.

why is her 9,000 person hometown in here this is goofy pic.twitter.com/Dp80gbYFhv

— bean 🌻 (@christapeterso) July 8, 2021

yikes

That person's thread seems OTM.

saline for the tears i cried

In a way 'Charles' comes out of the essay well, but in another way he doesn't: he will certainly be outed, more details about his life will be revealed, and his short life will forever be associated with 'Cat Person' in a way that it wouldn't have been if the essay hadn't been published. I wonder if he'd really have wanted that.

brad otm people are being weird in this thread

no reason to even assume he committed suicide - people are acting like this slate article is in fact an obfuscatory work of fiction meant to rouse speculation and not a slate article

is it more unethical to use someone else's life as a starting point for a shitty story or to write fanfic about it on ilxor.com

“no reason to even assume he committed suicide”

That’s what “died suddenly” means, no?

*shits*

Defining talking about the story and it's after life in this piece as "fanfic" sure is "weird".

i am not otm about this but i don't care to be

That’s what “died suddenly” means, no?

― 𝔠𝔞𝔢𝔨 (caek), Friday, July 9, 2021 3:12 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Defining talking about the story and it's after life in this piece as "fanfic" sure is "weird".

― xyzzzz__, Friday, July 9, 2021 4:29 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

i just said this:

If he didn’t treat Roupenian poorly, it is pretty inexcusable for her to have made him into an easily identifiable symbol of a groomer.

― treeship., Thursday, July 8, 2021 1:47 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

we don't know how he died. but it doesn't really matter -- this is the issue. roupenian implies she had a less than positive "encounter" with him, which led to the depiction in the story. the essay describes charles as haunted by the depiction.

these are details in the essay. it's not fan fiction.

Acting like I'm talking about every post in this thread and not Jim and tree's wild unwarranted speculation hour, come on
― ✖, Friday, 9 July 2021 bookmarkflaglink

I also think he committed suicide. The writer cannot blankly state this, but there's enough in the piece to think it.

Every writer dreams of doing what Kristen Roupenian has:
to write a massively successful New Yorker story humiliating a former lover, and then, having accumulated great riches and acclaim, to have them murdered.

— Dean Kissick (@deankissick) July 9, 2021

i just said this:
That is not your only post itt lol. Maybe I should've said "true crime podcast" instead of fanfic

I've read the piece twice and I cannot find any reason to extract "he killed himself and did so because of cat person" from it, people are projecting. Reread it under the assumption that he suffered heart failure or got t-boned by a drunk driver or a piano fell on him and you'll find little resistance

If he did kill himself and the writer is trying to communicate through morse code blinks that cat person did it, without knowing for sure (and why would she know? She barely knew him at that point), that would be fucked up! Plenty of people kill themselves without having cat person written about them

I see nothing here beyond "I'm bummed my dead ex boyfriend's memory is tarnished by a careless writer who should've changed some words around"

Given the fact that people would inevitably speculate about this, and how carefully written the piece is otherwise, it seems that she would have made a point that he was hit by a piano if that is indeed what happened. The silence of this issue is suggestive.

But it also isn’t the point. She isn’t just “bummed”— she writes about how she felt violated and also how it impacted her ex.

The essay is itself a good piece of writing. It isn’t just gossipy.

man i got popcorn over here. who will win????

Roupenian has already won. The book deal, the film rights.

no i mean who will be deemed the most correct on this thread??? jury’s out

if you read between the lines of my posts you'll actually see pretty clearly it's me

who says the aggrieved party won't get film rights? might be looking at a deep impact/armaggedon situation here

and also how it impacted her ex.

― treeship., Friday, July 9, 2021 8:24 AM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

i agree that the piece isn't gossipy and shouldn't be defined by the 20% of it that's about him

i do admit i am extremely impressed cat person is doing this to people again, the movie release is gonna be wild

She said he kept reviewing his old texts with Roupenian to reassure himself he wasn’t the monster in the story

*bodyslam*

makes u think

'Charles' clearly committed suicide, his cause of death would be mentioned otherwise.

She said he kept reviewing his old texts with Roupenian to reassure himself he wasn’t the monster in the story

― treeship., Friday, July 9, 2021 8:50 AM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

aha, now i have to cancel my podcast

Idk if that is definitely what happened, and even if it did I'm not sure Roupenian can be held responsible, but it did affect him enough to hold onto his old phone and keep reviewing their texts as treeship said, and his reaction to the story seemed significant enough to his friend to bring up to Nowicki right in their first conversations after his death.xp That is significantly more than what your first post said tbf.

i already said i cancelled the podcast! i don't put any value in the second thing though, they'd been talking for an hour of course the story that binds them is gonna come up

Ha OK I read more sarcasm in that comment than you may have intended.

The writer makes a point of how all these friends/acquaintances etc contacted her with IS THIS YOU but the thing is, I bet those same conversations were happening everywhere. Lots of young women receiving IS THIS YOU texts from their friends bc this story is so fucking common. I worked in a big supermarket from 15-18 and the social life was huge and it was extremely common for male managers in their 30s to be dating teen girls who worked there. The essay writer acknowledges friends were weirded out by the age gap but she doesn’t address it directly at all.

I've been picturing Buscemi in Ghost World for the past day.

^^^^^^ yes

from the flirty customer aspect to the sexual encounter all the way to the end -- this is hardly full of unique details. THAT IS WHY IT IS COMPELLING!!!

oops that yes was for just1n3

I read cat person when it came out (NYer subscriber not literary clusterfuck audience).

I've followed this thread since and that's the first I heard of this essay, which I read yesterday. And woke up this morning thinking about, wtf. I think it is assholish of the essay author to write this under the circumstances. I can only come up with two true motivations to publish: attention and/or paycheck. And both of those things are fine in theory. But I dunno if it were me I wouldn't do it.

I also feel it is my professional duty to point out or remind people that "committed suicide" is a phrase that is frowned upon in professional/mental health advocacy circles. "Died by suicide" is better.

"lots of people share stories like this and wonder if it's about them" would be a fine objection if it weren't literally confirmed as true in this case

the objection re language around suicide is fair, no need for catholic bullshit

The story used her exact hometown, her workplace, the circumstances of their first date, his physical description, etc

That's the irony: the vague details spoke to thousands, so why did the writer need to derive the specific details from this one person?

seriously this story/essay/clusterfuck keeps popping up in my head, it is annoying! I was just reading this week's NYer (instead of, you know, doing my job) and the Rebecca Curtis story has this line:

"We paid babysitters to watch our toddler, theoretically so that I could write novels, but all I'd written were short stories about SLUTTY CAT-WOMEN, which my agent told me to DELETE FROM MY COMPUTER

emphasis mine lol. cat ppl everywhere.

Either carelessness or animus toward Charles

I assume the former xp

I am totally assuming simple laziness followed by self-preservation impulses kicking in, not outright malice. happens all the time.

“Careless” doesn’t seem the right word for choosing to keep every personal detail in tact. And curious what the New Yorker process of editing fiction is, whether she had to sign any agreement that would keep the magazine from being legally culpable here.