Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

Tolentino begins this essay by diving into the story of Billy McFarland, the founder of Fyre Media, who had previously created a fraudulent promotion business. She describes the planning of his ill-conceived 2017 Fyre Festival. The timeline was far too short to pull off an event for 10,000 people, as intended; there was no location scheduled. However, the company began selling tickets to the event anyway. By the week before the event, McFarland ran out of money. Performers hadn't been paid and pulled. The event was a disaster, with charter flights not appearing and those who arrived at the site finding disaster-relief-style tents, wet mattresses, and awful food. McFarland was later arrested for fraud. Even still, that same summer, he sold $100,000 in tickets to events, some of which didn't even exist. Tolentino contextualizes this fraud as characteristic of the Trump era. After the 2008 financial crash, she writes, we have also seen the positioning of wealth as progressive for feminists, the disruption of companies like Uber and Amazon, reality TV, Facebook, high college tuition, and historic economic equality.

Under the heading "The Crash," Tolentino then dives deeper into the 2008 financial crisis. The crash was caused by the inflation of the housing market and its subsequent collapse. Tolentino enumerates the conditions that allowed for this to happen: the repeal of predatory lending laws, the rise of housing prices, the easy access to home equity credit, the ability to easily get cheap mortgages, and offers of subprime loans. She notes that this was compounded by the use of acronyms and words people didn't recognize to hide what was happening. At the time, Tolentino writes, she was in college, writing about the American Dream in 2007, when loan defaults started. In 2008, the company Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, quickly followed by others, and the government bailed them out. Nevertheless, this led to a recession characterized by high unemployment and a 35% loss of wealth for the average household. Tolentino traces the historical origins of the term "confidence man" to 1849, positioning cons as linked to the origins of the United States, particularly in their drive to profit. She writes that both the con and his target want to profit, but only the con man actually does. The 2008 crash shows the extent to which people can profit by exploiting others.

Tolentino then presents the second scam, "The Student Debt Disaster," by putting it in the context of the post-financial crisis American society. At this time, around 25% houses were worth less than what their owners owed on them. By 2013, student debt had taken second place to housing as the biggest source of debt . Costs at private universities were three times as high as they had been in 1974 and four times as high at private schools. Meanwhile, income and wages had stayed almost the same. Tolentino traces similarities between the student debt crises and the housing bubble. In the contemporary job market, Tolentino writes, people can’t forego higher education. However, higher tuition has not led to better education. At the same time, the job market students enter is increasingly perilous and defined by contract, part-time, and self-employed workers. Meanwhile, healthcare costs have risen by a factor of 29 in the past 40 years, as the costs of childcare have risen. The only guaranteed financial safety net, Tolentino writes, is inheriting money, yet college is still sold as necessary.

Tolentino positions the third scam, "Social Media," by introducing Mark Zuckerberg (founder of Facebook's) net worth as five million times that of the median US household income. With a quarter of the world population using the site at least monthly, Facebook has changed our relationships. Tolentino recalls using Facebook for the first time during her senior year of high school. Back then, Tolentino writes, it felt like we were using a product; now, we are the product. Facebook has been widely cited for deceptive practices (such as artificially inflating view counts on videos, claiming that there was no Russian interference in the 2016 election despite evidence to the contrary, and giving other companies access to its users' messages). Tolentino writes that the company's business model depends on exploitation. The site promises connection, then isolates its users. In other words, Tolentino notes, it makes society dependent on attention, then makes economics depend on this.

Next, Tolentino focuses “Girlbosses,” starting with Sophia Amoruso. The CEO of fashion retailer NastyGal, Amoruso was well-known for having built the company without debt. Her memoir was then positioned as motivational, "marketed with the language of pop feminism," (175) in which individual success is presented as feminist. After NastyGal declared bankruptcy, Amoruso created Girlboss, which produces "Girlboss rallies," promoting the idea that confidence is key to financial success. Tolentino remarks this type of "Girlboss feminism" (177) began with Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg's book. Centered around conferences, webinars, and wellness products, this movement presents individual success as a form of progress. Tolentino remarks that "The trickiest thing about this idea is that it is incomplete and insufficient without being entirely wrong" (179). However, she notes that it is crucially limited because it opposes collective solutions. Tolentino admits that she sees this movement as affecting and benefiting her own career; though she tries to avoid it, it is still part of her success.

In the fifth section, "The Really Obvious Ones," Tolentino gives an overview of recently uncovered scams and public reactions to them. This includes the sale of untreated, "raw water.” Before that, the public had taken pleasure in Juicero, a complex system of making juice centered around expensive juicers, where the juicers themselves had proved unnecessary. Here, Tolentino distinguishes between exaggerations and outright scams, giving numerous examples of the latter. Tolentino then transitions to a longer discussion of Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos. Though this bloodwork company was founded on technology that did not exist, it was nevertheless valued at $9 billion. Holmes was later convicted on nine fraud charges.

In the sixth section, "The Disruptors," Tolentino begins by discussing the history of the Amazon site. Founded by Jeff Bezos, the company began with books because it was easy to keep a large inventory of them. Meanwhile, they could track the habits of rich and educated consumers. It took 7 years for the company to break even, but it now dominates retail. Tolentino notes that the kind of efficiency that Amazon offers harms workers, both white-collar and blue-collar. The companies Uber and Airbnb, Tolentino writes, are similar to Amazon in their "disruption." This disruption in fact makes workers, not the companies, compete. Tolentino provides several examples to illustrate this point: Airbnb, for example didn't tell New York City hosts that subletting their apartments broke the law. At the moment, Uber has kept prices low to dominate market; when that happens, Tolentino posits, prices will probably rise, even as driver pay lowers. Another aspect of these disruptors that Tolentino presents is the willingness of venture capitalists to pour money into companies that do little to nothing. She provides examples of this, including the app "Yo." She notes that venture capital relies on networks; 76% of VC partners are white men.

Tolentino positions "The Election" as the seventh and final scam. Here, she writes about Donald Trump as a scammer who lied about his net worth and had declared bankruptcy three times by 2004. Exploiting and abusing others, he used undocumented workers, enforced discriminatory housing practices, and conducted illegal evictions. As president of the United States, Tolentino writes, Trump has also been a scammer. His daily briefings have been dumbed down, while his long list of promises have not been kept. She notes that he is a salesman who has spent a lot of time in his own properties as foreign governments have paid for access to them; he only wants profit. In other words, Tolentino writes, he provides Americans with the image of victory, not actual victory.

Facing such a context, Tolentino remarks, it is difficult to live morally, particularly when it is already so hard to survive individually. She recalls that it took her a long time to be able to afford to stop using Amazon, for example. She hopes to one day avoid compromising on her ethics, noting: "This is a useful fantasy, I think, but it’s a fantasy" (194).