Followers

“I’ve done the math,” Floss said. “I’ve done the actual math. There are eight million people here, and all of them want something as bad as I want what I want, as bad as you want what you want. We’re not all going to get it. It’s just not possible, that all these people could have their dreams come true in the same time, same place. It’s not enough to be talented. It’s not enough to work hard. You need to be disciplined, and you need to be ruthless. You have to do anything, everything, and you need to forget about doing the right thing.”

“9 INSANE Facts About Sage Sterling.” Never ten facts—readers hated the number ten. It was too perfect, too choreographed. Suspect

“We’re just targeting dogs right now,” Hilaria went on. “But I’m also really passionate about cats. So we’re looking to expand into the cat market as well.”

Orla couldn’t stop herself. “Couldn’t cats just wear the clothes you make now?”

Hilaria looked at her publicist. “I guess cats could wear the small ones, right?” she said uncertainly. “Like the alpaca cowl-neck?”

“Cats could wear the small ones,” the publicist confirmed, glaring.

“And every piece is one hundred percent vegan!” Hilaria shouted.

“Didn’t you just say something’s alpaca?” Orla said. “An alpaca is an animal. It’s kind of like a llama.”

They would see that she moved through her days with buoyant normalcy, and they would be reminded, every so often, that Hysteryl had made her this way. It was Jacqueline’s job to show America what they could buy to keep them happy. It was Marlow’s job to show them what to swallow

Her followers—the people who observed every move she made—were spread across the rest of America and various races and age groups. What they had in common was that they were troubled. This was how the network marketed her: as the poster child for troubled, the Constellation star who got what they were going through. The network mined public data, looking for adults whose devices clocked too much crying or eating, for kids whose heartbeats surged to panicked levels during gym class

It linked the use of personal screens—phones, tablets, anything that aimed blue light at the human eye from point-blank range—to a rapid dementia doctors predicted would eventually devastate Marlow’s parents’ entire generation. The millennials

A chubby Hispanic guy in horn-rimmed glasses held his phone up to the waif, filming her as she said: “We’re here at the launch of Hilaria Dahl’s dog sweater line, and all the hottest celebrity animal lovers have tuned out for the occasion.”

The items the network chose reflected Jacqueline’s core audience demo: married mothers across America, aged twenty-eight to forty-four, who tuned in while folding laundry around 9:00 p.m. on weeknights.

What? You seek something? You seek to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!

Friedrich Nietzsche

She had never quite understood Twitter, though Floss still talked about it like a dead, beloved friend. Short messages, but to everyone, mostly pointless, with blatant lies allowed—Marlow could not imagine what had been the appeal