Caroline Calloway's Content Machine Stops For Nothing, Not Even Deadly Hurricanes

I’m a born and raised Mainer, so I don’t pretend to know a damn thing about hurricanes or what it’s like to live through them. I do think that if the state government told me to evacuate, though, I would listen. But then again, how many Mainers would evacuate during even the worst Nor’Easter? Mainers still go out in their shorts and drink beers during storms.

Infamous internet author Caroline Calloway lives in Florida, on the water, in a mandatory evacuation zone, and she’s staying put for Milton. This has sparked internet outrage, as does everything Calloway ever does.

“I don’t think people understand the reasons I have for staying,” Calloway told Intelligencer on Wednesday before the storm landed. “I live on the water, but I’m three stories up. Even with a 20-foot storm surge, I will not be seeing any of that.” I can’t speak to the veracity of that statement, but it seems hubristic to me. That’s not the real reason she’s staying, though.

“My reasons for staying involve Hurricane Ian, which hit in 2022. I evacuated to my mom’s house in North Port. She lives very deep inland, but it’s very flat … It was three days, no water, no electricity, no AC, which is a huge fucking problem in Florida in late summer, even early fall. We were evacuated by boat by the U.S. military. Her whole neighborhood flooded. They drove one of those Lana Del Rey-husband fan boats down what was formerly known as her street. The scariest part was not our dwindling food supply or the insects, which were frankly terrifying when the entire surrounding land turned even swampier than it had been in rural Florida. I hope you never find out what was actually the scariest part, which was at night we’d hear gunshots. I still don’t know if it was just drunk Floridians exercising their Second Amendment rights on a homemade shooting range in their backyard to pass the time, or if it was something more sinister.”

Okay, yeah, that sounds…horrible. But that’s not all: the condo building she lives in is the one her grandmother used to live in, and it still has an elderly population. Those elders, who she knows closely from their relationships with her grandmother, can’t leave, and “someone needs to check on them,” she says. She also insists that her building is safe. “It’s never flooded in all the years that my family has lived here. The windows have never shattered. I know our windows can take gusts up to 145 miles per hour,” she explains.

But here, dear reader, is what I think is her really real reason for staying:

“My biggest plan for the hurricane is going to be very similar to the last time there was a widespread disaster, COVID-19 … I felt then and feel now like there were a lot of qualified experts and activists with social media, large social media presences, providing incredible resources, incredible reliable resources—and that the greatest service I, Caroline Calloway, could provide in these times of high anxiety and high stress is entertainment…I’ve been doing interviews all morning and doing literal hurricane prep, so I haven’t given this content the thought that it deserves yet. So I wish I could tell you more about what that will be, but I do know I’m going to make something. I’m going to do what I do best, take some terrible luck and turn it into a great opportunity for content.”

Once again, she accidentally reveals herself in an attempt to reveal a different version of herself. “Terrible luck”? This has nothing to do with luck; this is an act of nature, and your response to it is a decision you made out of free will.

But sure, self-promotion content. Here’s some of it:

Scintillating, right?