How Do Online Influencers Become Irresistibly Relatable?

My twin sister, Ruby Stone, and I split up after our parents' divorce. She stays with Mom, while I went with Dad. Since the divorce, he's sunk into a deep depression, gambling away every penny we have. We move into a dark, damp apartment, and life becomes an endless struggle. Every day, I go to school and quietly work a part-time job to keep us afloat. Then, out of nowhere, Ruby—whom I haven't heard from in forever—sends me a link to a live stream. "Check this out, Aria. There's a surprise waiting for you." I click it, and my jaw drops. I'm the one topping the trending live streams. The screen splits in two. On one side, I sit in my dingy apartment, hunched over homework under the dim light. On the other side, Mom and Dad cuddle with Ruby on the fancy couch of their sprawling villa. The comments came pouring in. "Let's see what happens when twins are raised on opposite sides of fortune all the way to 18." "Aria still doesn't know, right? Her parents never divorced. They're loaded and perfectly happy. Ruby's life has been like a dream too." "Poor Aria. She's always starving and never has anything decent to wear. Isn't that basically abuse?" "She's the more sensible one, so her parents decided to raise her poorly."

A week after my engagement, I was delivered an unusual engagement gift. My phone chimed. I glanced down and saw a push notification from a social app. [Fell in love with a female livestreamer right before my engagement. I feel guilty toward my older girlfriend who's about to become my fiancée—how should I deal with this?] The user ID was "SimonLovesClaire." The profile picture showed a melancholy side view of a man wrapped in a gray scarf. I recognized him instantly. It was my fiancé, Simon Aldrich. That limited-edition scarf was the birthday gift I had given him last year.

On the day the male influencer patient was discharged, he posted a tearful video accusing my chaste, principled doctor wife of sexually assaulting him. In the clip, he cowered in a corner of the hospital, trembling, his clothes disheveled. With a terrified cry of "Dr. Shelby," he abruptly cut the footage. Overnight, my wife became a monster in a white coat—public enemy number one across the internet. We begged him, again and again, to come forward and clarify the truth. Instead, he posted an injury assessment report and wept about being bullied by his doctor. My wife had no way to defend herself. She was suspended pending investigation—and in the end, she leapt from the thirtieth floor. I endured humiliation and waited for the truth to surface. When it finally did, I obtained a reexamination report that proved her innocence. But by then, no one cared about the truth anymore. And I, consumed by despair, died of cancer. When I opened my eyes again, I had returned to the day that patient was first admitted. This time, I begged my wife to take leave—I wanted to take her away from this doomed fate. But my gentle wife wrapped her arms around me, her eyes red, and said, "Don't be afraid, honey. This time… I won't run away."

Every year on the day the SAT results are released, I spend the entire day kneeling at my mother's grave. Three years ago, I fell for a phone scam and transferred all of the tuition money she had saved through years of diligently saving up to the scammers. Unable to take the sudden blow, Mom suffered a fatal heart attack. After she passed away, debt collectors began showing up at our door. Only then did I learn how much money she had borrowed just to keep us afloat. I have no choice but to give up my admission offer from Jaloria College. Working five jobs a day, I finally repay every last debt today. On the subway ride to the cemetery, I suddenly come across a streamer whose voice sounds strangely familiar. She blabs, "How do you teach kids the value of earning money? In my experience, extreme circumstances work the best. I deliberately created a scenario for my daughter where both her parents are supposedly dead, and she inherited a million dollars of my debt. "She's almost finished paying it off now. Tell me, can your kids do that?" Someone in the comments section questions her methods, saying it is too insane. She only grows more smug as she gloats, "So what? She's the one who was stupid enough to get scammed. I was just teaching her a lesson. As a reward for doing so well, I'll tell her the truth on her birthday five days from now. Any sensible child will understand their parents' good intentions." As she gestures animatedly, a crescent-shaped birthmark on her wrist comes into view. It's identical to my mom's. My hands tremble as I create a new account. I switch the profile picture to a man in a suit and change the background to luxury cars and mansions. Then, I send her an expensive virtual gift. While she excitedly thanks me, I leave a comment. "You're absolutely right, ma'am. If only I had a smart woman like you around to help me raise my children."

On my way to work, I came across a livestream from an influencer who posted about her relationship, tagged at my company’s location. She was talking about her office romance with the CEO of a major corporation. But wasn’t the CEO of her company my husband? I clicked on her profile and saw that it was full of wedding-prep posts. The man never showed his face, but his build looked almost exactly like my husband’s. So I left a comment in the livestream: “I heard the CEO of Gibson Corporation has been married for a long time. So what does that make you...?” The streamer muted me, then instantly burst into tears. “The internet isn’t lawless. If you keep spreading rumors and calling me a mistress, I’m calling the police.” Her fans immediately swarmed me. “You’re probably the other woman yourself. That’s why your mind went there.” “I checked her profile. She’s some woman in her thirties. She’s obviously jealous because the streamer is young, pretty, and has a rich, powerful boyfriend who dotes on her.” “The account’s brand new. She’s obviously just a troll.” I tried to say more, only to realize I had already been kicked out of the livestream, and my account had been reported until I couldn’t even log back in. I stared at the proof of our marriage in the drawer for a long moment. Then I raised my hand and smacked my sleeping husband awake. “Exactly how many wives are you planning to have?”

My adoptive parents' long-lost daughter came back. She's a wellness influencer. She eats from crystal bowls she "cleansed." Sleeps with a white noise machine. She will only ride in a custom, climate-controlled car. That's not all. She filled our family's Manhattan law firm with Himalayan salt lamps and energy crystals. The espresso in the conference room? Replaced with gluten-free, organic dandelion root tea. "The energy here is so murky," she'd say. "We need to cleanse the world with love and light!" My guilt-ridden parents gave her everything she wanted. Even my fiancé told me, "Ava, you stole twenty years of her Upper East Side life. Can't you cut her some slack?" The day of the final hearing for our firm's biggest case, the entire court had to wait for her to finish her "emotional cleansing meditation." The judge was furious. I stood up. Delivered a flawless closing argument. I won our client $500 million and secured the future of the firm. But at the party, she had a drunken breakdown, fell into the pool, and drowned. My parents and my fiancé blamed me for everything. "You always have to win, don't you? It was a simple, open-and-shut case. You couldn't even let her have that?" They had me committed to a psychiatric hospital. They destroyed my law license and my reputation. They even had me injected with a fatal overdose of sedatives. I died full of hate. The next time I opened my eyes, I was back. Back to the day she was crying on her Instagram Live, begging for the case. This time, I walked straight into our rival's law firm. This "sure-win" case? I'm going to make you lose everything.