r/nycinfluencersnarking

u/PeculiarVermicelli71 - with a week old account - posting in the Hot Chef mega thread about how we're all so wrong about the Hot Chef breakup narrative. The delusion is top notch.

And I quote...

"Okay. Requisite throat-clearing before this veritable novel of a comment: I disagree with 99% of the responses here; I think the majority of them are mean-spirited and posted in bad faith; and that the fundamental exercise of contributing over 3,500 comments about a semi-private influencer/academic is deeply messed up and says more about us than it does about her (best case, it says we're bored in highly-balkanized, late-stage capitalist ennui; worst case that we are projecting our own insecurities, unhappiness with our lives, and mental illnesses onto her). And I genuinely don't want to hurt Katie’s feelings, let alone "kick her while she's down."

ALL THAT SAID. Katie kind of lost me when she started deleting the (let's be honest, relatable) posts about the woman whom Ivan purportedly cheated with and trying to rewrite her breakup to fit a story of two people who just couldn't make it work. Taken in the best light, it was to protect the other woman and Ivan from the internet hordes. Chivalrous. But then she started posting all the stuff about how she still thought he was an amazing, kind-hearted person and how they both shouldered blame in the end of the relationship, etc., etc… Maybe it wasn't intentional, but attempting to divide blame equally when one person betrayed the other's trust reproduces a culture of victim blaming. 

I know some of you doubt that Ivan actually cheated; that doesn't comport with some of Katie's now-deleted posts and replies about his infidelity with a specific person who knew about Katie and pursued Ivan anyway; characterizations of this girl as "simple" and as someone who wouldn't "challenge" him; his refusal to hew to an open-phone policy or go to therapy in the wake of the discovery; and references to her believing this was her “just desserts" for being an affair partner in her early 20s.

This all points to the true "tale as old as time" that she hearkened to when she referred to becoming "increasingly insecure," resulting in him becoming "increasingly tired" (as a disclaimer, I have no basis for thinking this happened with Hot Chef other than my extensive life experience): Man gets caught cheating; Woman requests reasonable assurances that he is contrite and won't repeat infidelity. Man grovels for a couple days. Woman takes him back, which she wanted to do from the beginning because she wants everything to go back to the Way It Was. Man decides he is done repenting; why can't Woman just get over it? This makes Man feel Bad. This makes Man feel like he is not a Good Man. No, Man won't share password to phone. The real problem is that Woman won't trust Man. Man needs PRIVACY. Man needs PRIVACY so man can continue TEXTING OTHER WOMEN. Woman bottles up feelings of insecurity to prove she is the "cool girl.” Woman Loves Man. Woman will Fight For Relationship. Woman stays up at night with images flashing in her brain of Man with Other Woman. Woman is traumatized by this psychic injury inflicted by the person she loved and trusted most. Woman can't eat. Woman can't sleep. Woman can't talk about it with Man. Woman can't talk about it with Family lest they despise Man. Woman sees text flash across Man's Phone. Woman blows up. Man screams at Woman, "You are exhausting me! This Relationship is nothing without trust! We're done!" Two hours after Woman leaves the shared apartment in tears, Man calls Other Woman to come over.

I was gritting my teeth a bit at the outset of the Hot Chef saga because I experienced a couple of whirlwind love stories mirroring Katie’s and Ivan's when I was in my early 20s, including one in a foreign city (London, not Paris, mais c'est dommage). Like calling-our-parents-on-the-first-date, saying-I-love-you-on-day-3, 72-hour-dates, fucking-in-the-park, dancing-in-the-rain, staying-up-all-night, finally-found-our-person, we-know-something-no-one-in-the-history-of-the-world-has-known kind of atomic bomb loves. The certainty (and sometimes smugness) with which she described their romance worried me that she'd be in for the world of pain that I experienced when my epic love stor(ies) came crumbling down, and the person I thought stopped time was not a god after all, but a fallible human being, and a pretty shitty one, at that. Like one tried to hook up with my best friend when he was blacked out on a cocktail of drugs I didn't even know he did on a three-day bender. It struck me that "Hot Chef" was really a hologram of a lot of the ideal qualities Katie was looking for in a man and actually had in herself. But if she said he had them, who were we to contradict her? We don't know him.

I digress. Publicly, the story of Hot Chef, as presented, is about two transcendentally mature, emotionally dialed-in, young people falling in love, treating each other with kindness, communicating in a healthy way, and building a life together, including in the face of all the cynical haters. The notion that Ivan is actually a fuckboi who was being shady on his phone, liking other girls' photos on instagram, and apparently having a sidepiece (as is the trope for Parisian chefs), doesn't fit this narrative. TBH, I always strained to believe he was really that deep, when she would post these lyrical threads about their love story, whereas the one time he posted her, seemingly under duress, all he could muster was like "I liek my gf <3." 

And yes. Part of learning and growing after the end of a relationship is taking stock of your own contributions to its collapse so you can grow and bring a better version of yourself to the next person if that's what you want. It seems to be what all you vultures want her to do.

But.

But.

Framing the end of this relationship as two people going their separate ways in the normal course of things is disingenuous. And it's not going to heal what I've armchair-diagnosed (based on nothing but her posts and my own, similar life experiences) as the central cause of this entire throwing-caution-to-the-wind saga: not a personality disorder, not some gaping vortex of attention-seeking, not an affront to queer or liberationist activism. Just a plain old self-esteem deficiency. (Which is WILD because she is an objectively brilliant, beautiful, decorated, degreed, multitalented hottie, and I don't care what all you people think, I thought her $10 post was great. WORTH EVERY DOLLAR.) Because when you present to the world that asking for reasonable accommodations in your relationship after a serious breach was too much, and resulted in understandable "tiredness," that is cause to reflect on why you would accept so little from someone so ostensibly "wonderful." It falsely equates intentionally going behind your partner's back and choosing to betray their trust after agreeing to monogamy, potentially exposing them to all manner of STIs, and either disregarding or not even considering their feelings, with expressing insecurity in reaction to that. Even repeatedly, over an extended period of time. (Probably because you didn't receive sufficient reassurance in the first place.) One is a lapse in integrity; the other is a very human emotional response. Of course we are all responsible for regulating our emotions; relationships are complicated; and no adult would be expected to continue with another who is screaming and crying all the time and trying to exact revenge on them for making a mistake. But asking for an open-phone policy in the wake of an infidelity? More than reasonable. Hell, my spouse and I have had access to each other's phones basically from day one for practical purposes, though we almost never look in them except to like... hook them up to the car radio.

And it sounds like the initial incident (from what we know) happened in January. That is only five months of Ivan reassurring her he wasn't still cheating, and, in my experience, people who cheat on their partners tend to reveal the affair in "trickle-truths"; that is, you don't find out everything all at once--it's a painful, prolonged exercise of finding out what really happened over a long period of time. Sometimes you don't know the extent of what happened until years later. Sometimes you never find out.

Which also recalls that this relationship was only ten months old. So, for half of the relationship, part of which was long-distance, they fought over a very serious breach of trust and misalignment in values. And for the first, say, six months or so of a relationship, people are on their best behavior. So while Ivan was supposed to be his very best self, he couldn't even keep it in his pants. Being generous to people who "warned" Katie, I think that's what they wanted to convey: to be cautious because you can't really know someone at the outset of a relationship, and people present the best versions of themselves at the beginning. 

Anyway. I really don't have a problem with her sharing her love story, including monetizing it (get your bag, girl), and it's clearly been a source of entertainment for a lot of people, though I, a stranger on the internet, am hardly the arbiter on what she shares or how she makes her living and whether or not I have a problem is immaterial. And I don't think she should direct a mob at Ivan or the Other Woman. But I really wish she would stop whitewashing what happened between them. I know she is invested in painting this narrative of a fairytale love story. But it's perpetuating textbook victim-blaming: we broke up, not because I intentionally hurt you despite our monogamous agreement, but because we broke down irretrievably due to your insecurities that you couldn't get over. She is not the first, not the 1,000th, not the 1,000,000th person to internalize this message, and she won't be the last. But it's a dangerous message. And it's not the truth. If you're reading this and you're going through it or have gone through something similar--I'm sure there are ways you could have acted better on the margins, but it's really not your fault. And you deserve better."

She was just freezing her eggs.

On her podcast she talks about how she’s now paying for the $900 Tracy Anderson membership and says “whatever it’s also a full tax write off”. Girl just bc you film content there sometimes does not make it a defensible tax write off. I’m waiting for the day for the IRS to come after these influencers.

I’m a bit out of date, are they still together? Curious to know before watching tonight’s episode!