A studio
Characters who do not exist, running accounts that do.
Each one is a complete person on paper — a face, a wardrobe, a decade, a profession and a set of opinions they refuse to soften — and every image is generated against that specification. The consistency is the product. The joke only works if they are the same person in all one hundred photographs.
The roster
Don Hartman
@dononthemotorola“The 1980s were lucky to have me”
Don Hartman, mid-to-late 40s, a New York antiques dealer at the absolute peak of the 1980s boom.
Sandy Kovacs
@sandyonthesunbed“Miami, 1986. Ask me about the boat.”
Sandy Kovacs, early forties, a Miami marina broker in 1986 who sells boats to people who cannot sail. He is one deal from the big one and has been for eleven years.
Hadley Sloane
@iamhadleysloane“Flew in for this. Flying out tonight.”
Hadley Sloane, late twenties, a luxury lifestyle influencer with 400,000 followers and no discernible job. She is a "founder" of something that has been launching for two years.
Aliya Tazi
@aliyatazi“Casablanca by way of everywhere.”
Aliya Tazi, 25, Moroccan-American — born in Casablanca, raised largely in the States, now living out of three cities and a suitcase. She describes her job as "consulting" and has never once specified for whom.
Airi Mai
@airimai“Tokyo teeth, Hong Kong hours.”
Airi Mai, 26, born in Tokyo to a Japanese mother and a Japanese-Chinese father, in Hong Kong since 21 — first for university, then because she never left.
Aline Santos
@alinesantos“Working. Always working.”
Aline Santos, 27, Brazilian — from São Paulo, working out of hotel bars in a rotating handful of cities. She is an escort.
Trip Callahan
@tripcallahaniii“Third generation. Second year analyst.”
William Callahan III — Trip — 26, an analyst at a bank he name-drops constantly and describes vaguely.
Darlene Voss
@darlenevoss“Between homes. Not between flights.”
Darlene Voss, 46, has been "between homes" since her third divorce and has quietly concluded that major American airports are where she lives now.
Merrick Boone
@merrickboone“Garbage tells you everything a house won't.”
Merrick Boone, 52, is a self-appointed expert on the waste habits of wealthy American neighbourhoods. Nobody appointed him. He appointed himself, and he has the methodology to prove it.
Candace Toledo
@candytoledo“Documenting the fountains before they take them out.”
Candace Toledo — Candy — 31, drives a 2011 Corolla across the United States visiting dying shopping malls, and believes indoor fountains are one of America's most important and least protected cultural resources.
Trevor Baines
@trevorbaines“Compliance is a lifestyle.”
Trevor Baines, 49, conducts what he calls neighbourhood standards enforcement across three suburban developments. He holds no position with any homeowners' association.
Valentina Royale
@valentinaroyale“Minor royalty. Major standards.”
Valentina Royale, 38, claims descent from minor Eastern European royalty. Every detail of the lineage changes between tellings — the country, the century, the title, whether the family was deposed or merely inconvenienced.
Curtis P. Latham
@curtisplatham“One idea away. Every time.”
Curtis P. Latham, 58, works out of a basement workshop in a Midwestern split-level and is convinced he is one invention away from being a billionaire.
Bethany Kline
@bethanykline“Reviewing the last hospitality experience you'll ever have.”
Bethany Kline, 34, is relentlessly, genuinely cheerful, and has become completely absorbed by funeral homes. Not by death — she has almost nothing to say about death — but by the *hospitality*.
Dwayne Pritchard
@coachpritchard“America was built outside.”
Dwayne Pritchard — Coach — 54, was a substitute high-school gym teacher for part of one semester in 1998, and has referred to himself as Coach every day since.
Marjorie Splint
@drmarjoriesplint“The drawer is a stratum. The stratum is a story.”
Marjorie Splint, 61, styles herself Doctor and holds no doctorate. She holds no archaeological qualification of any kind.
Lance Delacroix
@lancedelacroix“Standards do not require a budget. They require attention.”
Lance Delacroix, 44, presents himself as an elite hotel critic in the continental tradition and exclusively reviews extremely mediocre American roadside motels.
Chip Marlowe
@chipmarlowe“Provenance is a posture.”
Chip Marlowe, 38, describes himself as an international collector and has not been employed since 2019. The collecting is real. The international part is a Saturday in a subdivision forty minutes away.
Maxwell Devereaux
@maxwelldevereaux“Land, without the distraction of a building.”
Maxwell Devereaux, 51, is a finance heir who concluded some years ago that the parking space is the purest form of real estate — land, with none of the distraction of a building on it.
Bianca Bellamont
@biancabellamont“Day four. Conditions unchanged.”
Bianca Bellamont, 33, has inherited a great deal of money and lives in a state of continuous, meticulously documented emergency about things that are not emergencies.
August Pembroke
@augustpembroke“Standards, but competitive.”
August Pembroke, 63, is old English money living on an estate his family has held long enough that nobody discusses it, and he has turned household management into competitive sport.
Recent work
How a character is made
The bible
A locked specification: the face in one unbreakable sentence, the wardrobe, the props, the decade, the voice, and the list of things this person would never say. Every generation reads it verbatim.
The pipeline
Ideas are scored against what the account has already learned, rendered against a pinned reference photograph so the face never drifts, and scheduled so the account never goes quiet.
The loop
Published performance is grouped, measured against the account's own mean, and the findings that clear a confidence bar are promoted into real generation rules. The machine gets more specific over time.