Lifestyle
In pursuit of radical honesty, 'Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show' delivers ambiguity
Jerrod Carmichael in Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show.
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Jerrod Carmichael in Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show.
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Peruse any online thread discussing Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show, the disquieting HBO series created by and starring the titular comedian and filmmaker, and colorful descriptors like “pretentious,” “mega narcissist,” and “self-righteous piece of [redacted]” are bound to appear.
“This show seems kinda invasive,” one observer noted on Reddit. “… I’m not sure what the obsession is with public humiliation … About a year ago, I was very much a fan of his honesty and what seemed to be [a] down to earth personality but it looks like it’s morphed into the narcissistic cry for help.”
Carmichael earned a lot of good will from his 2022 breakout standup special Rothaniel, in which he — among other things — came out publicly as gay and processed his mom Cynthia’s devout homophobia. It launched him into the “mainstream”; that is, a stratosphere where one wins prestigious awards, guest hosts Saturday Night Live, and makes headlines for easily agitating the ever-crotchety elder statesman Dave Chappelle.
He was easy to root for because he treated the performance like a therapist’s couch, a safe space where he could break through the silence that encourages shame and deceit. It was different from, but in the lineage of, Richard Pryor’s recounting of his own drug addiction in Live on the Sunset Strip – confessional, blunt, and refreshingly relatable to those who’ve shared a similar experience, delivered in the way only a gifted and self-aware comedian can.
But Reality Show practices an entirely different mode of candor. On camera, Carmichael cheats on his boyfriend Mike and later lies about it during their couples therapy session. He misses a friend’s wedding because he makes a pit stop to get a hot dog along the way. (He was supposed to be the best man.) He goads his parents Joe and Cynthia into having raw, painful discussions about their once-private lives and tightly held beliefs.
All of this is done in service of what he sees as a greater good: radical honesty, which he in turn hopes will lead to stronger bonds with his loved ones. Yet for some, the show has morphed the perception of him from that of an artist valiantly speaking the truth to an exhaustingly selfish crusader for a very specific truth — his own. And whether or not he succeeds at repairing his fractured relationships is only partially answered by Reality Show‘s finale, which aired Friday.
Carmichael in Rothaniel, his 2022 special.
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Carmichael in Rothaniel, his 2022 special.
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Reality Show stands apart
If Rothaniel was presented as catharsis, Reality Show arguably functions as exploitation. It’s one thing to process grief, pain, and pathos through your art; it’s utterly baffling to directly involve the sources of that pathos in your artistic process, particularly when they seem formidably resistant to even acknowledging themselves as the source.
This isn’t the first time. In 2019, Carmichael released two HBO documentary specials that also featured him in conversation with his family, Home Videos and Sermon on the Mount. Home Videos is where he first tested the waters to see how his mom would react to him coming out to her. On camera, he offhandedly dropped in an admission that he’s hooked up with men but stopped short at identifying as gay. Cynthia barely acknowledged the unexpected disclosure.
As Carmichael told Dave Holmes for Esquire, the silence from his parents after coming out is what pushed him to create Reality Show in the first place: “The lack of acknowledgment is what made me go, ‘Okay, I’ll turn the volume up.’ How do I make it as extreme as possible? It’s testing the limits of their cognitive dissonance.”
The extremities make up a strange gumbo: One-part old-school docu-style reality TV (in a different era, this could’ve been True Life: “My Mom’s a Homophobe”); a dash of trashy celeb-reality (think Being Bobby Brown or Britney & Kevin: Chaotic); and another part self-referential prestige experiment (Sarah Polley’s Stories We Tell or How To with John Wilson).
For all its cross-cultural parallels, though, Reality Show stands apart. To his credit, while he has near-total creative control as the creator, co-executive producer, and star, he’s willing to show himself being challenged by his own cognitive dissonance. Within the first few minutes of Reality Show, he makes his MO plain: “Cameras make me feel more comfortable, I like this — it seems permanent, and it feels really dumb to lie.” And yet, we later watch him lie on camera about being monogamous during a couples therapy session with Mike, proving he struggles to adhere to his own ethos, at least at first. (As the season carries on, he and Mike try out non-monogamy together, and seem to find that it works for them.)
The reality TV genre feeds heartily upon the judgmental instincts of its viewers. It needs audiences to engage with it as gossip fodder and opinion-generator, encouraging those who tune in for the “real”-ish drama to scoff at the foolish personalities, cheer on the likable heroes, and boo the flamboyant antagonists. Carmichael clearly understands the format – unscripted in theory, though manipulated and edited to make the “real” fit more neatly into a dramatic arc – and bends it to his will. And while the crudest entries in the reality genre tend to bring up social issues and prejudices either unintentionally or superficially, with Reality Show, Carmichael chooses to purposefully expose the issues in the name of raw, unfiltered honesty.
“I think this will be good for you”
In the mid-2010s, he co-created and starred in the loosely autobiographical network sitcom The Carmichael Show. Far more subversive than its multi-camera, live studio audience format let on, it positioned him as a nihilistic provocateur who revels in frank, multi-generational conversations on an assortment of hot-button issues with his fictional family: abortion, assisted suicide, mass shootings, depression. (It’s frequently, and aptly, been referred to as a modern-day All in the Family.)
A Season 2 episode focuses on Jerrod’s dad Joe (David Alan Grier) as he prepares to deliver a eulogy for his own father, who was abusive and abandoned the family long ago. Jerrod doesn’t understand why Joe would want to honor him – “Am I the only one who remembers what a deadbeat that man was?” – but Joe feels bound by the tradition of never speaking ill of the dead. Jerrod counters that if Joe is going to give the eulogy, he should at least tell the truth about who the man was: “I think it will be good for you.”
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That line could’ve been the tagline for Reality Show, which finds Carmichael butting up against the people in his life — many of them older — who bristle at his desire to revisit painful memories from the past. In the fourth episode, Jerrod attempts to have a straightforward conversation with his real dad Joe, and pelts him with a rapid-fire series of questions about the double life Joe led for years, which included having a secret second family with another woman.
“Would you say you loved [the other woman]? Or was it just like, sexual, or was it — ’cause it was a long time, what – like, 40 years of a relationship? Was it hard every time? Did you feel like a bad person?”
Joe, clearly uncomfortable, begins to shut down and insist that the past is the past, but Jerrod keeps pressing him. Joe snaps back: “Why are you digging into this so deep, son?”
I think it will be good for you.
“Is this gonna be on your special?” Joe wearily asks. “This is hard for me to discuss on cameras.”
Doing this in front of cameras is the only way Carmichael, a late-30s millennial who came of age in the early years of oversharing – The Real World, blogging, Facebook – knows how to have (or force, really) these conversations. It’s telling that, spliced throughout some of the episodes, Reality Show includes footage from the Carmichael family’s home videos going back decades, some of which Jerrod himself shot as a kid with a camcorder. The grainy images root the present-day points of conflict firmly in an “authentic” past, suggesting that this project was predestined, something this artist has unintentionally been working toward for decades.
“Your option is no option,” Jerrod snaps back at Joe around that campfire, “so don’t criticize the way I do it. If the cameras help me, then they f—— help. But your way is nothing, your way is silence, your way is death.”
Eventually, Joe is tapped out. “You’ve expressed yourself … can I go home?”
The camera gives Jerrod courage, a security blanket to wear while attempting to address the distance between him and Joe, yet it’s not yielding the results he’s looking for. It’s hard not to wonder if the cameras are actually hindering him in the long run, keeping him stuck on the false hope that others around him – who have thus far only proven rigid in their stances – might open up to him the way he wants them to.
Bending his truth for his mom
At the core of Reality Show, nestled beneath the layer of a mission for radical truth, is Carmichael’s determination to radically alter worldviews. “Could my mom change?” he ponders at one point. He surmises, “It’s reason to keep fighting.”
“I’m not going to sit here and lie to you,” his uber-Christian mom Cynthia insists in the finale, while repeating yet again that she’d “prefer” that he isn’t gay. (In an earlier episode, she likened homosexuality to being a murderer.) Cynthia might be the most authentic of all the figures in Reality Show, unapologetically herself. His impasse with her has less to do with avoiding the truth than it does the fact that her truth stands in direct opposition to his.
She visits Jerrod and Mike in New York City for Mother’s Day weekend, and he takes her to a queer-friendly Harlem church, where the pastor pushes back against her insistence that the Bible condemns homosexuality. Later they meet with a queer therapist for joint counseling. Neither of these experiences sees her budging from her stance: “I’d like for him not to be gay,” she tells the therapist during one-on-one time, adding matter-of-factly, “I can go further [with my acceptance], I just choose right now not to … I don’t want to.”
Later, when she reiterates her desire for him to find a woman to settle down with, he tries meeting her on her terms: He consents to letting her attempt to pray away the gay in front of him. She’s truly giddy; it might be the happiest she appears in the entire show. “I love you. That blessed my heart,” she says, satisfied. She’s completely unaware (or unbothered?) by how her son’s body seems to recoil out of deep discomfort.
In an effective bit of dramatic editing, the prayer immediately cuts to Carmichael remarking on the moment during a standup performance. “She was so happy that I let her do it. I immediately regretted it.”
Jerrod Carmichael in Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show.
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Jerrod Carmichael in Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show.
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Throughout Reality Show, Carmichael imagines standup snippets as if they were a more elevated version of a confessional booth, that reality TV convention where the cast members get to narrate their perspective of the story unfolding. It’s devastating watching him concede to her, to allow her this delusion. But there’s life as-it-happens and life as reflected upon later. And it’s important to note this doesn’t come out of nowhere; this has been years in the making, with long periods of absence and occasional heated exchanges, some of which were captured on camera. Through his extravagant attempts at familial reconciliation, Jerrod’s ultimately realized he has to bend his truth a little to maintain some sort of relationship with Cynthia.
I think it will be good for you.
“You know what I realized I need is a reason to believe everything will be OK,” he adds. “I’m always looking for that. When I was young, I found it in my mother. And now, I’m finding a lot of that in [Mike].” As he says this, a montage of images flurry by: Cynthia packing her bags in her hotel room to go back home to North Carolina; a younger Cynthia smiling for the camera in a home video; Mike teaching Jerrod how to swim in a pool.
A revelatory viewing experience
And yet the finale also suggests a small but perceptible shift in Jerrod’s relationship with Cynthia, and proves the show is more than a masochistic, navel-gazey affair (though it’s certainly that, too). This is soap opera verité in its most anarchic state — almost certainly a terrible idea for everyone involved, but quite possibly a learning experience for those observing from the outside looking in.
The post-credits sequence is jarringly optimistic. The final image is of Mike and Cynthia laughing together in her kitchen in North Carolina a few months later; she even places her hand affectionately on his back for a quick moment. We have no idea if Cynthia still believes Jerrod and Mike are on equally sinful footing with murderers, though the scene implies something within her has softened.
It’s unclear what we’re supposed to make of this – that maybe Jerrod’s persistence has actually helped him reconnect with his family? If so, it’s worth considering Reality Show a success for what he’s said he wanted out of this project, even if there’s reason to be disappointed in the concessions he may have had to make to get there.
The impulse to question why any of this needed to happen in such a public manner doesn’t completely recede with this conclusion, though maybe it makes the show’s existence easier to digest. In any case, the ending is hardly pat — real life plays out on its own terms away from the cameras — and Reality Show‘s frank depiction of a Black queer man attempting to push back against his family’s culture of silence moves the needle even further than Rothaniel did. He’s provided viewers with an imperfect guide for how to have difficult but necessary conversations with the people they care about (preferably without dropping a camera crew in the mix).
Clay and his mom Margarita on Love is Blind.
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Clay and his mom Margarita on Love is Blind.
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Oddly enough, Reality Show shares a bit in common with the most recent season of the absurdist Netflix dating series Love Is Blind, which featured Clay, a young Black man who also dealt with unresolved trauma stemming from his own dad’s infidelities in a very public manner. The show’s silly “social experiment” — above all designed for maximum gawking and entertainment — inadvertently stumbled into a candid and relatively honest discussion about Black masculinity and generational trauma.
At Clay’s doomed wedding ceremony to AD, his mom Margarita, no longer married to his dad Trevor, gave the series its truest moment thus far, when she explained to Trevor how his actions were affecting their son all these years later. “Your past and things that you witness, it’s part of your DNA. It’s part of your inside. And if you don’t get freakin’ help, you bring that s— into the next thing.”
Clay brought his baggage into Love Is Blind and Jerrod brought his into Reality Show. Disarray ensued and feelings were hurt. There’s a silver lining though: In making highly questionable decisions for all the world to see, they forced conversations that need to be had but often aren’t, and perhaps some viewers may come away feeling inspired to confront similar issues in their own lives. Even amid all the mess, some honesty managed to break through the silence.
The art industry is increasingly shaped by artists’ and art businesses’ shared realization that they are locked in a fierce struggle for sustained attention — against each other, and against the rest of the overstimulated, always-online world. A major New York art fair aims to win this competition next month by knocking down the increasingly shaky walls between contemporary art and fashion.
When visitors enter the Independent art fair on May 14, they will almost immediately encounter its open-plan centerpiece: an installation of recent couture looks from Comme des Garçons. It will be the first New York solo presentation of works by Rei Kawakubo, the brand’s founder and mastermind, since a lauded 2017 survey exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.
Art fairs have often been front and center in the industry’s 21st-century quest to capture mindshare. But too many displays have pierced the zeitgeist with six-figure spectacles, like Maurizio Cattelan’s duct-taped banana and Beeple’s robot dogs. Curating Independent around Comme des Garçons comes from the conviction that a different kind of iconoclasm can rise to the top of New York’s spring art scrum.
Elizabeth Dee, the founder and creative director of Independent, said that making Kawakubo’s work the “nerve center” of this year’s edition was a “statement of purpose” for the fair’s evolution. After several years at the compact Spring Studios in TriBeCa, Independent will more than double its square footage by moving to Pier 36 at South Street, on the East River. Dee has narrowed the fair’s exhibitor list, to 76, from 83 dealers in 2025, and reduced booth fees to encourage a focus on single artists making bold propositions.
“Rei’s work has been pivotal to thinking about how my work as a curator, gallerist and art fair can push boundaries, especially during this extraordinary move toward corporatization and monoculture in the art world in the last 20 years,” Dee said.
Kawakubo’s designs have been challenging norms since her brand’s first Paris runway show in 1981, but her work over the last 13 years on what she calls “objects for the body” has blurred borders between high fashion and wearable sculpture.
The Comme des Garçons presentation at Independent will feature 20 looks from autumn-winter 2020 to spring-summer 2025. Forgoing the runway, Kawakubo is installing her non-clothing inside structures made from rebar and colored plastic joinery.
Adrian Joffe, the president of both Comme des Garçons International and the curated retailer Dover Street Market International (and who is also Kawakubo’s husband), said in an interview that Kawakubo’s intention was to create a sculptural installation divorced from chronology and fashion — “a thing made new again.”
Every look at Independent was made in an edition of three or fewer, but only one of each will be for sale on-site. Prices will be about $9,000 to $30,000. Comme des Garçons will retain 100 percent of the sales.
Asked why she was interested in exhibiting at Independent, the famously elusive Kawakubo said via email, “The body of work has never been shown together, and this is the first presentation in New York in almost 10 years.” Joffe added a broader philosophical motivation. “We’ve never done it before; it was new,” he said. Also essential was the fair’s willingness to embrace Kawakubo’s vision for the installation rather than a standard fair booth.
Kawakubo began consistently engaging with fine art decades before such crossovers became commonplace. Since 1989, she has invited a steady stream of contemporary artists to create installations in Comme des Garçons’s Tokyo flagship store. The ’90s brought collaborations with the artist Cindy Sherman and performance pioneer Merce Cunningham, among others.
More cross-disciplinary projects followed, including limited-release direct mailers for Comme des Garçons. Kawakubo designs each from documentation of works provided by an artist or art collective.
The display at Independent reopens the debate about Kawakubo’s proper place on the continuum between artist and designer. But the issue is already settled for celebrated artists who have collaborated with her.
“I totally think of Rei as an artist in the truest sense,” Sherman said by email. “Her work questions what everyone else takes for granted as being flattering to a body, questions what female bodies are expected to look like and who they’re catering to.”
Ai Weiwei, the subject of a 2010 Comme des Garçons direct mailer, agreed that Kawakubo “is, in essence, an artist.” Unlike designers who “pursue a sense of form,” he added, “her design and creation are oriented toward attitude” — specifically, an attitude of “rebellion.”
Also taking this position is “Costume Art,” the spring exhibition at the Costume Institute. Opening May 10, the show pairs individual works from multiple designers — including Comme des Garçons — with artworks from the Met’s holdings to advance the argument made by the dress code for this year’s Met gala: “Fashion is art.”
True to form, Kawakubo sometimes opts for a third way.
“Rei has often said she’s not a designer, she’s not an artist,” Joffe said. “She is a storyteller.”
Now to find out whether an art fair sparks the drama, dialogue and attention its authors want.
Lifestyle
They set out to elevate karaoke in L.A. — and opened a glamorous lounge that pulls out all the stops
Brothers Leo and Oliver Kremer visited karaoke spots around the globe and almost always had the same impression.
“The drinks weren’t always great, the aesthetics weren’t always so glamorous, the sound wasn’t always awesome and the lights were often generic,” says Leo, a former bassist of the band Third Eye Blind.
As devout karaoke fans, they wanted to level up the experience. So they dreamed up Mic Drop, an upscale karaoke lounge in West Hollywood that opens Thursday. It’s located inside the original Larrabee Studios, a historic 1920s building formerly owned by Carole King and her ex-husband, Gerry Goffin — and the spot where King recorded some of her biggest hits. Third Eye Blind band members Stephan Jenkins and Brad Hargreaves are investors of the new venue.
Inside the two-story, 6,300-square-foot venue with 13 private karaoke rooms and an electrifying main stage, you can feel like a rock star in front of a cheering audience. Want to check it out? Here are six things to know.
The Kremer brothers hired sculptor Shawn HibmaCronan to create an 8-foot-tall disco-themed microphone for their karaoke lounge.
1. Take your pick between a private karaoke experience or the main stage
A unique element of Mic Drop is that it offers both private karaoke rooms and a main stage experience for those who wish to sing in front of a crowd. The 13 private rooms range from six- to 45-person capacity. Each of the karaoke rooms are named after a famous recording studio such as Electric Lady, Abbey Road, Shangri La and of course, Larrabee Studios. There is a two-hour minimum on all rentals and hourly rates depend on the room size and day of the week.
But if you’re ready to take the center stage, it’s free to sing — at least technically. All you have to do is pay a $10 fee at the door, which is essentially a token that goes toward your first drink. Then you can put your name on the list with the KJ (karaoke jockey) who keeps the crowd energized throughout the night and even hits the stage at times.
Harrison Baum, left, of Santa Monica, and Amanda Stagner, 27, of Los Angeles, sing in one of the 13 private karaoke rooms.
2. Thumping, high sound quality was a top priority
As someone who toured the world playing bass for Third Eye Blind, top-tier sound was a nonnegotiable for Leo. “Typically with karaoke, the sound is kind of teeny, there’s not a lot of bass and the vocal is super hot and sitting on top too much,” he says. To combat this, he and his brother teamed up with Pineapple Audio, an audio visual company based in Chicago, to design their crisp sound system. They also installed concert-grade speakers and custom subwoofers from a European audio equipment manufacturer called Celto, and bought gold-plated Sennheiser wireless microphones, which they loved so much that they had an 8-foot-tall replica made for their main room. Designed by artist Shawn HibmaCronan, the “macrophone,” as they call it, has roughly 30,000 mirror tiles. “It spins and throws incredible disco light everywhere,” says Leo.
Karaoke jockeys Sophie St. John, 27, second from left, and Cameron Armstrong, 30, right, get the crowd involved with their song picks at Mic Drop.
3. A concert-level performance isn’t complete without good stage lighting and a haze machine
Each karaoke room features a disco ball and dynamic lighting that syncs up with whatever song you’re singing, which makes you feel like you are a professional performer. There’s also a haze machine hidden under the leather seats. Meanwhile, the main stage is concert-ready with additional dancing lasers and spotlights.
Brett Adams, left, of Sherman Oaks, and Patrick Riley of Studio City sing karaoke together inside a private lounge at Mic Drop.
4. The song selection is vast, offering classics and new hits
One of the worst things that can happen when you go to karaoke is not being able to find the song you want to sing. At Mic Drop, the odds of this happening are slim to none. The venue uses a popular karaoke service called KaraFun, which has a catalog of more than 600,000 songs (and adds 400 new tracks every month), according to its website. Take your pick from country, R&B, jazz, rap, pop, love duets and more. (Two newish selections I spotted were Raye’s “Where Is my Husband” and Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need,” which both released late last year.) In the private karaoke rooms, there’s also a fun feature on Karafun called “battle mode,” which allows you and your crew of up to 20 people to compete in real time. KaraFun also has an entertaining music trivia game, which I tested out with the founders and came in second place.
The design inspiration for Mic Drop was 1920s music lounges and 1970s disco culture, says designer Amy Morris.
5. The interiors are inspired by 1920s music lounges mixed with ‘70s disco vibes
A disco ball hangs from the ceiling.
If you took the sophisticated aesthetic of 1920s music lounges and mixed it with the vibrant and playful era of 1970s disco culture, you’d find Mic Drop.
When you walk into the lounge, the first thing you’ll see is a bright red check-in desk that resembles a performer’s dressing room with vanity lights, several mirrors and a range of wigs. “So much of karaoke is about getting into character and letting go of the day, so we had the idea to sell the wigs,” says Oliver. As you continue into the lounge, the focal point is the stage, which is adorned with zebra-printed carpet and dramatic, red velvet curtains. For seating, slide into the red velvet banquettes or plop onto a gold tiger velvet stool. Upstairs, you’ll find the intimate karaoke studios, which are decorated with red velvet walls and brass, curved doorways that echo the building’s deco arches, says Mic Drop’s interior designer, Amy Morris of the Morris Project.
Sarah Rothman, center, of Oakland, and friend Rachel Bernstein, left, of Los Angeles, wait at the bar.
6. You can order nontraditional karaoke bites as you wait for your turn to sing
While Mic Drop offers some of the food you’d typically find at a karaoke lounge such as tater tots, truffle popcorn and pizza, the venue has some surprising options as well. For example, a 57 gram caviar service (served with chips, crème fraîche and chives) and shrimp cocktail from Santa Monica Seafood. For their pizza program, the Kremer brothers teamed up with Avalou’s Italian Pizza Company, which is run by Louis Lombardi who starred in “The Sopranos.” He’s the brainchild behind my favorite dish, the Fuhgeddaboudit pizza, which is made with pastrami, pickles and mustard. It might sound repulsive, but trust me.
As for the cheeky cocktails, they are all named after famous musicians and songs such as the Pink Pony Club (a tart cherry pomegranate drink with vodka named after Chappell Roan), Green Eyes (a sake sour with kiwi and melon named after Green Day) and Megroni Thee Stallion (an elevated negroni named after Megan Thee Stallion).
When John Lantigua, a retired journalist in Miami Beach, checked his email one recent morning, he was glad to see an invitation.
“It was like, ‘Come and share an evening with me. Click here for details,’” Mr. Lantigua said.
It appeared to be a Paperless Post invitation from someone he once worked with at The Palm Beach Post, a man who had left Florida for Mississippi and liked to arrange dinners when he was back in town.
Mr. Lantigua, 78, clicked the link. It didn’t open.
He clicked a second time. Still nothing.
He didn’t realize what was going on until a mutual friend who had received the same email told him it wasn’t an invitation at all. It was a scam.
Phishing scams have long tried to frighten people into clicking on links with emails claiming that their bank accounts have been hacked, or that they owe thousands of dollars in fines, or that their pornography viewing habits have been tracked.
The invitation scam is a little more subtle: It preys on the all-too-human desire to be included in social gatherings.
The phishy invitations mimic emails from Paperless Post, Evite and Punchbowl. What appears to be a friendly overture from someone you know is really a digital Trojan horse that gives scammers access to your personal information.
“I thought it was diabolical that they would choose somebody who has sent me a legitimate invitation before,” Mr. Lantigua said. “He’s a friend of mine. If he’s coming to town, I want to see him.”
Rachel Tobac, the chief executive of SocialProof Security, a cybersecurity firm, said she noticed the scam last holiday season.
“Phishing emails are not a new thing,” Ms. Tobac said, “but every six months, we get a new lure that hijacks our amygdala in new ways. There’s such a desire for folks to get together that this lure is interesting to people. They want to go to a party.”
Phishing scams involve “two distinct paths,” Ms. Tobac added. In one, the recipient is served a link that turns out to be dead, or so it seems. A click activates malware that runs silently as it gleans passwords and other bits of personal information. In all likelihood, this is what happened when Mr. Lantigua clicked on the ersatz invitation link.
Another scam offers a working link. Potential victims who click on it are asked to provide a password. Those who take that next step are a boon to hackers.
“They have complete control of your email and, in turn, your entire digital life,” Ms. Tobac said. “They can reset your password for your dog’s Instagram account. They can take over your bank account. Change your health insurance.”
Digital invitation platforms are trying to combat the scam by publishing guides on how to spot fake invitations. Paperless Post has also set up an email account — phishing@paperlesspost.com — for users to submit messages for verification. The company sends suspicious links to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, a nonprofit that maintains a database monitored by cybersecurity firms. Flagged links are rendered ineffective.
The scammers’ new strategy of exploiting the desire for connection is infuriating, said Alexa Hirschfeld, a founder of Paperless Post. “Life can be isolating,” Ms. Hirschfeld said. “When it looks like you’re getting an invitation from someone you know, your first instinct is excitement, not skepticism.”
Olivia Pollock, the vice president of brand for Evite, said that fake invitations tended to be generic, promising a birthday party or a celebration of life. Most invitations these days tend to have a specific focus — mahjong gatherings or book club talks, for instance. “The devil is in the details,” Ms. Pollock said.
Because scammers don’t know how close you are with the people in your contact list, fake invitations may also seem random. “They could be from your business school roommate you haven’t spoken to in 10 years,” Ms. Hirschfeld said.
Alyssa Williamson, who works in public relations in New York, was leaving a yoga class recently when she checked her phone and saw an invitation from a college classmate.
“I assumed it was an alumni event,” Ms. Williamson, 30, said. “I clicked on it, and it was like, ‘Enter your email.’ I didn’t even think about it.”
Later that day, she received texts from friends asking her about the party invitation she had just sent out. Her response: What party?
“The thing is, I host a lot of events,” she said. “Some knew it was fake. Others were like, ‘What’s this? I can’t open it.’”
Andrew Smith, a graduate student in finance who lives in Manhattan, received what looked like a Punchbowl invitation to “a memory making celebration.” It appeared to have come from a woman he had dated in college. He received it when he was having drinks at a bar on a Friday night — “a pretty insidious piece of timing,” he said.
“The choice of sender was super clever,” Mr. Smith, 29, noted. “This was somebody that would probably get a reaction from me.”
Mr. Smith seized on the phrase “memory making celebration” and filled in the blanks. He imagined that someone in his ex-girlfriend’s immediate family had died. Perhaps she wanted to restart contact at this difficult moment.
Something saved him when he clicked a link and tried to tap out his personal information — his inability to remember the password to his email account. The next day, he reached out to his ex, who confirmed that the invitation was fake.
“It didn’t trigger any alarm bells,” Mr. Smith said. “I went right for the click. I went completely animal brain.”
The new scam comes with an unfortunate side effect, a suspicion of invitations altogether. It’s enough to make a person antisocial.
“Don’t invite me to anything,” Mr. Lantigua, the retired journalist, said, only half-joking. “I’m not coming.”
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