Lifestyle
This teacher will guide you into talking with your dreams. A warning: They will talk back
This story is part of Image’s April issue, “Reverie” — an invitation to lean into the spaces of dreams and fantasy. Enjoy the journey.
Two weeks after I lost my sister, she visited me in a dream. Was it her, or was the dream a construction of my psyche, made to process this sudden loss? Either way, it shook me to my core.
Since childhood, I’ve transcribed thousands of pages of dreams into bedside notebooks in the dark, but it wasn’t until I studied dream work, using techniques pioneered by Carl Jung and adapted for artists, that dreams began to change me.
Dream work can be described as the process of interacting with unconscious material to generate deep, truth-charged work. Guided into a state of embodied meditation, the dreamer can “talk” with any element of the dream — characters, objects, room, weather. Shockingly, it all talks back.
Rosager wears Stella McCartney shirt, jeans, and shoes, Keane necklace and rings.
I first learned of dream work when I joined a theater company alongside Kim Gillingham, who founded the organization Creative Dream Work in 1999. Over the years, Gillingham has revolutionized Hollywood’s approach to artmaking through her work with Sandra Oh, Benedict Cumberbatch, Jane Campion and other luminaries who draw on their dreams to create unflinchingly authentic characters on screen.
“We’ve all developed personas, taken certain aspects of ourselves and hidden them away in order to walk through the world,” Gillingham told the Guardian. “Dreams pretty stubbornly and persistently remind us of hidden aspects of ourselves that we might do well to integrate.”
About a decade ago, I met another dream worker named Louise Rosager at a friend’s New Year’s Day brunch. She had also studied with Gillingham. In a past life, Rosager was a ballet dancer and actor in Copenhagen, but after moving to L.A. in 2009, she started developing television series (she’s one of the executive producers behind the Shakespeare drama “Will”). After five years of studying with Gillingham, Rosager became curious about the intersection between dreams and writing and decided to become a dream work teacher herself.
On a midsummer day in 2021, as L.A. emerged from pandemic closures, Rosager held a class in the backyard of a friend’s home in Venice. Starting with mat work, Rosager led us through writing prompts, breathwork and gentle movement, easing us into confluence with our dream material. In the second half of the class, by random draw, my dream was selected for staging. In other words, my classmates were asked to act out my dream, with me as director. I had first staged a dream in this way in Gillingham’s classes, but I’m never prepared for what unfolds.
Watching your dream play out before your eyes in waking life is like inhabiting an alternate reality: hair-raising, confronting, wrecking. Dream work is the opposite of escapism. It’s also nourishing. As Rosager talked me through the staging of the dream, a massive tree appeared in my mind, which I hadn’t noted in the original retelling of the dream. Had the tree been there all along, waiting for me to seek its wisdom? Had it grown with me over the years, or had I grown with it?
Three years later, in preparation for our conversation, I revisit this dream with Rosager, as she leads me through a second dream work session. “Artists want to bare their soul,” she tells me. “The thing we’re making becomes the context through which we can safely do that. It is us but not us.” Dream work offers no answers. It offers something harder to come by: wonder.
Amy Raasch: We tend to hear that the dreamer is every character in their dream. But many wonder, as I did with the dream involving a visitation from my sister two weeks after she died, whether dream figures have come to connect with us in some way or if it all comes from the psyche. How did you come to your understanding of dreams?
Louise Rosager: I was having extremely powerful dreams in my late teens and early 20s. They seemed so undeniable; I had to address them somehow. I used a technique called active imagination, which is essentially automatic writing with a dream character. You are yourself, but you’re allowing the dream character to take your pen and write answers to your questions. I was an actor at the time and dreams would often come in parallel to the characters I was working on. I intuitively had the sense they had something to offer my ability to bring that character to life.
AR: When “talking” to a character or object from my dream in this way — a red phone, a broken piano — I find that as long as I keep the pen moving on the page, there’s always an answer.
LR: It just comes through. Oftentimes, people who have never worked on a dream before will come in to work with me and say, what if it doesn’t work? What if nothing comes? It always comes. I drop them into the dream again, help them breathe a little bit, loosen up the body to dissolve the edges of judgment and ego that we all have, and immediately, I’ll ask, where is the broken piano? And they’ll point to it. They’ll know where it is in space. The dream is so present. It’s as if it’s existing the whole time. All you have to do is open some kind of doorway to it.
AR: Do you think the dream exists before the dreamer dreams it?
LR: Whether it’s in the psyche, or some part of the universe that we don’t know anything about — people call it source, God, dreammaker — something makes these dreams for us. There will never be another person in the world who will have the same dream you’ll have tonight. And the information in those dreams is truly tailor-made for you.
“There will never be another person in the world who will have the same dream you’ll have tonight. And the information in those dreams is truly tailor-made for you,” says Rosager.
AR: How did you transition from being a young actor in Copenhagen, working intuitively with dreams, to teaching this work?
LR: I moved to New York, I got into Shakespeare. When I moved to L.A. in my mid-20s, I met Kim Gillingham, an extraordinary acting teacher who uses dream work as a portal into the unconscious, into things you don’t know about yourself. You close your eyes and work in a very embodied way with your dream images for sometimes up to two hours. When I first worked with her, it was this sense of, OK, this exists. Dream work was something other people were doing and having extraordinary results creatively.
AR: But as you’ve developed as a teacher, you’ve taken it in your own direction.
LR: Yes, after working with Kim, I studied with Stephen Aizenstat at Pacifica Graduate Institute. Stephen’s approach is that dreams are living, autonomous worlds and figures and landscapes. They show up to teach me something, but they also need something from me. Could it be the dream figure is dreaming me as much as I’m dreaming them? What if, with no agenda, I’m in relationship with this figure the same way I’m in relationship with people in my life?
AR: And in relationship with scripted characters?
LR: I work with people’s written characters or characters they’re playing onstage the same way I work on a dream: Let’s meet this living image from the perspective of archetype. If I’m playing Juliet, I would like to think she should be played a certain way, because that’s who she is. But if I allow that image to truly work on me, she might be a completely different Juliet than I or anybody else has ever imagined.
AR: Can you describe the process of letting the image work on you?
LR: Step 1, get out of the ego consciousness around what’s supposed to happen. That’s where I drop people down. I use breath work, gentle movements — just to discombobulate the body a little bit. Then I talk people into a place where they can begin to imagine into the world they’ve created. If I’m working with a dream, I say, “OK, enter the dream place again. What do you see?” Same thing if it’s a setting from your script. When you work in that way, details become clear that you didn’t know were there. Sometimes there are people in the room you hadn’t imagined. You can take it or leave it. If it doesn’t fit into the script, that’s fine. But the imagination is creating this world for a reason; let’s just allow it to be for a moment. And then I bring the character in. What’s the essence emanating from them? Where in your body do you feel that essence? Sometimes, depending on the person, I’ll say, “What would happen if you allowed some of that energy into your body, some of the thoughts they might have into your head?”
AR: You work with writers on structure and outlining as well as dream work. Do you consider dreams narrative?
LR: The narrative structure of a dream, like most TV shows and films, is basically a four- or five-act structure. Shakespeare plays are five-act structures. So the dream is usually constructed of four moments. The first, from a symbolic perspective, is your life right now. For example, in your dream, we first set up the space: Where am I right now? What do you see?
AR: The cabin, my sister’s place in Stillwater. A spare anteroom, a desk, a red phone. The phone rings. It’s my sister.
LR: That’s the second moment, the inciting incident — there’s something you need to see. In the third moment, it shifts; there’s a realization.
AR: She’s calling me from beyond the grave. And she’s so light. She’s a step ahead of me. I’m chasing her through the rooms, but I can’t reach her.
Rosager wears Silk Laundry dress, Everlane shoes, Elizabeth Hooper earrings and cuff.
LR: That’s that third moment: psyche or dreammaker saying you have to look at this and deal with it. And then there’s the fourth moment, which is what Jung called the lysis, where the energy of your life wants to go.
AR: When I first wrote down the dream, it ended, “empty hallway, sky.” But when we staged it, there was this massive tree in the center of the room, rooted beneath the house and growing out through the skylight.
LR: It was very distinct. It was calling for your attention. I would say that is the last moment of the dream. It has an element of unconsciousness, like in any dream. We wouldn’t get the dream if it didn’t. When I rush through the rooms and try to grab onto her, I don’t see the tree. I don’t see light. When I slow down, this last moment can unfold itself and a brand-new perspective on the situation can unfold. I can be in this light too, with this companion, old mother tree, which teaches me how to live in the world, from a more authentic place. That’s the arc.
AR: There’s a strong component of you talking us through the moments, creating a container that allows the world to flower. I could not have gotten there on my own, because the dream was already making my head explode.
LR: When I sold my first show to HBO, I asked one of the executives, “What’s your secret to all these great shows?” Well, he said, “I think my job is to hold a safe space for artists to bring out their best material. Everything else I do is my job as well, but that’s my real job.” And I thought, “OK, that’s going to be my job.”
AR: You’re currently directing veterans in a production of “Romeo and Juliet.” How does dream work intersect with teaching Shakespeare?
LR: We work with Shakespeare’s characters as if we’re working with dream characters. And we will treat the play as if it were a character because it is. Shakespeare plays are like big dreams. Big dreams for the culture. Joseph Campbell says that dreams are personal myths and myths are collective dreams. Shakespeare, because he is a timeless writer, has created myths for our modern world. You can tap into those plays as if they were dreams the culture is experiencing. And I think we’re moving more and more toward the late romances [“Pericles,” “Cymbeline,” “A Winter’s Tale,” “The Tempest”], which is great, because those plays are full of hope and regeneration and forgiveness.
Rosager wears Gabriela Hearst dress, Alexis Bittar rings and cuff.
AR: One of the things that’s so curious about this work is the sense there’s something in dialogue with me. I’m not alone, I don’t have to invent everything.
LR: I see this with my clients all the time; that sort of fundamental loneliness goes away. Over time, you build up a council of figures that will be there for you in any situation. They can be figures from dreams, or figures you write, but you’re helping each other the whole time.
AR: We recently revisited my dream after a span of years. I was wary of returning to that deep grief, but it was all about the tree, which uprooted itself and floated into space — it had a wise but cheeky vibe.
LR: That tree is a portal. People will tell you that you can’t learn inspiration; you have to wait for it. I don’t believe that. I think the dream work is the inspiration. If you practice dream work the way you practice form and structure, you’ll be inspired the whole time. It’ll come to you because you’re open.
Producer: Mere Studios
Makeup: Daphne Chantell Del Rosario
Hair: Marilyn Lizardo
Styling Assistant: Alexa Armendiz
Amy Raasch is a Los Angeles-based writer, actor and performing musician. She holds a BA from the University of Michigan and an MFA from Bennington Writing Seminars. She writes about what haunts us.
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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