Just Watch Me

Those questions about the culture of live streaming inspired Torenberg’s debut novel, Just Watch Me, a tragicomic look at life in the era of the so-called attention economy. The book’s protagonist is Dell Danvers, a chaotic twentysomething New Yorker who can’t keep a job, is behind on rent, and has a sister, Daisy, who is in a coma and on life support. The hospital is just about ready to pull the plug, so Dell launches a 24-7 live stream about her own day-to-day existence to raise donations for private care to save Daisy’s life. The live stream takes off. Dell accumulates staggering numbers of viewers and monetary tips by accepting entertaining dares, such as challenges to eat progressively spicier chili peppers. As the week goes on, she is encouraged to perform increasingly dangerous stunts, and an anonymous online troll threatens to expose a secret from her past.

On one hand, Just Watch Me drips with dark humor. “It’s a book I wrote to make myself laugh during a heavy time,” Torenberg said. On the other, Torenberg also wanted to raise serious questions about the content people create and consume online nowadays, including about the performative nature of some live streaming and the ethics of commodifying personal tragedy for clicks and dollars. Just Watch Me is written from the point of view of Dell, a narrator who is exploitative to the point of being “unapologetically awful,” Torenberg said. “She’s live streaming every aspect of her life so that she doesn’t have to be alone with her thoughts for one second. I don’t like her very much as a person. I don’t think we’d be friends.”

And yet, Torenberg added, unlikable characters are often among the most compelling. She said she has always been drawn to the literary archetypes of dubious grifters (The Talented Mr. Ripley, for one) and strong yet self-destructive women (she’s a fan of All Fours by Miranda July, about an artist’s midlife crisis). In Just Watch Me, Dell’s acid personality is perversely amusing and a huge part of what appeals to the viewers of her live stream. “She’s loud, opinionated, brash—and charismatic,” Torenberg said. She hopes the novel might lead readers to reflect on the kind of behavior they encourage online, where rage-baiting and risky antics are what seem to drive engagement in the digital marketplace today. “There is no decision that Dell makes in a vacuum,” Torenberg said. “She’s in a system that encourages her to do more and more extreme things and rewards her for it constantly.”

For her part, Torenberg is trying to get more comfortable with finally building her own online presence to promote her work as a first-time novelist. “My friend is a social media guru, and he kindly bullied me into doing a social media campaign,” said Torenberg. Her current book tour will bring her back to Boston College, where she majored in applied psychology and human development, with minors in both English and management and leadership. Torenberg works full-time in the tech industry, and unlike her creation Dell, self-promotion doesn’t come naturally to her. “Social media is something you can’t learn in private. You have to learn it in public,” Torenberg said. “There’s a fear of embarrassment.”

Dell has no such fear in Just Watch Me as her viewers coax out and reward even her most negative, shameless instincts. “Dell’s viewers are egging her on at every turn,” Torenberg said. “I wanted to explore the feeling of being implicated in and responsible for the content we consume and encourage." ◽