Cat Person by Kristen Roupenian (and what it says about relationships)

OMG. That's one of my favorite tweets ever. I'm dying.

 

I have to say I definitely get a first-time-this-person-has-ever-read-a-short-story vibe from a lot of people in #HotTake land.

 

I've seen a ton of people who didn't even realize it was fiction before reacting to it, just started attacking the author assuming it was an essay.

 

I love the Hold Steady but would have no clue what that meant if it weren’t for this thread. It’s frigging brilliant.

 

I'm certainly not the intended audience for that piece. It was meh. Sorry, just an opinion from an old fart.

 

Nothing seemed to stick. By the time I got to the end, I didn't particularly care about either character.

 

I read it. Was mildly amused by both characters, but as a 45-year-old guy who got married at 22 and, therefore, never dated when the Internet existed, I couldn't relate to them.

How out of touch am I with modern dating? "Baby It's Cold Outside" makes more sense to me than the Cat Person story ...

 

‘Cat Person’ Author, Kristen Roupenian, Gets 7-Figure Book Deal

 

Just thinking hypothetically:
What if the author was male and the two characters were reversed?
Young, good-looking male college student working at a movie theater meets older, overweight woman who like Red Vines and is a bad kisser.
Not physically attracted to her, borderline repulsed, yet likes the attention and interested in her interest in him.
With no true interaction, he constructs a mental personality for her.
When it turns out not to be close to who she really is, he rejects her. Doesn't end it cleanly. Doesn't respond to her for a while and then finally ends it.
She gets creepy and then something extremely hateful.
the end

 

The author would not get a 7 figure book deal

 

It's a playful exercise, perhaps one that would be an enjoyable satire of modern fiction tropes (Sam Lipsyte writes dark and funny stuff like this and he's well received) but certainly the reason this resonated with so many women is it mirrored many of their real life experiences. I do think the scenario you laid out is a likely reality.