The doppelganger horror runs on the double doing better than the original

Evidence

Fear of our digital doubles taking over our lives and fooling those around us is a theme also found in Netflix’s underappreciated 2018 movie Cam, directed by Isa Mazzei. It tells the story of an online sex worker who gets locked out of her cam girl account and finds herself facing the ultimate horror in the age of the monetized self: watching someone who looks exactly like her steal her fans, followers, income, life—and, as in so many doppelganger tales, doing a better job of being her than she ever did. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 188

Categorization

• XREF: The point about the double doing a better job of ‘being you’ than you do is the core anxiety at the heart of the Other Naomi situation — the doppelganger outperforming the original at her own brand. Foreshadows the later chapters where Wolf out-performs Klein in the Mirror World. — connects to: Simulated doubles are purged of death and appear more alive than the original — Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, 46
• SEED: Angle for an essay: the doppelganger anxiety as specific to monetized selfhood — a horror that can only exist in an attention economy where identity is an asset that can literally be stolen and run better by someone else.