Will the Real Anthony Fauci Please Stand Up?

Who is Anthony Fauci? Who is Erika Kirk, or Lindsay Clancy? Each has become a star in a peculiar kind of reality show, their characters vivisected across social media and podcasts. The fixation on these and other figures has produced a kind of fan fiction (that mostly-online genre of storytelling, in which enthusiasts of a given book or entertainment franchise craft their own spinoff tales using existing characters). The real lives of Fauci and Kirk and Clancy have become fodder for a feeding frenzy driven by journalists, podcasters, and influencers. Whoever they may be in reality, they have become “content.”

Yet many of the questions about their lives are not frivolous. We are witnessing an agitated battle for the American mind, for some national consensus on the truth. The digital age clobbers us with information—factual or otherwise—and we scramble to make sense of it. We are storytelling creatures, struggling to land on the right story.