Artist Amalia Ulman increased her followers by the thousands when she announced she was moving to Los Angeles. She depicted her new fabulous life in a series of typically sexy, filtered selfies, intermixed with still lifes of flowers and brunch. Then things got dark. She broke up with her boyfriend, got a boob job, and posed with a gun. Then she pulled through, posting inspiring messages and photos of her meditating, as well as being embraced by a mysterious man. “Isn’t it great being taken care of?” she wrote.

It was all a performance. “Everything was scripted,” Ulman explained to The Telegraph. “I spent a month researching the whole thing. There was a beginning, a climax, and an end. I dyed my hair. I changed my wardrobe. I was acting: It wasn’t me.”