Who is Anna Delvey’s techno-bro beau based on in ‘Inventing Anna?’ – New York Post

Scammer Anna Delvey is infamous for swindling the New York elite out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And in Inventing Anna, the new Shonda Rhimes Netflix show about her, she has a ridiculous tech entrepreneur boyfriend.

On the series, which stars Julia Garner in the title role and is out Friday, Annas on-screen love interest is Chase Sikorski (Saamer Usmani, Succession). Chase is introduced to the audience in episode 2, when hes giving a Ted Talk about the potential to cloud source your dreams. A tech entrepreneur, he has an app called Wake, that never gets off the ground, and he uses the cringeworthy slogan, everyone else is Woke but Chase is Wake.

As he explains in his Ted Talk, dreams are filled with meaning and magic but when we wake up in the morning, All of that knowledge just dissolves Imagine, what if instead of losing that time, you could tap into it? Could we be more connected?

The sequence feels like a satire of Silicon Valley culture, and its true that Chase and his idea to cloud source dreams are fictional. All episodes of Inventing Anna begin with the same disclaimer: This story is completely true. Except for the parts that are totally made up.

But Chase has roots in reality.

In the 2018New York magazine article about Delvey that inspired this show, her beau is mentioned just briefly, unnamed blind-item style, as a futurist on the TED-Talks circuit whod been profiled in The New Yorker. According to the profile, Delvey ran around with him for a while in 2015. Then it was 2016. The guy, whose app never materialized, moved to the Emirates, and Anna came to New York on her own.

When that profile when viral, internet sleuths honed in on two men who fit the bill.

anna delveys futurist boyfriend is almost certainly either shingy or ray kurzweil but BOTH (surprisingly?) have new yorker profiles AND Ted Talks, one Twitter user speculated, while a 2015 Slate article concurred that these were the likely candidates.

Lets break it down.

David Shing, aka Shingy, was described as AOLs Digital Prophet in a 2014 New Yorker profile. Hes an Australian marketing exec who worked at AOL, has an eccentric sense of style, and a TED Talk in which he talks about how connected this generation is which is similar to what Chase says in his TED talk in Inventing Anna. Hes currently 50 while Delvey is 31, but a 20-year age gap isnt out of the question.

Meanwhile, futurist Ray Kurzweil, who was profiled by the New Yorker in 2012, has written books on AI and transhumanism. But, hes currently 73, making a match with Delvey less likely.

However, there is one other man who checks both boxes and then some.

Hunter Lee Soik, 40, is a Korean-American futurist who got a 2013 profile in the New Yorker, actually created an app involving dreams, and lived in Dubai. Among other endeavors, he was a creative consultant on Jay-Z and Kayne Wests Watch The Throne tour and for Italian Vogue.

He spent several months reading Freud and Jung and Allan Hobson on dreams, just to figure out everyones position, and learning about researchers in Japan who are mapping the neurological processes of dreams, his 2013 New Yorker profile says. What would happen if we created a space where dreams were organized?Soik poses in the story.

A 2014 Fast Company profile explains that Soik lives out of temporarily rented homes in Berlin, San Francisco, New York, or Los Angeles often found via Airbnb and wears only black.

A Kickstarter for his app, called Shadow, has a video of him proposing to create the largest dream database in the world.

The clincher? Hes also mentioned in a 2014 post on Delveys Instagram.Its a photo taken from far away of someone lounging on the deck of a boat on the ocean. In the caption, Delvey wrote, #Ibizato#Formenteralast days of summer with@jaymacardoso@hunterleesoik.

Neither Delvey nor Soik responded when The Post reached out for comment.

If social media is to be trusted, the relationship didnt last.

While Delvey was in jail in 2021, she posted on her Instagram that she is looking for a boyfriend.

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Who is Anna Delvey's techno-bro beau based on in 'Inventing Anna?' - New York Post