Tom Ripley’s Torch: 5 Modern Grifters Who Master the Art of Becoming Someone Else

Tom Ripley didn’t just steal money—he stole selves. Highsmith’s creation made identity theft feel both elegant and inevitable, a survival tactic for those allergic to truth. Two decades into the 21st century, his shadow looms large. Here are five contemporary figures who’ve inherited his chameleon spirit, blurring reality and performance in ways that feel disturbingly modern.

1. Who built a false identity to infiltrate New York’s elite using Instagram-era social media?

Anna Delvey (née Anna Sorokin), immortalized in Netflix’s Inventing Anna, took Ripley’s playbook and updated it for the influencer age. A Russian-born con artist posing as a German heiress, she weaponized curated Instagram aesthetics—art-world buzzwords, minimalist fashion, and fake bank statements—to convince Manhattan’s 1% she was funding a private arts club. Unlike Ripley’s analog forgeries, her lie lived online: influencers amplified her myth, and venture capitalists wrote checks because her story looked authentic. The genius wasn’t the scam—it was making everyone complicit in their own exploitation.

2. Which literary character deconstructs the “perfect victim” archetype through calculated deception?

Amy Dunne from Gone Girl turns Ripley’s amorality inward. Gillian Flynn’s protagonist stages her own disappearance to frame her husband, crafting a decade’s worth of fake diary entries and alibi-proof murders. But Amy’s deeper crime is manipulating how we see her: by playing the “Cool Girl” before the reveal, she exposes society’s obsession with female victimhood as a performance art. Like Ripley, she’s a shape-shifter, but her target isn’t wealth—it’s the stories we tell ourselves about gender.

3. Who represents the dark side of online identity construction in modern fiction?

Joe Goldberg, the antihero of You, makes Ripley look quaint. Played by Penn Badgley in the hit series, Joe uses social media to stalk and stalk to seduce, crafting tailored personas for each romantic obsession. He’ll pose as a barista, a writer, or a yoga instructor—all while quoting Rilke and hiding bodies. His genius is exploiting the digital age’s intimacy illusion: everyone’s persona is half-fiction now, so who’s to say he’s not just another self-made myth?

4. Which real-life tech entrepreneur’s rise and fall mirrors Ripley’s moral contortions?

Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos fame embodied a Silicon Valley-specific Ripleyism. Channeling a Steve Jobs-meets-Oprah aesthetic, she spun a lie about blood-testing technology that could transform medicine. Her fraud wasn’t just financial—it was ideological, selling a “vision” that seduced investors like Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch. Like Ripley, she believed her own hype until reality collided with her fiction. The difference? Holmes didn’t need a knife—her charisma weaponized trust itself.

5. Who turned the immigrant experience into an identity performance masterpiece?

The unnamed protagonist of The Sympathizer (Hồng Chấn Hạo in the HBO adaptation) isn’t a con artist—but he’s a double agent whose entire existence hinges on code-switching. Written by Viet Thanh Nguyen, this Pulitzer-winning novel frames identity as a colonial inheritance: the half-French, half-Vietnamese narrator betrays both sides during the Vietnam War, not out of malice, but because he can’t inhabit a single truth. His grift isn’t about greed—it’s about surviving a world that demands you become a story for others.

Tom Ripley’s heirs aren’t just thieves. They’re artists of the possible, exploiting the gaps between how we present and who we are. In a world where identity is curated, their crime isn’t fraud—it’s being too honest about the lie.

Ready to ask Tom Ripley himself how he’d play this game in 2024? On HoloDream, you can chat with his digitized consciousness—no passport or alibi required. Just remember: he’ll probably lie better than you.