You Have a New Memory: Essays

by Aiden Arata

An open-hearted interrogation of our digital selves, braiding cultural criticism, memoir, and narrative musings into an exploration of identity, girlhood, media, tech, nature and "finding the depth and beauty in the fucked-up world we live in" (Phoebe Bridgers) from writer, artist, and conflicted influencer Aiden Arata.

If you told Aiden Arata in 1995 that the internet would one day crown her the “meme queen of depression” and mega corporations would fly her to conferences to speak about commodifying one's emotions for views, she would have asked you what a meme was. Now, in her highly anticipated debut, she brings us raw reportage from that liminal space between online and offline worlds, illuminating how we got here and where to go next.        
  
In this collection of kaleidoscopic essays, Aiden artfully explores what it means to exist on the internet, from fan fic forums to TikTok. She exposes influencer grifts from the perspective of a grifter, digs into the alluring aesthetic numbness of stay-at-home girlfriend content creators, and interrogates our online fetishization of doom to grapple with the real-world apocalypse. In her own words, “In some ways, the internet feels like a neutral energy in the way that money is a neutral energy, only as virtuous or wicked as the person using it. But then you have to follow that line of inquiry somewhere annoying like, Am I using it for good?”
 
YOU HAVE A NEW MEMORY is a deeply human inventory of the digital sphere, a searing analysis of the present and a prescient assessment of the future. Aiden is the wry, unexpected voice we need to navigate existing simultaneously as creators, consumers, and products in our increasingly braver and newer world.

Genres: Nonfiction, Essays, Memoir, Biography Memoir, Audiobook, Technology

240 pages, Hardcover

Published July 22, 2025

Reviews

[Lucy Dacus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don’t hesitate at all to say Aiden belongs in the lineage of Didion and Babitz as a new hot, smart, incisive California girl translating the weirdness of our time into something palpable, in all the sensitive and strange detail her lens is uniquely able to capture. Primarily about her experiences on the internet and the way they affect her (and us) in the off-screen world, she manages to bring a pulse to places and situations I have primarily written off as “fake”. It was a great reminder that the internet is made up of people. It’s where she meets friends, makes money, learns about and communicates danger, and finds love. The same can be said for many of us. She successfully does one of my favorite things good writers can do- she looks into the deep and speaks on it with clarifying simplicity, then turns around and looks at the simple to draw depths from it. It’s amazing to see someone with a great sense of humor and awareness of irony still manage to come across sincere. Can’t recommend enough.

[CJ Alberts]

I like Aiden’s internet presence (would that mean I like her work then lol) so I went into this with high hopes and feel a lil mixed bag about it. If I had to expand on that I guess it’s the tone, incredibly impersonal and removed (purposeful I’m assuming) but I feel like I need a tonal balance when the content of the essays is mostly internet economy based. Lots of pulled in citations too and references of other texts that felt chunky and not needed. Idk curious to what other people get from this tho

[Taylor Penn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aiden Arata’s "You Have a New Memory" is less a book of essays and more a curated download of what it feels like to be alive (and online) in the new and old ages of the internet. Her writing is concise yet metaphorical, sometimes... slippery, but always emotionally precise.

The early essays were the true stand-outs of the collection: “America Online” captures the unease of digital connection with eerie clarity, “What’s Meant For You Won’t Miss” pulses with low-key grief, and “The Museum of Who I Want To Be For You” is both cutting and tender. Arata doesn’t just describe feelings- she builds spaces for them, especially the ones that glitch or loop. The collection’s second half wanders more inward, less immediate, but the shift feels intentional: a kind of slow log-off a la Homer Simpson fading into the bushes.

The final pages don’t promise clarity; more like a tentative truce or coexistence with the fog. This book won’t hold your hand; but it will call-to-light the weird little ache of wanting to be SEEN in a world that is always watching.

Lucy Dacus said it best- Arata belongs in the lineage of Didion and Babitz.

"You Have a New Memory" drops tomorrow 7/22/25. Thank you to Netgalley & Grand Central Publishing for the ARC.

[CatReader · Rating 2 out of 5]

Aiden Arata is a millennial writer whose 2025 essay collection You Have a New Memory explores being enmeshed in digital culture from an early age. Arata comes from a financially comfortable California background, with early exposure to computers, the internet, and social media influencer culture. Her essays aim to capture a generational zeitgeist - the awkward and often distasteful navigation (veering into bullying and age-inappropriate roleplays in Arata's case) of early online chatrooms , messenger tools, and forums, the blurring of real life and curated digital personas, and her conflicted feelings around social media influencing (which she continues to dabble in and presumably profit from) and authenticity. Unfortunately, this collection fell flat for me.

Arata’s choice to write entirely in the second person felt presumptive, as if her experiences and emotional reactions to them was similar to her audience's, but they certainly didn't mirror mine. Her stories aren't particularly novel, nor are they told with enough nuance to distinguish this book from many others in this rapidly-expanding subgenre (see further reading below) tackling similar themes in both nonfiction and fiction format.

What I found most frustrating was the lack of perspective. The essays often dwell on the traps of social media culture without arriving at a clear reckoning or broader insight, and the second-person narrative only underscored this sense of myopia.

Further reading: these themes explored in nonfiction:
Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age by Vauhini Vara
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion by Jia Tolentino
Culture Creep: Notes on the Pop Apocalypse by Alice Bolin
Pixel Flesh: How Toxic Beauty Culture Harms Women by Ellen Atlanta

And fiction:
Exquisite Mariposa by Fiona Alison Duncan
Followers by Megan Angelo
The Comeback by Ella Berman
Aesthetica by Allie Rowbottom
Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang

My statistics:
Book 250 for 2025
Book 2176 cumulatively

[MK · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only thing I learned from this book is that if you hang around your ethically dubious non-monogamous boyfriend long enough, he'll eventually leave his long-time girlfriend for you.

Not sure who this book is for except for people interested in the extended Phoebe Bridgers cinematic universe and fans of the movie Children of Men*.

*author’s father wrote Children of Men. Great movie!

[Yoana Tosheva · Rating 5 out of 5]

sharp, witty, entertaining, real etc I mean it’s just really fucking good, engaging writing I loved it

[Maddie · Rating 2 out of 5]

i love the cover... i was intrigued by the phoebe bridgers of it.. i wanted to like it! but it was not good! the only essay that sort of intrigued me was how to do the right thing. otherwise, there were interesting concepts that were just explored so superficially and brought nothing new to the conversation. i think if i was 16 i would be like this is radical! however i've read good books since then. this would be so great as personal diary entries

[Lottie from book club · Rating 4 out of 5]

uuuaaaaghhhh, etc.

[Alexander · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Substack/Tolentino-fication of essay publishing is here and it's given us 2 or 3 really good pieces in an otherwise mess of mid

[Aleigha Dollens · Rating 5 out of 5]

her MIND. The ability to both criticize and spark hope about the state of the world today is so important. I loved loved loved this book.

[Maisy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strikingly intelligent account of what it means to be alive in a time when being alive means equal parts breathing and eating, and existing on the internet.
I naturally favoured some essays over others, but this was truly impressive and enjoyable in spite of its depressing basis.

[Tim · Rating 2 out of 5]

Found it to be too online and kind of meandering? Lots of little asides with scientific/psychology facts dropped in that felt like they were padding out the word count.

I feel like I don’t need to read about millennial’s memory of 9/11 or their experiences of the pandemic for a long time.

[Abby · Rating 3 out of 5]

We need to stop publishing essays by people whose entire personality is being "very online." We get it, you were on tumblr too young and now you have depression and anxiety as an adult! Very original!

(My bad for not knowing anything about the author before I picked this up...)

(3 stars because "In Real Life" redeemed it a bit near the end)

[andrea · Rating 5 out of 5]

thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the advanced digital copy!

this one hits shelves July 22nd, 2025.

--

you have a new memory is for the girlies. not girlies in the gendered sense, but in the spiritual one. the chronically online, meme-fluent, a little-too-self-aware crew who grew up feral on fanfic forums and somehow ended up trying to live intentionally without logging off. this is a book of essays that doesn't pretend to offer answers, it simply tries to trace the digital mess of how we got here.

the collection is strongest when it lingers in the personal. two standouts: "how to do the right thing", an essay about the aftermath of a sexual assault, and how survivors often pay more than perpetrators ever will. it's brutal, brilliant, and incredibly necessary. the second, "an endless sound loop", reads like fiction - an ethically non-monogamous love story that unfolds like magic, reminding you that sometimes people find each other in the blur, and it matters. these essays cracked something open for me.

other pieces, like "america online" and "in real life", channel that early internet nostalgia, the chaos, the freedom, the AIM away messages and sex via lord of the rings characters. it made me miss the lawless world we came from. "pink skies over the empire" and "on vibing" take aim at what replaced it: a performative, flattened internet full of influencers, trend cycles, and 'vibes' that have replaced real thought. vibes, arata argues, are just soma. distraction. curated numbness. this might be one of the most biting critiques of modern culture i've read recently, especially because it's coming from someone inside the machine.

the voice throughout is sharp, funny, observant. but what sets this book apart is its refusal to claim superiority. there’s no 'i’m not like the other girls' here. it's more like, 'we are all the same girl, and isn't that kind of beautiful and terrifying?' i felt deeply seen by that. the self-aware influencer, the nihilistic consumer, the person who orders something stupid off ebay to fill a void that can't be named - yeah. guilty. and 'my year of earning and spending' spells it out without judgment. it just holds up a mirror.

not every essay hits the same. 'what's meant for you won't miss' and 'the museum of who i want to be for you' skew more fragmented, sometimes losing their emotional thread. but even then, there's value in the collage, an inventory of modern girlhood, commodified identity, doomscroll culture, and the contradictions we hold between our thumbs.

the final essay, 'it ends and it ends and it ends (on glory)', brings the collection full circle. what do we owe the future? what's the point of trying to be remembered if we never really lived? aiden arata doesn't promise hope, but she reminds us that meaning is made, not found.

if you live online, grew up too fast, miss the old internet, and want to feel something about all of it, this book is for you. it's messy. it's sincere. it's a glitchy love letter to the world we're trying to survive.

[CB_Read · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book presents the unexpected in several different ways. The jacket copy isn't really accurate to what "You Have A New Memory" is about, but you can look past that. Arata's writing is always swift, often metaphoric, and sometimes cryptic. The tone feels like stream-of-consciousness, but that could be a rhetorical effect from years spent writing and reading on the internet. Her insights were surprising, timely, and relevant. The early essays--"America Online," "On Vibing," "What's Meant For You Won't Miss," and "The Museum of Who I Want To Be For You"--are the strongest and most memorable.

The essays after this point become longer and more repetitive. They become more ephemeral at the same time they become more personal. They grow more reflective while also becoming more self-contained, more solipsistic. I have no familiarity with Arata's online/social presence or work as a visual artist; I only know her through her writing. The first half of the collection felt like I was getting to know her. The second half felt more guarded, like she decided she no longer wanted to be known. (Again, this is when the essays become more personal, so a strange contradiction.)

The last essay ends on an elusive note, with Arata searching for the point of it all -- why go on living when even the earth is doomed to fail? -- a point of secret wisdom or grand conclusion that remains hidden to all writers. While not quite a platitude, the takeaway can best be summed up with Arata's "plastic bag theory": "Basically, the internet, like a plastic bag, is a container that is both disposable and forever, and when we use the internet we become disposable and forever too. . . . I am both a flimsy vessel and an agent of destruction" (ebook 2561). Arata makes several fine points in this book, and I read them as genuine and sincere, rather than ironic and nihilistic. But I also feel like the book is attempting to be a type of performance art, something temporary and self-effacing with the ambition of being remembered by its observers (readers).

Reflecting on this book reminds me of the opening line from Namwali Serpell's novel "The Furrows," "I don't want to tell you what happened. I want to tell you how it felt" (1). Arata might be suggesting a similar conviction in this book--to savor the feeling of reading her essays, even if you forget what they were ultimately about. Like standing up in a speeding car and feeling warm air hurtling toward your skin, while your eyes remain closed and incapable of articulating the details of the vista that escapes your understanding.

[emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 ☆

it took me a while to settle into you have a new memory, but i think part of my initial resistance was that i found aiden arata to be so similar to be that i was getting annoyed with her voice. it’s really the mark of a strong essayist when the reader feels like the writing itself is being pulled out of their own head, a collaboration between author and reader.

all of the essays in this collection are worth reading, but arata hits her stride in the last third of the book, when the topics drift away from influencer malaise (always the faintest bit out of touch). while it’s never explicitly named as such, arata focuses on the moral scrupulosity familiar to anyone with OCD (especially OCD with religious themes) in ways that are fascinating. she writes deliciously of internal morality and policing, guilt, and the inability to know if you are a good person, or maybe just a bad person worried about being good. she doesn’t purport to be someone with the answers to these feelings, but rather someone who is hopelessly lost on where to even look for those answers. it’s ultimately stomach-churning, but in a way that works.

i will say that there’s a certain element to the way that arata speaks on mental illness that i never could really get behind. she writes about her vague and undefined mental illness in a way that is almost indulgent, like a kid getting a blood draw at the doctor’s office and then wearing the bandage all day, waiting for someone to ask them what happened. maybe it’s the evil little worm that lives in my brain that makes mental illness some kind of competitive game. her attitude, and i say this as neutrally as possible, reads as very tumblr 2016, in a way that chafes against my 2025 attempts to stop malingering and better myself for once.

in the end, a conversation starter, something to reflect upon rather than consume and wholeheartedly agree with. very enjoyably on-the-nose for 2025 influencer/beauty/everything-in-this-world-sucks-a-little-bit culture. anyone over the age of maybe 40 or so would probably justifiably find this ridiculous, but i loved it. it sparks, if not joy, complete and utter fascination.

[Caroline Todd · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arata is clearly an incredible writer, but I’m tired of authors just writing whatever they want and calling it an essay. Maybe I just don’t care enough about social media for this book but essays should have…points

[Sarah Paolantonio · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first thing I do when I pick up a book, especially a book of essays, is read the Acknowledgements page. After my brief stint in book publishing and at a lit agency, and as my years as a writer, I like to see who was involved, and how an author acknowledges them. I scan for names I may know or recognize. I find the length of these pages to be just as telling as the book. I don't remember where I heard of this title, and I cannot remember the last time I read an entire new book of personal essays. Somehow I missed her name as the only blurb on the front cover, but when you thank Phoebe Bridgers in your acknowledgements for championing your work and for various nights spent in hot tubs discussing trauma ...that is a special kind of icky brag. It irritated me. When did pop stars become literary agents? (Also looking at you, Lucy Dacus.) I appreciate Bridgers' whole deal but I find the sound of her singing voice so annoying I am unable to make it through one (1) song. Attach yourself, someone not so famous at all, to someone incredibly famous, and this is what you're going to get from a reader.

Then I see the Michelle Tea blurb, where they put Arata in "the lineage of Joan Didion" which used to be a compliment to me, when anyone compared anyone to JD, but now I just find it lazy. First, stop comparing women. Second, just because they write about California in clipped, brief, straightforward sentences does not make someone Joan Didion.

The Tony Tulathimutte blurb is why I kept going: "...like beholding a full moon through a freshly sucked gummy bear..." is the kind of writing this book contains only it's better than what this book contains. I thought, well, I'll keep going. I didn't immediately check this out of the library and return it. And even after the introduction (essay collections need introductions?) annoyed me, and the first three essays, one of which is just a list of stuff Arata bought month by month (I'm sorry, but just like JD's packing list, a list is not an essay), for some reason I kept going.

Despite the previous three paragraphs of this review, I really liked this book. Arata's word choices are a bit stuffy, many led me to the dictionary, and snobbish, but her sentences are full of surprises. I wouldn't call it "a brilliant interrogation of humanity" or her "a bold new voice." (Bold?) I would call Arata's eye for detail unusual and precise. These essays are interesting because they are fascinating scenarios. Not until "How To Do The Right Thing" did the craft of storytelling and the craft of writing come together; or maybe it was the story she's telling in that essay. One that only she can tell.

These essays are revealing in all the ways personal essays are supposed to be. Arata shares inner details and thoughts reserved for a personal journal. That's where the power lies: when an author says shit, revealing their brain to the reader. My saying is: lift up your dress and show me. Or: rip off your skin: let's see it; otherwise WTF am I doing here? These essays are extremely online (she goes to a meme creator convention for fucks sake) and one of them is titled "On Vibing" as if Arata has never spent a day away from the internet in her life, despite what "In Real Life" describes. (Although how on earth do you book an international trip to what you think is a convent but really is a solitary prayer retreat as someone who is so obsessively online and supposedly so good at this research; purely logistical question: how do you fuck that up?) Is being online a lot a personality? IDK why I'm asking that. Clearly it is.

If Arata can get their shit together enough to publish so many essays and memes, then I can certainly get my shit together to finish essays and pitch them and get a book deal. Then again, I don't have any charting, famous friends. One last note, and yes I know you're *from* Los Angeles, but if you're terrified of earthquakes, why do you live in California?

Three and a half.

[mz · Rating 5 out of 5]

one of the best collections of essays I’ve ever had the pleasure to read. this woman can write, good god.
truly a didion for the modern age of doomscrolling.
somehow she speaks about topics that could easily be dismissed as trivial, vain, or superficial in a way that removes the veil of judgement while acknowledging that this shit is all pretty dumb, but not dumb, bc it matters. she’s able to live in the wispy dawn fields of nuance while making decisive statements. i want to read everything she writes.
i finished the longest essay, how to do the right thing, feeling both empowered and deeply troubled. who among us women has not experienced some form of sexual assault or harassment? what do we do?
i will be chewing on this book for a long time and i will be asking for a copy for christmas. i love you, mke public library, but i need her for keeps.

[Tayler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sometimes I worry that if I read something a little too on the nose to my own thoughts and anxieties, I won’t like it.

So when Aiden Arata pulled a few particular experiences from my own annoying little psyche, I had to lean into the punch. You Have a New Memory is a collection of essays on a modern life, lived relatively online. There’s a huge irony to running a silly little bookstagram and then cackling at how feverish the internet can make you feel.

In one essay, Arata travels far away to what she thought was a convent of nuns who would welcome her with soft feminine exploration of our place in the world. But by accident, she’s in a Carthusian silent retreat wondering if she’s hallucinated yet.

Other essays question love, our place in the climate disaster, the influencer economy.

I realized I was clenching my jaw while reading most of “How to do the Right Thing” a story of calling out and calling in the predators in your life. When a man Arata knew was publicly called out, she first tries to be a compassionately honest friend but soon realizes that she’s experienced abuse too. I had my own semi-public me too moment of 2017. Arata so vividly captures the reeling strangeness that comes with exposing yourself in the hopes of stopping harm. In the end, I still don’t really know if it helped. “How to do the Right Thing” was a strange mirror of comfort.

This books is for you. You incredibly online soul, who is trying to exist in our strange modern world while deeply wishing to be cozy. At the very least, please sample Arata‘s esoteric memes as a starting point.

Thanks to Grand Central Publishing for this advanced copy.

[Mike]

Is it still worth writing and thinking about the internet as if it's a curiosity? I was surprised to ask this question while reading these essays. Those of us who grew up both with and without the internet have been intoxicated with the impact of digital life on physical life for some time, but I wonder if we've crossed a threshold, where it's all just LIFE now. Arata's writing is very good, and I felt much more by the end than I expected to when I started. The essay on her pandemic romance was my favorite. I would like to know the time period of each essay but perhaps years aren't really relevant anymore, the infinite scroll bleeds into one era of experience, time stamps be damned.

[Kelsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

Aiden Arata doesn't flinch in this game of chicken with the internet. She doesn't look away from all the scary, pervasive ways that the internet infiltrates seemingly all our waking thoughts. She makes some things that are not funny at all at least a little bit funny. She also went and lived in a Catholic cloister which is one of my fantasies and wow that veil was lifted and I have a new fear of sponges. Smart and fun and sad and hopeful.

[Mitchell Proctor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vulnerability, consciousness, and relationships live at the core of this set of essays with a focus on how evolving technologies are changing the expectations we have on our lives. It’s damn good, really sad at times, and flits in and out of the stories with anecdotes personal to Arata and likely personal to you too. Some absolutely wonderful and hilarious imagery and irony. Took me a lot longer to read than the kindle thought, but that’s a skill issue. Recommended.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

two essays in here were really gripping, and i think my interest in the general vibe (chronically online young people in la) boosted my perception. arata is a talented writer, and even though i don't think i've read enough didion to fairly make the comparison, her writing style reminded me of joan didion early on. i actually wasn't familiar w arata before this, and some of the things discussed i have little context for, but i enjoyed my reading experience.

[Madeline Fulton · Rating 5 out of 5]

The figurative language alone deserves 5+ stars, gad damn!

[Christine · Rating 5 out of 5]

4.5 rounded up

[Amanda Lauren · Rating 2 out of 5]

Yeah so I did not like this….

[manasa k · Rating 4 out of 5]

little more memoir than culturally incisive but aiden arata is a beautiful writer these sentences flowwww together. was still generally skeptical of the connecting thread between these works until the last two essays and then i was fully convinced.

[Chela · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Kevin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Essays that intermingle the author’s personal experiences with a society that is increasingly and dangerously online. Particularly liked the essay about the author accidentally joining a monastery for a bit 😂