What do you think?
Rate this book
You Have a New Memory: Essays
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.
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.
240 pages, Hardcover
Published July 22, 2025
75 people are currently reading
9647 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews
June 1, 2025
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.
Read
January 28, 2025I 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
July 21, 2025
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.
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.
August 12, 2025
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
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
October 11, 2025
sharp, witty, entertaining, real etc I mean it’s just really fucking good, engaging writing I loved it
March 11, 2025
uuuaaaaghhhh, etc.
August 24, 2025
i spent the first few essays of this annoyed with the latest iteration of millennial malaise and frustrated with the way that arata criticized influencer culture while being a self-admitted grifter herself.
however. there were some essays in this collection that arata might as well have yanked directly out of my chest. a book worth picking up for the chronically neurotic, for the perpetually guilty and confused ex-catholic, for those of us with the kind of ocd that makes you feel like everything everywhere is always your fault.
give it fifteen years and a lot of what is said here will lose its relevance, but boy does it hit hard now.
however. there were some essays in this collection that arata might as well have yanked directly out of my chest. a book worth picking up for the chronically neurotic, for the perpetually guilty and confused ex-catholic, for those of us with the kind of ocd that makes you feel like everything everywhere is always your fault.
give it fifteen years and a lot of what is said here will lose its relevance, but boy does it hit hard now.
August 13, 2025
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.
September 20, 2025
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.
I naturally favoured some essays over others, but this was truly impressive and enjoyable in spite of its depressing basis.
August 18, 2025
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
February 20, 2025
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.
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.
June 25, 2025
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.
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.
May 27, 2025
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.
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.
Read
September 10, 2025Is 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.
September 29, 2025
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.
July 25, 2025
The figurative language alone deserves 5+ stars, gad damn!
August 6, 2025
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
August 24, 2025
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.
June 26, 2025
Very very good ty emily !!!! 💗
Cool to write about hopelessness and not understanding what the fuck is happening in the world but with so much hope and presentness
Cool to write about hopelessness and not understanding what the fuck is happening in the world but with so much hope and presentness
April 23, 2025
"I don't know how to tell him that it's not even that I want forgiveness for doing the wrong thing, but that I don't even know if I'm doing the wrong thing. Or I want blazing horny visions, divine contact, and that makes me feel ashamed because I know I'm not special. No emergency exit. What if I did turn inward—what if I found the center, and there's nothing there?"
a compelling collection of essays about life in the Age of the Internet, that was depressing and hopeful in equal measure. as someone who's spent almost her entire life navigating the online world (and will most likely continue doing so), I found this really interesting and relatable, if also a little disheartening in precisely how relatable it was lmao
a compelling collection of essays about life in the Age of the Internet, that was depressing and hopeful in equal measure. as someone who's spent almost her entire life navigating the online world (and will most likely continue doing so), I found this really interesting and relatable, if also a little disheartening in precisely how relatable it was lmao
April 28, 2025
This read was a layered experience. Aiden Arata writes beautifully—there's a dreamlike, dense quality to her prose that pulled me in but also made me pause often to fully absorb it. Lately, I've noticed this with essay collections in general for me: last year, I devoured them easily, but this year, it's been more of a slow vibe.
This collection explores the strange tenderness and anxiety of being young and online today, touching on meme culture, stay-at-home girlfriend content, emotional commodification, and the often-blurry line between online and offline existence. Arata captures the contradictions of digital life with sharp insight and vulnerability.
There were times I felt like I was almost drowning in the language—getting lost in the current before resurfacing with a new thought or a new feeling. But honestly, that feels fitting for a book about living through the internet's strange tides. If you're looking for a collection that mirrors the disorienting, beautiful mess of modern online life, this is one to sit with slowly.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy!!!!!!
This collection explores the strange tenderness and anxiety of being young and online today, touching on meme culture, stay-at-home girlfriend content, emotional commodification, and the often-blurry line between online and offline existence. Arata captures the contradictions of digital life with sharp insight and vulnerability.
There were times I felt like I was almost drowning in the language—getting lost in the current before resurfacing with a new thought or a new feeling. But honestly, that feels fitting for a book about living through the internet's strange tides. If you're looking for a collection that mirrors the disorienting, beautiful mess of modern online life, this is one to sit with slowly.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the advance copy!!!!!!
August 14, 2025
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!
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!
August 4, 2025
2.5⭐️
Thank you to Grand Central Publishing for gifting me this free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
NGL, I didn’t love this book. Reading it felt like a chore—like I was doing assigned reading for a class I didn’t sign up for. The only essays I really clicked with were How to Do the Right Thing and In Real Life (kind of). Those felt the most raw, personal, and like the writer dropped the performance a bit.
I feel a little bad for not loving a collection that I technically relate to. I’m a 30-year-old, American born meme-maker with severe mental illness who grew up on the internet so you'd think I'd relate more (but I'm also Latina, spent a ton of money on education (and by spent I mean put myself in debt for), and have never dated, so maybe this really isn't for me). It felt like the book was simultaneously trying to make the mundane profound and stay mundane on purpose. Like a magic trick where you keep the rabbit in the hat and then just explain the metaphor.
The rest of the essays reminded me of when I had to write three different papers for three different classes, so I just swapped out a few synonyms and plugged in a slightly new anecdote. Technically different, but spiritually the same.
Again, those two standout essays were so well done. But the rest? It felt like talking to myself hitting sativa—trying to be chill, knowing I’m not chill, overanalyzing it, and somehow becoming even less chill. Also, ADHD. Lots of ADHD. I love Phoebe Bridgers and I feel bad disagreeing with her but this wasn't my cup of tea.
Thank you to Grand Central Publishing for gifting me this free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
NGL, I didn’t love this book. Reading it felt like a chore—like I was doing assigned reading for a class I didn’t sign up for. The only essays I really clicked with were How to Do the Right Thing and In Real Life (kind of). Those felt the most raw, personal, and like the writer dropped the performance a bit.
I feel a little bad for not loving a collection that I technically relate to. I’m a 30-year-old, American born meme-maker with severe mental illness who grew up on the internet so you'd think I'd relate more (but I'm also Latina, spent a ton of money on education (and by spent I mean put myself in debt for), and have never dated, so maybe this really isn't for me). It felt like the book was simultaneously trying to make the mundane profound and stay mundane on purpose. Like a magic trick where you keep the rabbit in the hat and then just explain the metaphor.
The rest of the essays reminded me of when I had to write three different papers for three different classes, so I just swapped out a few synonyms and plugged in a slightly new anecdote. Technically different, but spiritually the same.
Again, those two standout essays were so well done. But the rest? It felt like talking to myself hitting sativa—trying to be chill, knowing I’m not chill, overanalyzing it, and somehow becoming even less chill. Also, ADHD. Lots of ADHD. I love Phoebe Bridgers and I feel bad disagreeing with her but this wasn't my cup of tea.
March 8, 2025
The first two essays "Pink Skies Over the Horizon" and "America Online" were really strong, but I found the rest not as much.
"Pink Skies" had a really immersive scientific metaphor with how the unbreakability of the Venus of Dolní Věstonice mirrors our compulsion to preserve everything in our lives. Arata includes other such metphors into the other essays, such as the minute difference in chemical composition of two enzymes that both produce euphoria in "An Endless Soundless Loop," but none of them serve as a driver in those essays, so they just felt like cool fun facts that allowed Arata to simply repeat what she had already said.
"America Online" was really well-done with the parallel narratives and the various alter-egos that everyone inhabited, all of which made the essay itself highly immersive. Though her other essays such as "How to Do the Right Thing" pertain to more serious topics that Arata's extremely brave in writing about, I just didn't find them as captivating. I don't know, this all feels a little weird to say, because I'm not trying to critique Arata's experiences, just the style in which she's written about them, but they're kind of intertwined...so I'm just going to leave it at that.
Very grateful for the eARC, thank you Grand Central Publishing!
"Pink Skies" had a really immersive scientific metaphor with how the unbreakability of the Venus of Dolní Věstonice mirrors our compulsion to preserve everything in our lives. Arata includes other such metphors into the other essays, such as the minute difference in chemical composition of two enzymes that both produce euphoria in "An Endless Soundless Loop," but none of them serve as a driver in those essays, so they just felt like cool fun facts that allowed Arata to simply repeat what she had already said.
"America Online" was really well-done with the parallel narratives and the various alter-egos that everyone inhabited, all of which made the essay itself highly immersive. Though her other essays such as "How to Do the Right Thing" pertain to more serious topics that Arata's extremely brave in writing about, I just didn't find them as captivating. I don't know, this all feels a little weird to say, because I'm not trying to critique Arata's experiences, just the style in which she's written about them, but they're kind of intertwined...so I'm just going to leave it at that.
Very grateful for the eARC, thank you Grand Central Publishing!
October 2, 2025
Första halvan som handlade mer om influencer/internetkultur var intressant men tappade mig lite, kanske på grund av ett väldigt amerikanskt fokus (vilket ju är rimligt). Men underhållande med en kritisk inblick i livet som en slags b-influencer.
Precis när jag började känna att det lutar mot en trea så nådde jag kapitlet how to do the right thing och tänkte ok wow det här är bästa kapitlet, men sen höll resten av boken samma höga nivå och lyfter nog ändå boken till en fyra. Det satte liksom de första kapitlen i ett annat perspektiv, helheten som handlar om att hitta någon slags mening med livet. How to do the right thing, kapitlet om MG (minns inte namnet nu) och sista kapitlet är nog bäst i boken.
Väldigt vackert om än lite "self-indulgent"/pretentiöst språk ibland, men det är ju lite av charmen också när boken till stor del handlar om vardagliga situationer och "fulkultur".
När jag tänker på bokens teman tänker jag på ytlighet, inre dialog/liv vs samhällets förväntningar, sårbarhet i en tid som använder det som valuta och gemenskap.
"Maybe someday I will be resilient. Maybe this will mean that I feel less, or maybe it will mean that I will be heartbroken over and over again and I keep feeling it and survive."
Precis när jag började känna att det lutar mot en trea så nådde jag kapitlet how to do the right thing och tänkte ok wow det här är bästa kapitlet, men sen höll resten av boken samma höga nivå och lyfter nog ändå boken till en fyra. Det satte liksom de första kapitlen i ett annat perspektiv, helheten som handlar om att hitta någon slags mening med livet. How to do the right thing, kapitlet om MG (minns inte namnet nu) och sista kapitlet är nog bäst i boken.
Väldigt vackert om än lite "self-indulgent"/pretentiöst språk ibland, men det är ju lite av charmen också när boken till stor del handlar om vardagliga situationer och "fulkultur".
När jag tänker på bokens teman tänker jag på ytlighet, inre dialog/liv vs samhällets förväntningar, sårbarhet i en tid som använder det som valuta och gemenskap.
"Maybe someday I will be resilient. Maybe this will mean that I feel less, or maybe it will mean that I will be heartbroken over and over again and I keep feeling it and survive."
September 17, 2025
A series of personal essays about being a chronically online millennial (both on- and off-line). The writing is both very compelling and very...empty? It really mirrors the void of social media: shiny yet vacuous, leaves me grasping at something that is not really there, simultaneously makes me want to scroll forever and permanently delete my account. The author seemingly wanders through her life like we have been trained by social media to wander around on social media. Some of the situations she gets herself into make me want to shake her- girl, what are you doing? do you know you can get out of there?? These essays read a bit like diary entries (and, like diary entries, I suspect they are immensely meaningful to the person writing them but less so to everybody else- by this I mean, they remind me of my own journals and thank goodness I have not published any books). Maybe I see a bit of myself in Arata, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Now I'm writing a review that is essentially devoid of content yet perhaps relatable and/or superficially meaningful (?), just like this book.
September 2, 2025
⭐️ 4/5 ⭐️
I rarely read non-fiction books as I would usually grow uninterested, but this one was quite easy to understand. From start to finish, the only word I could describe this book is unhinged. It talks about the ugly reality of being an online influencer and viewing those said influencers. The topics discussed are the topics I often talk about with my girl friends; body dysmorphia, fake life for posts and likes, and men being... you know how it is. I was able to immerse what I know while reading these essays since we encounter these topics on a daily basis.
If you're a millenial and think doom scrolling on Instagram and seeing those influencers "win life" and think "wow, I wanna be like them," I think you will appreciate the essays here. Do you ever wonder why some influencers think they're entitled free stuff? It was discussed in one of the essays and I thought that was one of the most interesting parts for me since I always come across news articles or posts of influencers asking for free stuff in exchange for promotion.
I rarely read non-fiction books as I would usually grow uninterested, but this one was quite easy to understand. From start to finish, the only word I could describe this book is unhinged. It talks about the ugly reality of being an online influencer and viewing those said influencers. The topics discussed are the topics I often talk about with my girl friends; body dysmorphia, fake life for posts and likes, and men being... you know how it is. I was able to immerse what I know while reading these essays since we encounter these topics on a daily basis.
If you're a millenial and think doom scrolling on Instagram and seeing those influencers "win life" and think "wow, I wanna be like them," I think you will appreciate the essays here. Do you ever wonder why some influencers think they're entitled free stuff? It was discussed in one of the essays and I thought that was one of the most interesting parts for me since I always come across news articles or posts of influencers asking for free stuff in exchange for promotion.
June 6, 2025
Thank you so much to Grand Central Publishing for a Goodreads giveaways ARC! I came into this collection of essays completely blind without any idea of who Aiden Arata is, and I leave it feeling nostalgic, sad, called out, hopeful, and a sense of ennui towards the digital world we all now live in. This is a strong collection of essays to be able to achieve such a feat- while some were stronger than others (How to Do the Right Thing was a major standout for me, gut-wrenching, devastating, but so important), each packed a punch to hit on their thesis and central themes. Arata is a strong author and an inspiration to persevere, not despite of but partially because of her down-to-earth, almost mundane outlook and collection of experience. She encompasses a collection of feelings, hopes, and memories of the younger Millennial and older Gen Z generations, and that relatability, and ability to put into words all the things many of us feel but can't quite get a pulse on, is significant.
July 22, 2025
I read this book in basically one sitting, I couldn't have put it down if I had tried but I didn't try.
One of those books where when you finally finishr reading you get to walk around the world seeing everything for the first time. You see the leaves twinkling on the trees and the insects boldly marching along the sidewalk and also you see the bright device in your hand for the first time but you see it as it really is, not as what its been made to be through repetitive collective fixation. You see your teenage years again through fresh eyes and you see your future on this burning planet.
Some reviews had trouble with the detached narration and I actually think that's my favorite thing about it -- the frisson between the flame-tinted micro lens and the wide-scoped vistas, all laid out with the same perfectly objective attention to detail. If this book is for the girlies as another reviewer wrote, please consider me an honorary girlie.
One of those books where when you finally finishr reading you get to walk around the world seeing everything for the first time. You see the leaves twinkling on the trees and the insects boldly marching along the sidewalk and also you see the bright device in your hand for the first time but you see it as it really is, not as what its been made to be through repetitive collective fixation. You see your teenage years again through fresh eyes and you see your future on this burning planet.
Some reviews had trouble with the detached narration and I actually think that's my favorite thing about it -- the frisson between the flame-tinted micro lens and the wide-scoped vistas, all laid out with the same perfectly objective attention to detail. If this book is for the girlies as another reviewer wrote, please consider me an honorary girlie.
August 2, 2025
My first encounter with Aiden Arata's work was her TikTok "Guided meditation: you are under the mist machines in the produce aisle." I enjoy the hyperspecificity of her online presence and was excited to see what she would do with a full book. At one point in the book, she talks about the challenge of talking about serious topics like depression online: "You think maybe the only way to talk about anything is to circle it." However, she spends most of her book doing exactly that: circling around issues instead of talking about them directly, and getting distracted from her own ideas instead of seeing them through. My favorite essay from this collection was about her experience of falling in love with her now spouse and being surprised by the strength and depth of her own emotions, which makes me think that Aiden is a skilled writer when she can commit to her ideas and give herself long enough to cook. Thank you to NetGalley and Grand Central Publishing for the ARC.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 65 reviews