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Girl Online: A User Manual
What happens when a woman goes online? She becomes a girl.
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’.
This arresting personal narrative disguises the truth of a women negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona. Written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, Girl Online takes in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism. It is an (anti) user manifesto, exploding the terms and conditions of appearing online under the sign of 'girl'. A profound and moving philosophical investigation into the online experience of women as everyday users, it asks, is the personal internet a trap, or can it also be an opportunity for survival, and resistance?
The unwritten contract of the internet, that a user is what is used, extends from the well-examined issue of data privacy and consent to the very selves women are encouraged to create in order to appear. Invited to self-construct as 'girls online', vloggers, bloggers and influencers sign a devil's bargain: a platform on the condition they commodify themselves, eternally youthful, cute and responsibility-free, hiding offline domestic, professional and emotional labour while paying for their online presence with ‘accounts’ of personal ‘experience’.
This arresting personal narrative disguises the truth of a women negotiating the (cyber)space between her identities as girl, mother, writer, and commodified online persona. Written in a plethora of the online styles, from programming language to the blog/diary, from tweets to lyric prose, Girl Online takes in selfies, social media, celebrity and Cyberfeminism. It is an (anti) user manifesto, exploding the terms and conditions of appearing online under the sign of 'girl'. A profound and moving philosophical investigation into the online experience of women as everyday users, it asks, is the personal internet a trap, or can it also be an opportunity for survival, and resistance?
160 pages, Hardcover
First published May 10, 2022
41 people are currently reading
1065 people want to read
About the author
Joanna Walsh
19 books171 followersJOANNA WALSH is a British writer. Her work has appeared in Granta Magazine, gorse journal, The Stinging Fly, and many others and has been anthologized in Dalkey's Best European Fiction 2015, Best British Short Stories 2014 and 2015, and elsewhere. Vertigo and Hotel were published internationally in 2015. Fractals, was published in the UK in 2013, and Hotel was published internationally in 2015. She writes literary and cultural criticism for The Guardian, The New Statesman, and others, is edits at 3:am Magazine, and Catapult, and created and runs the Twitter hashtag #readwomen, heralded by the New York Times as “a rallying cry for equal treatment for women writers.”
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 55 reviews
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November 30, 2023This is a theoretical, challenging, iterative book that's trying something new and cool, and it's also written by a woman, so of course it has a bad average rating on here! The Goodreads audience actively self-selects books that aren't well matched to their tastes, then lashes out at the author when they inevitably feel intellectually threatened. Hate it! Maybe I should retire off of here in 2024!
July 4, 2022
Fails what it's advertised as: a user manual. Not at all whatsover. Not even essays or meditations. They feel like beginnings to thoughts that have not yet been fully fleshed out because the deadline for your residency is up and the money has run out.
Less about being online and disillusions itself as is with the CliffNotes readings of McLuhan.
What I did find interesting about the book was the idea of the "death of the girl," and death begins when there is no more privacy. Girls don't keep diaries, per say, they keep Tiktok confessions dilluted with a portion of a song in five seconds or less, then requiring an explanation when someone asks for it, when that someone asking for it has enough likes for their comment. Through the tumblr girl or the VSCO girl, every iteration of the Sofia Coppola girl, privacy becomes angelic, a holy state of being because the smartphone has become an extra limb, our laptops another set of eyes.
Also enjoyed Walsh's ruminations on the idea that labor is fixated in the flatness of a four-cornered world. From the table to the screen, labor is required of the female body, continued scrutinty, feeding explanations to men stuck in some womb that shields them from any kind of education.
Cecilia's sweet, sad voice, as flat as her hospital cot, still rings in my head, "Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl."
If you're looking for ways in how to be, do not look here. You will just further the confusion of existence itself. But if you're looking for wishy-washy ways to pseudo-intelectualize yourself into creating conversation starters for that first date in Tribeca or to fill the gaps of wine-o-clock after visiting the New Museum, this one might be for you???
Less about being online and disillusions itself as is with the CliffNotes readings of McLuhan.
What I did find interesting about the book was the idea of the "death of the girl," and death begins when there is no more privacy. Girls don't keep diaries, per say, they keep Tiktok confessions dilluted with a portion of a song in five seconds or less, then requiring an explanation when someone asks for it, when that someone asking for it has enough likes for their comment. Through the tumblr girl or the VSCO girl, every iteration of the Sofia Coppola girl, privacy becomes angelic, a holy state of being because the smartphone has become an extra limb, our laptops another set of eyes.
Also enjoyed Walsh's ruminations on the idea that labor is fixated in the flatness of a four-cornered world. From the table to the screen, labor is required of the female body, continued scrutinty, feeding explanations to men stuck in some womb that shields them from any kind of education.
Cecilia's sweet, sad voice, as flat as her hospital cot, still rings in my head, "Obviously, Doctor, you've never been a 13-year-old girl."
If you're looking for ways in how to be, do not look here. You will just further the confusion of existence itself. But if you're looking for wishy-washy ways to pseudo-intelectualize yourself into creating conversation starters for that first date in Tribeca or to fill the gaps of wine-o-clock after visiting the New Museum, this one might be for you???
January 9, 2023
girl online is to 22-year-old drifting liberal arts college grads what the bell jar is to 16-year-old new york wannabe small-town high school girls (complimentary).
walsh communicates in prose-like language the experience of occupying a girl/woman/female/feminine physical form entangled in the webbed netting of cyberspace. emerson noted that poets (or liberating gods for that matter) give names to feelings, emotions, and experiences that the rest of us brain-rotted individuals lack the language for. this book does exactly that for me. i specifically appreciated the interpolated use of discrete math and logic gates. when i first started learning the programming language known to cyber sapiens as "Python" i began to dream in it. instead of sentences, i spoke in declarations and loops. her writing felt like i was back in that dreamland. of course, i don't think dreaming in programming languages is a prerequisite for this work (but it sure does help).
when my friend (who was living in Florida at the time) sent me this book i felt like the author had somehow tapped my iphone and simply published my 3am notes app files. by far the best book i read in 2022. if you are an oat-milk-iced-flat-white-diet-coke-and-blood-autism-spectrum-miu-miu-web-weaving-feminine-urge-in-my-blank-era girl like myself: read this book.
walsh communicates in prose-like language the experience of occupying a girl/woman/female/feminine physical form entangled in the webbed netting of cyberspace. emerson noted that poets (or liberating gods for that matter) give names to feelings, emotions, and experiences that the rest of us brain-rotted individuals lack the language for. this book does exactly that for me. i specifically appreciated the interpolated use of discrete math and logic gates. when i first started learning the programming language known to cyber sapiens as "Python" i began to dream in it. instead of sentences, i spoke in declarations and loops. her writing felt like i was back in that dreamland. of course, i don't think dreaming in programming languages is a prerequisite for this work (but it sure does help).
when my friend (who was living in Florida at the time) sent me this book i felt like the author had somehow tapped my iphone and simply published my 3am notes app files. by far the best book i read in 2022. if you are an oat-milk-iced-flat-white-diet-coke-and-blood-autism-spectrum-miu-miu-web-weaving-feminine-urge-in-my-blank-era girl like myself: read this book.
June 9, 2024
I first discovered Girl Online through the Girls I Followed Online, unsurprisingly enough. Maybe it’s simply an instance of the Baader-Meinhoff effect, but ever since purchasing a copy I began noticing its thin grey spine peeking at me between a carefully curated book stack on Instagram, excerpted quotations lurking in the margins of dissertations and referenced mid-way through a substack article. Despite my initial anticipation and a somewhat encouraging introduction, Girl Online’s theoretical sparseness spattered with fragments of vacuous introspection lacked critical rigour and cohesive intention. Some particularly low points include Walsh’s coinage of “#theorymadehouseworktheory”, a term that effectively denotes the act of listening to philosophy lectures while cleaning, then remarking upon an academic following her back on Twitter. Such instances exemplify the work's sputtering trajectory; integrating a somewhat démodé, gauche personal mode of address with a self-reflexive tone of affected irony in what I imagine to be the literary equivalent of nails on a chalkboard.
A reviewer on here stated Girl Online's low average rating is due to the fact that “Walsh is a woman and the book is challenging” - and I might have granted this additional consideration if the latter were actually true. The review continues to assign this low rating to misaligned reader expectations, which provides a convenient heuristic to discard criticism as merely a matter of mismatching tastes. (For what it's worth, I have a notable interest in the intersection of feminist writing and critical theory, hence why I purchased the book.) What challenged me most was pondering how to accurately articulate the stilted dialectic of the personal truncated by the theoretical and the theoretical truncated by the personal. The crux of Girl Online's vapidity may lie in Walsh’s incapacity to fulfil its ambitious introductory aims, mapping extensive iterative possibilities at the expense of the comprehensive analysis required to provide a provocative, experimental critique. To its credit, Girl Online is uncannily mimetic of social media scrolling as Walsh vacantly meanders across progressively vacuous feedback loops, prompting the dull, fleeting recognition that you're gradually wasting your time.
I'm inclined to recognise that my evaluation of theory may be somewhat heterodox. I find I engage with theory more as a metaphor than a rigid framework, for better or for worse, seeking the distinct rush in those moments of complete recognition or upon discovering new critical constellations that I can peek through. I’m reminded of my experience reading Bataille’s Eroticism earlier this year, a work I love conceptually but found the actual prose lacklustre (but remain suspicious of this being more of a translation issue). Hence my issue may be embedded in two diverging purposes or my complete disinterest in what portions I can use for future reference. However, as a self-proclaimed 'user manual' there was nothing for me to use, to latch onto, nothing that excited me or piqued my curiosity, no aspects to reflect on for months after I'd finished reading. (I think I've been thinking about Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex since I was 16 years old.) I would give Girl Online the leniency of being unfairly maligned by discordant preferences, or perhaps just not being the right user for her manual - but Girl Online does not so much resemble a manual as it does the draft of a blog post, and the lack of any theoretical structure makes me wonder if it ever really had an intended 'user' in the first place.
I would advise the 'girl online' not to waste their time or money on this.
A reviewer on here stated Girl Online's low average rating is due to the fact that “Walsh is a woman and the book is challenging” - and I might have granted this additional consideration if the latter were actually true. The review continues to assign this low rating to misaligned reader expectations, which provides a convenient heuristic to discard criticism as merely a matter of mismatching tastes. (For what it's worth, I have a notable interest in the intersection of feminist writing and critical theory, hence why I purchased the book.) What challenged me most was pondering how to accurately articulate the stilted dialectic of the personal truncated by the theoretical and the theoretical truncated by the personal. The crux of Girl Online's vapidity may lie in Walsh’s incapacity to fulfil its ambitious introductory aims, mapping extensive iterative possibilities at the expense of the comprehensive analysis required to provide a provocative, experimental critique. To its credit, Girl Online is uncannily mimetic of social media scrolling as Walsh vacantly meanders across progressively vacuous feedback loops, prompting the dull, fleeting recognition that you're gradually wasting your time.
I'm inclined to recognise that my evaluation of theory may be somewhat heterodox. I find I engage with theory more as a metaphor than a rigid framework, for better or for worse, seeking the distinct rush in those moments of complete recognition or upon discovering new critical constellations that I can peek through. I’m reminded of my experience reading Bataille’s Eroticism earlier this year, a work I love conceptually but found the actual prose lacklustre (but remain suspicious of this being more of a translation issue). Hence my issue may be embedded in two diverging purposes or my complete disinterest in what portions I can use for future reference. However, as a self-proclaimed 'user manual' there was nothing for me to use, to latch onto, nothing that excited me or piqued my curiosity, no aspects to reflect on for months after I'd finished reading. (I think I've been thinking about Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex since I was 16 years old.) I would give Girl Online the leniency of being unfairly maligned by discordant preferences, or perhaps just not being the right user for her manual - but Girl Online does not so much resemble a manual as it does the draft of a blog post, and the lack of any theoretical structure makes me wonder if it ever really had an intended 'user' in the first place.
I would advise the 'girl online' not to waste their time or money on this.
August 24, 2022
a thought-provoking collection of essays/texts in an atypical format. if you're interested in what it's like to be a woman online, and this is something you're contemplating yourself, i highly recommend this book.
May 2, 2024
In a sentence: compelling but disjointed. She seems to never fully finish a thought.
Referencing Derrida, Judith Butler, Aristotle, Lacan, Levi-Strauss, among others all within the in the first (short) chapter felt like she was throwing theory at a wall and trying to see what sticks.
I found her Lewis Carrol Alice in wonderland through line a successful thought experiment. She does point out the inobvious, and take an accurate reading of the pulse on the culture.
The things I wish that she would expand upon, she never does. She defaults to referencing other theorists rather than expanding upon her on ideas. From questioning “when does girl hood end?” to inserting Carrie bradshaw quips into platonic dialogue, Walsh is undoubtedly clever. Some of her insight into girlhood “through the looking glass” borders on brilliant, but ultimately fell short of making any real statement.
Referencing Derrida, Judith Butler, Aristotle, Lacan, Levi-Strauss, among others all within the in the first (short) chapter felt like she was throwing theory at a wall and trying to see what sticks.
I found her Lewis Carrol Alice in wonderland through line a successful thought experiment. She does point out the inobvious, and take an accurate reading of the pulse on the culture.
The things I wish that she would expand upon, she never does. She defaults to referencing other theorists rather than expanding upon her on ideas. From questioning “when does girl hood end?” to inserting Carrie bradshaw quips into platonic dialogue, Walsh is undoubtedly clever. Some of her insight into girlhood “through the looking glass” borders on brilliant, but ultimately fell short of making any real statement.
January 23, 2023
yeah really did not like this one unfortunately
i was really excited about the idea of philosophy of the self through the lens of gender and the prism of the internet, and what’s infuriating abt the book is actually PART III (barely 20 pages long) does a great job of getting into that, but the beginning of the book (first 120 pages) is quite frankly odd, difficult to follow, over-cited, overly pretentious, and seemingly off topic at times?? the alice through the looking glass comparison was difficult for me to follow and although i admire what she’s attempting to do with the prose; which is incredibly experimental, i think an edit for simplicity would have done the book wonders esp because it is such a short read. a bit disappointed!!
i was really excited about the idea of philosophy of the self through the lens of gender and the prism of the internet, and what’s infuriating abt the book is actually PART III (barely 20 pages long) does a great job of getting into that, but the beginning of the book (first 120 pages) is quite frankly odd, difficult to follow, over-cited, overly pretentious, and seemingly off topic at times?? the alice through the looking glass comparison was difficult for me to follow and although i admire what she’s attempting to do with the prose; which is incredibly experimental, i think an edit for simplicity would have done the book wonders esp because it is such a short read. a bit disappointed!!
August 21, 2022
The first page of Girl Online: A User Manual describes it in twelve different ways, from 'virtual manifesto for manual workers' to 'work of literary criticism' and 'forum post' to 'chick lit'. This combination of different formats and styles, coupled with a somewhat erratic structure, made for a book that included interesting content but didn't quite cohere. It's short and worth reading, however I was hoping for a bit more substance. I found some of Walsh's adventures in theory intriguing, while some parts dragged - especially the extended analysis of Sex and the City. The juxtaposition of Carrie quoting Plato's Symposium was amusing, then constant repetition of the phrase 'I can't help but wonder' became tiresome. I liked this commentary on memes:
Notwithstanding this, the use of well-known gifs and images as emotional reactions to posts often does not involve modification. Whatsapp, for instance, provides a library of reaction gifs to browse from. Galaxy brain thought: these standardised emotional reaction memes are a form of bureaucracy. Overall I enjoyed most of the wordplay, while wishing the book had been longer and the ideas in it developed in more detail.
Memes replace emotional content: they allow me to like not quite liking, not being quite like. A meme can only continue to exist through ironic re-iteration; it shrugs off iteration that is not also critique but survives via recognisable iterations of form. It prompts reproduction only by modulation.
Memed irony plays not on linguistic elegance but 'failure': the more clunky its iteration (within the limits of recognition of its relationship to the original), the stickier the meme. Offline, irony can be indicated by tone. Online, the live quality of the ironic delivery, diluted by distances of space, time, culture, and duration, is replaced by a virtual indicator: winkyface ;-).
Notwithstanding this, the use of well-known gifs and images as emotional reactions to posts often does not involve modification. Whatsapp, for instance, provides a library of reaction gifs to browse from. Galaxy brain thought: these standardised emotional reaction memes are a form of bureaucracy. Overall I enjoyed most of the wordplay, while wishing the book had been longer and the ideas in it developed in more detail.
November 27, 2025
analyzing Sex and the City using Plato’s Symposium….yessss YEEEEESSSSSSSS
May 13, 2023
This book sucked. Thought about giving up on multiple occasions - forced myself to finish. Haven’t picked up another book for a month cause traumatised by how bad this one was.
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November 9, 2022mostly shallow, unfocused and tedious even if there are some occasionally striking thoughts buried deep here. reads like what it is: thoughts on media theory and culture written by someone not in the field (which is obviously fine but the musings here come across as very surface level despite the heavy focus on theory). not what sure what the point of this was if i'm being completely honest.
"Looking for identity online, I become an example to myself. I am shown the self-similar, similar to the self the algorithms I enter record, until I am like what I like onscreen. On Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest I am making a self through photographs of things that self would like to have.
A girl online is an alphabet of things: pure exemplarity! IFTTT (‘If this, then that’) is an algorithm that gives the illusion of subjectivity. It will synch my preferences across websites and show only what it thinks I’ll like, basing what I’m like on what I’ve liked. Desire creates an oriented, mobile subject-as-continuous-process, in which virtual objects provide expanded but set vocabularies for self until I want ‘Recommended for You’ and ‘Twelve Boards Like Yours’.
"Looking for identity online, I become an example to myself. I am shown the self-similar, similar to the self the algorithms I enter record, until I am like what I like onscreen. On Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest I am making a self through photographs of things that self would like to have.
A girl online is an alphabet of things: pure exemplarity! IFTTT (‘If this, then that’) is an algorithm that gives the illusion of subjectivity. It will synch my preferences across websites and show only what it thinks I’ll like, basing what I’m like on what I’ve liked. Desire creates an oriented, mobile subject-as-continuous-process, in which virtual objects provide expanded but set vocabularies for self until I want ‘Recommended for You’ and ‘Twelve Boards Like Yours’.
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June 30, 2022Not an easy read by any means—the type of book that reads like a mind map, held together by linguistic and etymological coincidences and theoretical references that you get or don’t. Somehow felt more about work and writing than technology (more ‘girl’ than ‘online’, I guess). Was impressed that within loose structure and subject matter, certain characters/theorists/referents had meaningful, recurrent roles. Really, this just reminded me strongly of I am baby essay
did-not-finish
June 16, 2023This books is like on cocaine, rambly rapid fire thoughts and a turn every new paragraph. Wild.
June 24, 2023
Some of it is really good but some of it reads like the adlib part of a Grimes song
August 26, 2024
really challenging at points but SO good
May 25, 2025
I’m disappointed at this being my first recreational nonfiction book ☹️ taking nonfic recommendations…
June 11, 2025
I don’t dislike this book necessarily—I actually noted down some of Walsh’s ideas about self-othering and depersonalization when your work is virtual—but I think the synopsis and marketing overpromises what is actually in the text.
I was hoping for less theoretical and abstract ideas of being a woman on the internet and the ways that virtual spaces both mimic and exaggerate IRL sexism. The synopsis should have indicated how big of a role programming and discrete mathematics play in the text.
I was hoping for less theoretical and abstract ideas of being a woman on the internet and the ways that virtual spaces both mimic and exaggerate IRL sexism. The synopsis should have indicated how big of a role programming and discrete mathematics play in the text.
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October 25, 2025heeloworld
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May 18, 2024Although I felt out of my depth reading this book at times, I really enjoyed it. Thought provoking and definitely a first for me in terms of subject matter and structure. Very cool.
January 31, 2023
really mid did not enjoy as much as i hoped i would :/
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October 22, 2022Here are some quotes — I don't quite know what to do with — but jotted down while reading through this little but very smart book about identity/the internet by the always brilliant (maybe too brilliant at times for me!) Joanna Walsh.
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"My screen is not a looking glass, though it is a glass for looking. And while, I see myself in it, I never see myself exactly as I am offline. Onscreen woman defaults to girl."
"In order to demonstrate my identity, my identity must first be demonstrated. To establish a recognizable identity, I must find an example with which to identify. Looking for identity online, I became an example to myself. I am shown the self-similar , similar to the self the algorithms I enter record, until I am like what I like onscreen. On Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest I am making a self through photographs of things that self would like to have. A girl online in an alphabet of things."
"Sometimes like anyone else I Google myself to find out who I am."
"And I was code-switching between online and off and I can't tell you why this made me so angry."
"Why give diaries to girls, not boys? A girl must be somewhere secrets are kept."
"Is the blog the essay form for girls?"
"And I can't help but wonder, Is this why girls keep diaries, and women don't?"
"But to refuse to pay attention to the 'trivial' is to refuse to pay attention to the feedback loop of most people's lives — or to people's lives most of the time"
"The Wikipedia page on 'blog' hardly mentions personal blogging or the experiments in identity it facilitated; it mentions only blogs that dealt with subjects that could already be categorized as nontrivial within the polis, monologues that already had offline platforms."
"How can we make art that has any kind of effect in the real world?"
"When do you abandon an identity online? I mean, when do you stop writing it."
"Switch off social media: dust settles on the work of self. Time to hear things IRL, accidental things. Onscreen, hearing is replaced by reading, and there's such a clamor in writing. There are times when I wonder if I could back pedal in identity when my identity is so up with what I have written online."
-
"My screen is not a looking glass, though it is a glass for looking. And while, I see myself in it, I never see myself exactly as I am offline. Onscreen woman defaults to girl."
"In order to demonstrate my identity, my identity must first be demonstrated. To establish a recognizable identity, I must find an example with which to identify. Looking for identity online, I became an example to myself. I am shown the self-similar , similar to the self the algorithms I enter record, until I am like what I like onscreen. On Tumblr, Instagram, Pinterest I am making a self through photographs of things that self would like to have. A girl online in an alphabet of things."
"Sometimes like anyone else I Google myself to find out who I am."
"And I was code-switching between online and off and I can't tell you why this made me so angry."
"Why give diaries to girls, not boys? A girl must be somewhere secrets are kept."
"Is the blog the essay form for girls?"
"And I can't help but wonder, Is this why girls keep diaries, and women don't?"
"But to refuse to pay attention to the 'trivial' is to refuse to pay attention to the feedback loop of most people's lives — or to people's lives most of the time"
"The Wikipedia page on 'blog' hardly mentions personal blogging or the experiments in identity it facilitated; it mentions only blogs that dealt with subjects that could already be categorized as nontrivial within the polis, monologues that already had offline platforms."
"How can we make art that has any kind of effect in the real world?"
"When do you abandon an identity online? I mean, when do you stop writing it."
"Switch off social media: dust settles on the work of self. Time to hear things IRL, accidental things. Onscreen, hearing is replaced by reading, and there's such a clamor in writing. There are times when I wonder if I could back pedal in identity when my identity is so up with what I have written online."
July 11, 2022
Oh god, Derrida's here again. Familiar as I am now with the slew of feminist theorists this book evokes, I was disappointed to see how little this takes from the culture of the web itself. The ending in particular is especially translucent. Most of this has to do with blog culture/occasional surface level readings of social media culture. There are some good thoughts on what it means to be female online/labor/attention economy, but I feel like taken from a more intersectional angle these thoughts reveal that there could have been so much more to mess around with on a subject like this. Take the works of Porpentine, various digital manifestos like the ones on the Yesterweb, other queer and radical projects of distributed onlineliness and even more potent commentary on the horrors of the digital in its legitimate pits (yeah, 4Chan). There's nothing wrong with a narrow focus, again, but I read the title and assumed I was in for something so much wider or sharper than offered. I think I spent about as much time thinking about girl-as-symbol in terms of the prevalence of post-real anime women (hello, Vocaloid) in online culture based off one sentence as I did at least eighty more pages of the book. If you like experimental prose, though, there sure are tags. Also a 3D list of list could be anything, not just strings. (There are a lot of moments like this where I just kept thinking, "are we sure this is deliberate? Could it be more so?")
March 20, 2023
this book is a shallow essay about great ideas. i dont know how the author managed to write 160 pages full of nothing.
June 2, 2023
This lost me sometimes in its jargony academic language but when it hit…. Wow. The second part, “girl online,” on blogging/confessional writing…. Was everything I’ve been aching for the words to explain for the past couple years. (stream the contortionist haha lol). One of the books that makes you want to cry because you identify with it so strongly (which I think Walsh would have some interesting things to say about…. The desire to be seen and to identify yourself /with/ media as an act of self definition yadda yadda yadda…)
August 20, 2022
this book advertised itself as something way different from what it was; i was disappointed and underwhelmed
January 16, 2024
I usually try to write a review immediately after reading a book, but with this one, I had to wait four days. It left me perplexed. At first, I thought it was bad. It seemed like the first book I'd ever read where I agreed with every sentence but was troubled by the overall sentiment it conveyed, and I couldn't explain why. After some reflection, I think this comes from the book's density. It's packed with interesting details and ideas I'd never considered before, and it doesn't offer any straightforward answers. The author did a great job transmitting her experience, which was what irked me - it forced my brain to think in ways it hadn't before.
Now, after some thought, I see that while the main topic seemed to be about women, it's actually about screens. The author draws a parallel between demonstration and the monster, noting that these share the same root: to show oneself is to become a monster, to alienate oneself. The book felt as dense as some of Foucault's works, but it didn’t provide a strict philosophical framework. It's something more raw and needs to be consumed in a special way to take root in you. I'm not sure if it did in me, even if I read it carefully and correctly. Nonetheless, it's a fascinating book.
Now, I want to share some interesting ideas from the book that are quite thought-provoking and cover a broad range of topics. The first is that love is both a resource and a sophisticated, efficient evolutionary hack. I'll leave these quotes uncommented, as I don’t think I can add anything to them.
The next idea suggests that we're transformed by technology into part of its process, akin to being a word processor. Another idea reflects a universal truth in simple terms: 'The hardest work I've ever done is the work of waiting. The best kind of work was waiting for no one to come.' I also learned a new word, 'ataraxia,' which is not quite euphoria or well-being, but being OK with being only kind of OK.
Lastly, the book discusses how logic sometimes breeds monsters. It states that formerly, but as a new function, they were invented for some practical end. Today, they are invented deliberately to show the faults in our ancestors' reasoning, and we shall never get anything more out of them."
Now, after some thought, I see that while the main topic seemed to be about women, it's actually about screens. The author draws a parallel between demonstration and the monster, noting that these share the same root: to show oneself is to become a monster, to alienate oneself. The book felt as dense as some of Foucault's works, but it didn’t provide a strict philosophical framework. It's something more raw and needs to be consumed in a special way to take root in you. I'm not sure if it did in me, even if I read it carefully and correctly. Nonetheless, it's a fascinating book.
Now, I want to share some interesting ideas from the book that are quite thought-provoking and cover a broad range of topics. The first is that love is both a resource and a sophisticated, efficient evolutionary hack. I'll leave these quotes uncommented, as I don’t think I can add anything to them.
The next idea suggests that we're transformed by technology into part of its process, akin to being a word processor. Another idea reflects a universal truth in simple terms: 'The hardest work I've ever done is the work of waiting. The best kind of work was waiting for no one to come.' I also learned a new word, 'ataraxia,' which is not quite euphoria or well-being, but being OK with being only kind of OK.
Lastly, the book discusses how logic sometimes breeds monsters. It states that formerly, but as a new function, they were invented for some practical end. Today, they are invented deliberately to show the faults in our ancestors' reasoning, and we shall never get anything more out of them."
June 30, 2025
“Is love kitsch? I mean, is it also an imitation of something manufactured that is an imitation of something handmade? Is love always fabricated only by the lover, and what materials does the lover use? What are the economics of love? If you can afford not to make some-thing, do you buy something, and if so, is less love involved? XOR if you can afford to buy something and yet you make it, is more?”
1.5/5 rounded up only because I could see this being insanely insightful had I understood gender theory, computer science, and the philosophical undertones of “Through the Looking Glass” to a greater degree. I’m simply in awe of the writing style, the disjointed thoughts, and the correlations between the self and the non-self through a screen. I’m even more fascinated by the existential questions arriving seemingly out of no where, hitting hard when sensical. For now, this book overpromises what it cannot do: serve as a user guide. It is more of a compilation of thoughts surrounding womanhood and the digital age in the format of a case study through other feminist literature. Might do the pre-reading work necessary and attempt to come back to it at some point, but for now it is too out of reach.
1.5/5 rounded up only because I could see this being insanely insightful had I understood gender theory, computer science, and the philosophical undertones of “Through the Looking Glass” to a greater degree. I’m simply in awe of the writing style, the disjointed thoughts, and the correlations between the self and the non-self through a screen. I’m even more fascinated by the existential questions arriving seemingly out of no where, hitting hard when sensical. For now, this book overpromises what it cannot do: serve as a user guide. It is more of a compilation of thoughts surrounding womanhood and the digital age in the format of a case study through other feminist literature. Might do the pre-reading work necessary and attempt to come back to it at some point, but for now it is too out of reach.
October 2, 2022
Experimental literature, I guess? In the end the author (finally) revealed the true form of this book — not a user manual, but a user manifesto, and the user is a female, a female in the online world, both being observed by other people and observing herself. Hence object and subject. The text uses Lewis’s Alice in Alice in Wonderland to lead discussion, and the authors plays with different forms to discuss many issues and topics females online face. While I do recognize and know many of the scholars and thinkers mentioned in the book, unfortunately, I’m too dumb to understand why the authors want to discuss them and why she must present her text in ways like these. 3 stars for not fully understand.
March 18, 2025
Dear god. I cannot begin to explain the pain that was experienced making my way through this "book". Rambling incoherent sentences that go nowhere, chapters entitled Though Experiment that appear as a deranged word soup. I was so excited to read something experimental about the feminist experience of the internet, but there comes a point where 'experimental' crosses over into 'deranged stream of consciousness ego stroking that does not make any kind of solid point'. I'm a fast reader, usually. This 141 page book took me around a month to get through. I haven't been so close to not finishing a book in years. Jesus Christ. Two stars because I feel it did teach me something about patience and resilience, the same way that having a life threatening disease might.
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