Vita Byrd

“The call of self-expression turned the village of the internet into a city, which expanded at time-lapse speed, social connections bristling like neurons in every direction. At ten, I was clicking around a web ring to check out other Angelfire sites full of animal GIFs and Smash Mouth trivia. At twelve, I was writing five hundred words a day on a public LiveJournal. At fifteen, I was uploading photos of myself in a miniskirt on Myspace. By twenty-five, my job was to write things that would attract, ideally, a hundred thousand strangers per post. Now I’m thirty, and most of my life is inextricable from the internet, and its mazes of incessant forced connection—this feverish, electric, unlivable hell.”
― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror

“As with all optimization experiences and products, athleisure is reliably comfortable and supportive in a world that is not.”
― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror

“Be a mystery, not a demographic. Be someone a computer could never quite know.”
― Matt Haig, Notes on a Nervous Planet

“I thought that if we had a national character and a national genius, these people, who were beginning to be called Okies, were it.”
― John Steinbeck, America and Americans