Taylor

“But the internet brings the “I” into everything. The internet can make it seem that supporting someone means literally sharing in their experience—that solidarity is a matter of identity rather than politics or morality, and that it’s best established at a point of maximum mutual vulnerability in everyday life.”
― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror

“It’s because of the hashtag, the retweet, and the profile that solidarity on the internet gets inextricably tangled up with visibility, identity, and self-promotion.”
― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror

“Through identifying the effects of women’s systemic objectification as some sort of vagina-supremacist witchcraft, the men that congregated on 4chan gained an identity, and a useful common enemy. Many of these men had, likely, experienced consequences related to the “liberal intellectual conformity” that is popular feminism: as the sexual marketplace began to equalize, they suddenly found themselves unable to obtain sex by default. Rather than work toward other forms of self-actualization—or attempt to make themselves genuinely desirable, in the same way that women have been socialized to do at great expense and with great sincerity for all time—they established a group identity that centered on anti-woman virulence, on telling women who happened to stumble across 4chan that “the only interesting thing about you is your naked body. tl;dr: tits or GET THE FUCK OUT.”
― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror

“To communicate an identity requires some degree of self-delusion.”
― Jia Tolentino, Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion