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A review by thespiritoftheage
Better Than IRL: True Stories About Finding Your People On The Untamed Internet by Katie West, Jasmine Elliot
5.0
Reading this book was incredibly moving. The aptly chosen essays managed to cover a myriad of experiences from different social, geographical and generational contexts, many of which had a direct impact in the identity formation of their writers, which made reading their blurbs at the end of the collection so special! I felt like I had met their younger selves and now saw all these brilliant kids turn into amazing people doing incredible things.
The experiences recounted in these essays resonated deeply within me, and often seemed to mirror my own. I felt many excerpts ring true to my own experience, and it was very emotional feeling part of this community once again, especially in an analysis in retrospect, because it prompted me to reminiscence. I too found my people on the untamed internet in a simpler time and it too changed me and helped me become the version of myself I aspired to. I too was a kid looking for myself and needing a setting where I could experiment with my identities, all messy and loud and enthusiastic and uncivilised. Finding like-minded people (who went on to become my best friends) helped me reconcile these identities with my IRL self and made me the person I am now. Reading Better than IRL brought to the fore memories and nostalgia, but it also helped me reconstruct this process.
I am so grateful to Katie West and Jasmine Elliott, to the contributors, and to everybody who, like me, pitched in, for making this book possible, for making our experiences visible, and with that, leaving for posterity an account of the role the internet had in making us who we are. Thank you.
The experiences recounted in these essays resonated deeply within me, and often seemed to mirror my own. I felt many excerpts ring true to my own experience, and it was very emotional feeling part of this community once again, especially in an analysis in retrospect, because it prompted me to reminiscence. I too found my people on the untamed internet in a simpler time and it too changed me and helped me become the version of myself I aspired to. I too was a kid looking for myself and needing a setting where I could experiment with my identities, all messy and loud and enthusiastic and uncivilised. Finding like-minded people (who went on to become my best friends) helped me reconcile these identities with my IRL self and made me the person I am now. Reading Better than IRL brought to the fore memories and nostalgia, but it also helped me reconstruct this process.
I am so grateful to Katie West and Jasmine Elliott, to the contributors, and to everybody who, like me, pitched in, for making this book possible, for making our experiences visible, and with that, leaving for posterity an account of the role the internet had in making us who we are. Thank you.