A review by stifledlaughter
Better Than IRL: True Stories About Finding Your People On The Untamed Internet by Katie West, Jasmine Elliot

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

5.0

 This book was an intense roller coaster of emotions that I honestly didn't expect when I Kickstarted it. When I first saw this on Kickstarter, I was incredibly excited, thinking it would be a lighthearted, nostalgic look back at the world I had my formative years in (ages 9-17 - a bit younger than most of the people when they had the experiences in the book, but still very resonant with me). 
However the book was a lot more emotionally intense than I had thought it would be initially, and even though I received it in early 2020, I only finished the last essay in it in March 2022. It took me two years to read because almost every story was like a gut punch in a way I just had not prepared myself for, and it wasn't until halfway through that I just started to assume every story would involve intense themes such as death, physical illness, child abuse, mental illness, etc etc. (Not all of them did - just many of them!) Therefore, I really had to be in the right headspace to read the book, which, as you can imagine, during 2020-2022, was not the easiest to be in. But I am so glad that I did finish it.
The core of the book involving the internet as a lifeline or space of respite tied it all together, and the essays were all brilliantly written and then chosen/edited in a way that reflected the theme. I appreciated how varied the experiences were - for example, I hadn't known about some of the spaces mentioned in it (I had mostly stuck to my little corners of the internet such as Neopets, ff.net, and GaiaOnline). 
It felt like getting to know friends I had lost contact with during those years of the untamed internet, and their commentary on the current internet resonated so much with me. I would strongly recommend this book not just for people who also were on the internet at this time, but also any GenZ readers who might want to see what the experiences were back then on the internet. I just suggest you be in the right headspace- it's not a light read, but a read that's very worth the emotional investment.
(This review was also posted to other review sites.) 
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