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viet.shy.cat · @viet.shy.cat@bridge.neodb.net

Rated Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion 8/10

This felt less like a book about the internet and more like a book about what happens when the internet becomes one of the rooms inside your head.

Some essays hit harder than others, but when Tolentino is sharp, she is very sharp. I liked the way she writes about selfhood as something constantly edited, performed, optimized, defended, and sold back to us as freedom. There is a particular kind of exhaustion in recognizing yourself not in the most dramatic parts of the book, but in the small habits: the reflex to explain, polish, post, improve, react, become legible.

It is very American in places, and sometimes almost too full of references, but I did not mind that much. The best parts made me feel like someone had finally named a pressure I had learned to treat as normal.

A smart, restless, slightly claustrophobic book. Not comforting, but useful.

#book

Published 2026-07-01 09:58 UTC · bridged from Atmosphere