First Post

[hoisinsauce]

A space to chat fandom! Anon!

Got a WIP you're excited about? Want to rave about your fave? Or is your fandom absolutely in love with a character who detracts from every scene they bumble into, and you need somewhere to vent? You're in the right place!

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Comments

Re: Books - Currently Reading

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, I should elaborate! I know there's no pressure to write ~*✰Nuanced✰*~ reviews here, but there's a lot more to this book than my mostly petty gripes. xD

I actually agree with her that being extremely online can both be isolating and contribute to social contagion. For teens who are already prone to anxiety, it's easy to escape into social media as their only source of interaction. At that age, it could lead to a skewed worldview because they don't have as much of a reference point in reality. I don't think the book is anti-social media or anti-internet; it's more about usage, patterns in certain communities, and cultural climate in schools and other institutions.

We (and Abigail Shrier herself) aren't that far apart in age. She was speculating that since our generation were forced to socialize in person (she left out the option "or not at all"), we generally were more used to seeing imperfection, and more likely to accept it when our idealized self didn't match what we were. I think you're right that some teens in our day were way more isolated than the teens who are only on social media today. But without that outside pressure, we'd just be lonely, depressed-without-the-label, or whatever else, not lonely and trans-identifying. It was mostly her phrasing I was poking fun at, not the overall point. I have zero writing skill, so maybe that's an asshole thing for me to do, lol

I gotta say, though... several of my friends who were isolated 90s kids are now very online and questioning their gender or transitioned. So. Yeah. The book may be about kids and teens, but people don't always age out of the social contagion. I questioned a bit as an adult, too. Wound up too confused by the gender reading to do anything about it.

The book is written for parents who don't know what's going on, so I think some of the drama is there to alert them. There hasn't been much of the "anime is cgi furries!" or "oh no, DeviantArt!" stuff after those initial moments. Her assessment of what's making things worse seems reasonable so far (schools have changed a lot in the past few years...). I have a few possible disagreements and some open questions, but I'm still only on ch.5 and liking it a lot more.

Other anon in this thread is right, too: there are some really funny bits!