On life, lived online

We have become archivists of the self, I thought, curators of a life half-lived. Each countless photograph of a wonder, of dinner, of a view, of our children, of the utter banality of our everyday lives, was not a memento, a way of remembering the things we did, but instead evidence of the poverty of our engagement with the present moment.

Compared with other kinds of digital output, a screenshot feels “homemade” — a piece of digital DIY confirming that screen spaces contain as much mundaneness as the “analog” or “offline” world. In a time when so much communication and production is mediated by a set of increasingly powerful corporate platforms and absorbed into the internet’s big c... See more

The bike rides. The sleepovers. Your first cigarette. Gossiping about your latest crush. Being consoled when they break your heart. Discovering a new city. Re-discovering your own (at 2AM). The hungover brunches. The tears. The laughs. The love. So many of the moments that shaped us were shared with friends. And then those moments started happening... See more