Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion

Tolentino begins this essay about the personal, social, and cultural effects of the internet with a description of her experience of the internet as a child. Tolentino describes her own memories of the excitement of spending time on the internet in the early days and segues into a larger discussion of the cultural role of the internet at the time. Then, the internet seemed like a benign entity. It was centered around forms and newsgroups and didn't yet have search engines.

This internet is known as Web 1.0. Darcy DiNucci, a blogger, coined the term Web 2.0 in 1999. When this development occurred, Tolentino writes, our personal lives became public and economic incentives to boost this began to be put in place. As Tolentino traces her own life through the development of the internet, she discusses how the "curdling of the social internet" (7) began around 2012. At this time, social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter made her start to feel a compulsion to be online, as well as a simultaneous alienation linked to the performativity within the medium. It began to feel to her that the main purpose of the internet was to make oneself look good through virtue signaling—not just from liberals, but from conservatives as well. She notes that projecting morality and living morally are different.

Tolentino presents a turning point by discussing 2017’s Gamergate, when male members of the gaming community accused a female game designer sleeping with a journalist to get good coverage. This led to a large outcry and violent threats against her from the community. Tolentino links this to Pizzagate, in which a group of conservatives online believed that the Comet Ping Pong pizza shop (associated with the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign) was running codes about child sex slavery in its ads. This led a man to fire a gun within the shop. Tolentino questions how the internet got to this place, but also wonders whether this question is productive, since there may be no going back.

Tolentino lists five problems related to the current state of the internet: it distorts identity, overvalues opinions, maximizes feelings of impressions, cheapens solidarity, and destroys our sense of scale. She then goes into each of these problems in detail.

Regarding the distortion of identity, Tolentino cites Erving Goffman's 1959 theory of identity that states that it is related to playacting. Our performances can be calculated or automatic, and do not always require an audience; all they need is a measure of self-delusion, as well as a "backstage area" away from an audience. The effects of this unlimited audience online create a stage for these performances that are unlike performances in physical spaces, because there is no backstage area where we can distance ourselves from the performance. Tolentino links this to Gamergate in terms of the "hyper-visibility" (15) of the self. 

Tolentino then returns to her own life, admitting that as a journalist and essayist she has herself benefited from the internet's focus on opinions, but also pointing out that this focus minimizes our drive towards action because of our use of the internet and the way it redistributes our attention into "unsatisfying micro-installments" (18). Tolentino recalls working at Jezebel in 2014, where part of her job was to read the feminist press. In the headlines, she writes, speech was equated with action, as opinions were. Accordingly, she claims, the value we accord to speech has increased and that "professional opinion-haves" (19) are not a force for good in general. To support this point, Tolentino gives the example of Bari Weiss, a New York Times columnist.

Tolentino then shifts the discussion to focus on angry internet mobs. She notes that the internet has moved from an organizing principle drawn along "lines of affinity" (21) to one drawn along "an organizing principle of opposition" (21). This form of socializing works through antagonism. And while online opposition can be useful, Tolentino writes that it only creates appearance of equality, citing the misogyny inherent in both the Gamergate episode and on the platform 4chan. Tolentino notes that the principle applies to trolls who oppose women, but also women who oppose trolls. Here, she uses herself as an example. If she were to write a column about her experience with trolling, this would prompt more trolls to attack her, resulting in "mutual escalation" (24). She sees this phenomenon, which ends up promoting what is being opposed, in many belief systems, but notes that the internet in particular makes everything seem personal. Because of this, it makes solidarity seem based in identity rather than politics or morals, and this leads to real harm. Furthermore, it suggests that solidarity can only come from "shared vulnerability" (27).

Finally, Tolentino writes about the ways in which the internet has destroyed our sense of scale. Online algorithms privilege information according to the principle that things are important if they're important to you, destroying a "shared civic reality" (29). Tolentino makes the point that technology which has been designed to grab and keep our attention actually does the opposite. Humans exhibit lab-rat behavior in front of the internet precisely because the internet's dissatisfying nature is part of the experience.

Tolentino concludes by returning to 2016 and an essay she wrote about upsetting world events that year, when she'd been bombarded with news but could do so little to act. Similarly, she writes, the worse the internet is, the more we want it. She herself sets boundaries for time online but has trouble maintaining them. She acknowledges that throughout history, people have worried about the social effects of new technologies, dating back to Socrates' worries about writing. She questions how to fix the bad parts of the internet, coming up with only two solutions: the collapse of our society and economy, or anti-trust cases and regulation. Tolentino believes the first option will occur. If neither does, she writes, we will have to work to maintain our own humanity.