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Overview
An open-hearted interrogation of our digital selves, braiding cultural criticism, memoir, and narrative musings into an exploration of identity, girlhood, media, tech, nature and "finding the depth and beauty in the fucked-up world we live in" from a writer, artist, and influencer (Phoebe Bridgers).
YOU HAVE A NEW MEMORY is a deeply human inventory of the digital sphere, a searing analysis of the present and a prescient assessment of the future. In her highly anticipated debut, Aiden Arata brings us raw reportage from the liminal space between online and offline worlds, illuminating how we got here and where to go next. With high-res, cosmic vision and razor-sharp wit, this kaleidoscopic collection of essays artfully explores what it means to exist on the internet. Arata exposes influencer grifts from the perspective of a grifter, digs into the alluring aesthetic numbness of stay-at-home girlfriend content creators, and interrogates our online fetishization of doom to grapple with the real-world apocalypse. Arata is the wry, unexpected voice we need to navigate existing simultaneously as creators, consumers, and products in our increasingly braver and newer world.Customers Also Bought
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9781538767597
- ISBN-10: 1538767597
- Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
- Publish Date: July 2025
- Dimensions: 7.79 x 5.85 x 0.9 inches
- Shipping Weight: 0.77 pounds
- Page Count: 240
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In 10 fresh, intelligent essays, Los Angeles-based writer and artist Aiden Arata’s You Have a New Memory blends memoir, criticism and reportage to produce a vivid portrait of life in the online age from the perspective of a digital native. Fittingly, Arata kicks off the collection with an essay titled “America Online,” an excavation that exposes her first forays onto the internet as an elementary schooler in the early days of the millennium. It’s peppered with references to long-forgotten and mostly unlamented cultural totems of the era like erstwhile social media platform MySpace and the TV show Joe Millionaire that will leave readers both smiling and wincing. Arata’s own immersion in the digital world blossomed from scattered seeds like those. In “What’s Meant for You Won’t Miss,” she describes her cringeworthy visit to a “sponsored influencer wellness retreat” on the Sunset Strip that amounts to an “afternoon of aspirational grifting.” But by the time of “The Museum of Who I Want to Be for You,” her views on online influencing are important enough to win her an invitation to a panel at a New York City meme conference sponsored by an unnamed “narcissism app” that readers can assume was Facebook. The longest and most serious piece is “How to Do the Right Thing.” Writing from a second-person perspective, Arata traces the course of her friendship with Adam, a comic artist who’s singlemindedly devoted to amassing a legion of Instagram followers. When he’s accused of sexual assault on Facebook by a Tinder date, it launches Arata into an existential crisis about their relationship. Arata’s book is also laced with some wickedly funny moments. Several occur in “In Real Life,” an account of her 10 days without electronic devices with the monks at a French Carthusian cloister. “Monastic sequestration feels a bit like I’m on a reality show and the only viewer is God,” she writes. Above all, Arata reminds us, online life is a unique form of performance art. Her attempts to both embrace it and critique it with a cool and distanced eye make for intriguing and not always comfortable reading, as we glimpse our own reflections in the mirror of the online world she presents to us.
In 10 fresh, intelligent essays, Los Angeles-based writer and artist Aiden Arata’s You Have a New Memory blends memoir, criticism and reportage to produce a vivid portrait of life in the online age from the perspective of a digital native. Fittingly, Arata kicks off the collection with an essay titled “America Online,” an excavation that exposes her first forays onto the internet as an elementary schooler in the early days of the millennium. It’s peppered with references to long-forgotten and mostly unlamented cultural totems of the era like erstwhile social media platform MySpace and the TV show Joe Millionaire that will leave readers both smiling and wincing. Arata’s own immersion in the digital world blossomed from scattered seeds like those. In “What’s Meant for You Won’t Miss,” she describes her cringeworthy visit to a “sponsored influencer wellness retreat” on the Sunset Strip that amounts to an “afternoon of aspirational grifting.” But by the time of “The Museum of Who I Want to Be for You,” her views on online influencing are important enough to win her an invitation to a panel at a New York City meme conference sponsored by an unnamed “narcissism app” that readers can assume was Facebook. The longest and most serious piece is “How to Do the Right Thing.” Writing from a second-person perspective, Arata traces the course of her friendship with Adam, a comic artist who’s singlemindedly devoted to amassing a legion of Instagram followers. When he’s accused of sexual assault on Facebook by a Tinder date, it launches Arata into an existential crisis about their relationship. Arata’s book is also laced with some wickedly funny moments. Several occur in “In Real Life,” an account of her 10 days without electronic devices with the monks at a French Carthusian cloister. “Monastic sequestration feels a bit like I’m on a reality show and the only viewer is God,” she writes. Above all, Arata reminds us, online life is a unique form of performance art. Her attempts to both embrace it and critique it with a cool and distanced eye make for intriguing and not always comfortable reading, as we glimpse our own reflections in the mirror of the online world she presents to us.