In Patricia Lockwood’s No One is Talking About This – the best ‘internet novel’ there is, in my opinion, the narrator invites the reader into “the portal”. It’s never precisely clear what exactly the portal refers to: the internet, the phone that enables it, the social networks that live on both? But one thing is for certain about the portal: it takes you somewhere else.
That somewhere else might be the most important place in the world, or it might be nowhere in particular. It is important, in this time of constant technological self-reproach, to note that our phones really are often good for us: all of our loved ones live in there, and so much of the rest of the most beautiful things in the world. If there wasn’t some good there, of course, we wouldn’t keep going back.
