My Tiny Life

Crime and Passion in a Virtual World

by Julian Dibbell
read Summer 2002
reviewed 2003-08-01

I loved the breathless, hip, intellectual pop-culture neo-electric-kool-aid acid test writing style. He captures the initial thrill of joining an on-line community, the strange blurring of on-line and real-life identity that those of us who live largely in our own minds are apt to experience, especially the first time out. His descriptions of the characters are vivid: excellent postage-stamp portraits that we would have had to compile for ourselves from hours of typed dialogue.

About two-thirds of the way through I lost interest in the descriptions of bickering and intense dislike among the participants in the mud. Had I been there I suppose I would have left the mud; as it is, I stopped reading the book. I’ll finish it one of these days.

Recommended.

internet culture history of internet social-history