I wrote a book! Say hello to Social Capital
And it's all about... the internet
Picture the scene: Cork, late 1990s. A teenage girl goes to a bowling alley. The room is dark and vaguely exciting. There’s probably an air hockey table somewhere. In the corner, she sees what she’s here for. Not a game of bowling - the computers, glowing in a corner. She hands over a few pounds, searches ‘chat room’ on AltaVista and spends 15 minutes messaging strangers about her love of Silverchair.
I know I’ve been teasing a ‘big project’ that I’ve been working on (forgive me - I know it’s really annoying to do that), and here it is: my first book.
Fittingly, for someone who has a tortured relationship with social media, it’s about… the internet and social media.
It’s called Social Capital, and it’s being published on 27 April 2023 with HarperCollins Ireland. Writing it has been quite the intense experience, so it’s exciting to be at this stage of the publishing journey! Read on for more info and - crucially - how to pre-order it.
So, it’s about the internet, eh?
It is indeed. When I started going online as a teenager (in the aforementioned bowling alley, and my friend J’s house after school), the first thing I noticed - surely the first thing we all notice - was a basic one: how people behave.
People, I learned, were not always nice. People could be weird, or rude, or overly friendly, or just strange. Not all of them, but enough to perturb me. Over the years, I’ve gotten more and more fascinated by how we act on social media in particular, and pretty appalled by some of what goes on there. And yet… there’s so much I love about the internet. The community! The fun! The strange languages we make up together! The memes! The escapism!
So it’s been a pretty interesting ride the last 20 months or so to get to speak to others about their lives online, and to analyse my own experiences for a book. My first book! I can hardly believe it.
The internet is a broad place, and the book is too - I cover a range of topics to try and give an overview of the main events and themes that have been obsessing us online over the past number of years: the online scandals that have occurred, the legislation that’s had to be brought in to try and curb harmful behaviour, the influencing that started a backlash.
I also write for the first time about my own experience of online harassment.
In the book, I speak to people about how tech companies deal with all of the harm that can happen online - and how dealing with it by using human content moderation could be causing even more harm.
I end the book by zooming out from our everyday behaviour to look at ‘Silicon Docks’, which is, in a way, a microcosm of the greater narrative around the internet and progress. Yes, the docklands has been revitalised, but at what cost?
Social Capital takes in a lot, but it’s all focused through the stories of people - my own story, and the stories of others. That’s what the internet is about, after all: people. All of the topics I cover weave in and out of each other; they’re all interconnected. The throughline is human behaviour, and what we’re willing to do to each other in the digital space.
I really hope the book will serve as a way of assessing where we right now with our relationships with the internet, and to help us figure out the future. Time has flown by so fast that we’ve barely had time to catch up with what’s gone on online in the past 10 years in particular, and yet it’s been so pivotal for us cultural and socially.
We aren’t going to be living without the internet any time soon, or without social media, so how can we learn from the past to make the future a better one?
Where can I buy the book?
I would love if anyone interested in reading Social Capital would pre-order the book. I know you can buy it on publishing day, but pre-ordering means you’ll get a book in the post just in time for some May bank holiday weekend reading…
Here are the bookshops where you can pre-order the book:
A huge thanks to everyone who supported me throughout the writing of the book, especially over the very challenging final few months of 2022. I honestly couldn’t have done it without so many people, including everyone at HarperCollins Ireland, having my back. (And red wine.)
Over the next few weeks I’ll give an insight into the writing process, my inspirations and other interesting elements connected to Social Capital. Until then… see you on social media!
Congratulations Aoife!
Identity politics!