No One is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood follows an unnamed woman famous for her posts on social media, or what she terms “the portal.” In the first half of the book, the woman is chronically online. From videos of someone applying their foundation with a hard-boiled egg or posts enlightening people about the powers of socialism, the woman is bombarded with an absurd amount of information and left wondering, “What did it mean that she was allowed to see this?” Suddenly, when problems arise with her sister’s pregnancy, her endless scroll online is interrupted. The woman is forced to withdraw from “the portal,” but she gains an entirely new perspective on love and human connection.
Lockwood writes a strikingly accurate portrayal of online culture, describing the internet as a single, potent entity. While the internet has millions of sub-communities, there are norms and unwritten rules everyone follows, like certain emojis you should never text your family members. As the woman spirals further down the rabbit hole, she catches on to the unquestionable nature of “the portal,” and also discovers a strange sense of community within it.
All of this encompasses the collective consciousness — a set of shared beliefs and attitudes on the internet that informs our sense of belonging. Isn’t that why people log onto social media in the first place? Yet when the woman disengages from being online, she must confront a heart-breaking reality that cannot be subdued by scrolling. It’s in the second half of the book where she learns to truly connect with the people in her life, something she tried replacing with the internet before.
The woman’s experience online is extremely relatable, almost ashamedly so. Indeed it is a portal; an escape to a world not far from ours, but one that somehow feels closer and more accessible. Lockwood doesn’t implore readers to ditch the internet, but she does however raise the question: To what extent can we search for human connection on the internet, and find it? Both hilarious and deeply moving, this is a book everyone should definitely be talking about.
