@expectations
by Kit Reed ***
Given that social networking has burgeoned in the 10 years since Kit Reed wrote "@expectations," her cautionary tale about the dangers of virtual life is still surprisingly fresh and relevant.
Unlike the movie "Avatar," in which it's a GOOD thing when the main character morphs into his virtual self at last, "@expectations" explores the down side of virtual identity.
*** SPOILERS *** Readers will probably be able to suss out the virtual angle of the novel, which might have been a little harder to discern 10 years ago. But they might also be able to read about poor Jenny Wilder (a psychotherapist, ironically enough), who's having a virtual affair on a social networking site, with considerably more chagrin.
If you have access to a teenager's page on Facebook, you'll see that the kiddies are all over this, reinventing themselves sometimes daily with new pictures, often heavily Photoshopped, cool new names, and conversations in which they try out new double entendres and hip language. Meet them in real life, and they're still the scrawny or pudgy kids you see hiding zits behind their hair and trying to blend into the background in real life.
But FaceBook isn't just for kids anymore. Studies show that 50-year-old women are the fastest growing segment of the network. Most of my friends seem to be using FB as a kind of virtual "Grandma's Brag Book" or, worse, for inspirational riffs ripped off from the "Eat Pray Love."
How many of them might also have avatars other than their real gramma selves, I don't want to know. It would be too sad, though I can't say I wouldn't understand. Who among us wouldn't like to cast off the aging carapace occasionally and replace it with a cute 30-something self but with all the savvy and sass we've got at 50-something? It's possible through social networks, and some of the characters in "@expectations" do just that.
OK, Reed's novel might be a little TOO cautionary--there's a tittle too much melodrama for my taste--but it does force you to look at whether social networking is really all that harmless or therapeutic. There are some pretty twisted people, and Vinnie the ex-con (Azeath the super hero in virtual life) isn't the most twisted. In fact, the thread of his story is so predictable as to be banal, perhaps purposely so. Nope, it's the seemingly "normal" people who seem to get the most twisted up in virtual reality, twisted up so tight that they can scarcely function off line.
You probably know people like this. Even if you don't know you know them. Reed treats them pretty kindly and allows one or two of them to untwist in an ending that is both appealing and and surprising.
Click the pic to hear "Avatar" director James Cameron talk about "the uncanny valid," the point at which his half-animated, half-human characters become sympathetic characters. Maybe there's a counterpart to the "uncanny valid" on social networks?
Late reading this, but a nice review of @expectations. That seems to be her only recent novel I skipped. In the intervening years since the book was written I'm sure we have all accumulated stories we can tell....
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