Category: Testimonial

“We contain multitudes. Seeing all of those multitudes spun together with a combination of personal memoir and academic interest kept me turning page after page…on my e-reader. Ultimately, Chris Stedman does for our digital worlds what he does for atheism—asks us to expand our thinking beyond just one thing or the other, good or bad, and see that we’re all of us…just real.”

“I didn’t realize how much I needed this book! Chris Stedman’s perspective on humanness is so wise, vulnerable, and insightful. While the internet can bring us together and make us feel like we know strangers, true intimacy is a rare and magical thing. This surprising book possesses that magic and generously offers it to the reader.”

“I, like many of my millennial compatriots, spend a good chunk of my life online. What I’ve found is that the internet has its own language and foments unique relationships, which can be difficult to navigate and understand. Few are able to write as lucidly on that subject as Chris Stedman, whose prose and insights bring clarity to the muddled, often chaotic lifestyle of we, the ‘terminally online.’ With this book, Stedman writes eloquently on his own experiences to illuminate the core truths of the online dynamics we interact with every day while at the same time asking key questions: What is ‘authenticity?’ What is ‘real?’ I highly recommend it, and I think it will play an important part in shaping how we discuss online interactions moving forward.”

“In IRL, Chris Stedman is getting after the real questions—and best of all, he’s not answering them for us, but encouraging us to ask them too. He’s a mapmaker charting intangible paths between the digital and physical realms, inviting us along to test out the pathways.”

“It’s easy to dismiss social media as one hundred percent bad and destructive (as many of us do when we performatively quit it once a week) or to passively let it run our lives (as many of us do when we start our day by scrolling through it). It takes a wise person to find the good and edifying within it, to identify a constructive way to use and to think about it, to see it for what it is. Chris Stedman is that person, and we’re lucky to have his rational voice in these rancorous times.”

“How can we harness the internet in ways that give life, community, and meaning? Chris Stedman draws on his work as a fierce activist and trailblazing thinker to illuminate a path forward for us all. Weaving together powerful personal reflections and insightful research and reporting, Chris shows how the internet offers us an opportunity to approach the most central questions of life in new ways. This book is essential reading for understanding what it means to be human in our digital world.”

“With IRL, Chris Stedman shares the vulnerable, and often harrowing, account of his search for how to be real in a messy, messy world. By reckoning with his own complicated relationship to social media, he ponders notions of community, friendship, heartache, and, above all, how to live a meaningful life. Filled with humane candor and clear-eyed prose, these pages show a brilliant mind at work on some of the thorniest issues today.”

“Chris Stedman brings a compelling combination of intimacy, vulnerability, irony, and brutal honesty to his search for what it means to be ‘real’ both in and out of virtual spaces. We’ve become more dependent than ever on the relationships we form online—and so we’re under more pressure than ever to integrate our identity in something consistent, forever ‘on-brand.’ His testimony opens a space for all of us to stop fetishizing discipline and false coherence and instead dig deeper into uncertainty and connection.”

“With IRL, Chris Stedman shares the vulnerable, and often harrowing, account of his search for how to be real in a messy, messy world. By reckoning with his own complicated relationship to social media, he ponders notions of community, friendship, heartache, and, above all, how to live a meaningful life. Filled with humane candor and clear-eyed prose, these pages show a brilliant mind at work on some of the thorniest issues today.”

“IRL is a personal, and often-poignant, investigation into what it means to be real in a digital age. In his writing and exploration, Chris Stedman embraces (rather than resists) the unity of opposite impulses that define our social lives online: critical engagement alongside mob mentality, surprising intimacies and algorithmic bubbles, selfies as vanity projects and selfies as spiritual opportunities. Reading this book made me think more deeply and ethically about the life I lead online and—relatedly, I now see—what it is to be human.”