IRL

Name: IRL
ISBN: 9781506485157

Finding Our Real Selves in a Digital World

by Chris Stedman

Publisher

Broadleaf Books

Publication

Aug 30, 2022

Format

Paperback/Softback

Illustrated

Price

18.99

Dimensions

6 x 9 in

ISBN

9781506485157

Pages

331

Age

Adult 18+

Rights Sold

🌍 World Wide Rights Available

Description

What Does "IRL (In Real Life)" Really Mean in Today's Digital Age?

It's easy and reflexive to view our online presence as fake, to see the internet as a space we enter when we aren't living our real, offline lives. Yet so much of who we are and what we do now happens online, making it hard to know which parts of our lives are real.

IRL, Chris Stedman's personal and searing exploration of authenticity in the digital age, shines a light on how age-old notions of realness--who we are and where we fit in the world--can be freshly understood in our increasingly online lives. Stedman offers a different way of seeing the supposed split between our online and offline selves: the internet and social media are new tools for understanding and expressing ourselves, and the not-always-graceful ways we use these tools can reveal new insights into far older human behaviors and desires.

IRL invites readers to consider how we use the internet to fulfill the essential human need to feel real--a need many of us once met in institutions, but now seek to do on our own, online--as well as the ways we edit or curate ourselves for digital audiences. The digital search for meaning and belonging presents challenges, Stedman suggests, but also myriad opportunities to become more fully human. In the end, he makes a bold case for embracing realness in all of its uncertainty, online and off, even when it feels risky.

Awards & Endorsements

Garrard Conley, author of Boy Erased

"Chris Stedman's IRL is full of insight and honesty, but its greatest achievement lies in furthering our vocabulary of what it means to be real. IRL provides the side of the story many think pieces ignore: that for many of us, our digital lives were where we first learned to live most fully." -

Author(s)

Chris Stedman

CHRIS STEDMAN is a writer, activist, and professor who teaches in the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Augsburg University in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is the author of IRL: Finding Our Real Selves in a Digital World and the writer and host of Unread, named one of the best podcasts of 2021 by the Guardian, Vulture, HuffPost, Mashable, and the CBC, and honored by the 2022 Webby Awards. Additionally, Stedman is the author of Faitheist and has written popular essays for outlets including the Atlantic, Pitchfork, BuzzFeed, VICE, and the Washington Post. Previously the founding director of the Yale Humanist Community, he also served as a humanist chaplain at Harvard University.