This book traces how the trans community has navigated and operated within different microeras online. Obviously the zines, physical literature, and in-person groups of yesteryear have given way to the more direct/rapid communication and dissemination of info online. The forums have changed quite a bit over the years - from BBSes and message boards, to chatrooms, to blogging networks, to the current situation within larger social media platforms, and each forum necessarily affects the conversations held within.

The larger conversation has expanded (good!) and allowed access to information for questioning individuals as they begin their journey (great!), but we also see the rise of context-less (mis-)information returned in search results via algorithm (bad!), and the datafication and commodification of specific identities and the labels/language used to approximate those identities by advertisers (horrible!). 

The development of the language around these identities is interesting - particularly funny is the popularization of  "cisgender" as a term driven by one dedicated, overzealous poster. The final section on the tagging/indexing of identifiers in Livejournal and Tumblr was also interesting - the increased visibility in certain circles comes with the codification of these terms and some potentially harmful gatekeeping, as has been the case historically. I was more of a message board and blog person back in the day, but I imagine this section would be super interesting for those that actually kept a Livejournal/Tumblr at the time.

Also interesting is the larger question of archiving these conversations and preserving these histories. Obviously private interests can't be trusted to handle things with any level of care (as we see time and time again), but some personal accounts likely carry with them identifying/sensitive information, deadnames, etc, and the larger digital context is necessarily lost with the passage of time. The language and the ideas have developed, and the conversations have as well (both within the group and outside it), in some cases for better, in others possibly not. The inter-group "flame wars" of BBS & message board-era conversations seems to have mostly fallen away, but some of the nuance of those discussions might be lost in today's larger microblogging/social media landscape. The terms have been created, redefined, and reexamined as we've come to understand their implications (and ourselves) more, and the acceleration of communication (and the commodification of that communication and identities more broadly) threatens to undermine real progress in understanding these things at a deeper level.

And these are very complex things! We're all just trying to find and understand ourselves, trans or otherwise. The journey to understanding is a long one, and I'm not sure there's a real endpoint, even when one finds the specific term(s) that resonate at a deeper level. Even with the wealth of easily-accessed information available to us now, I know I still have questions. I hope the extremely-online kids today are able to wade through the algorithmic "suggestions" with skepticism and find their way forward. 

Anyway, good book! Check it out if you're interested!