Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It by Kaitlyn Tiffany is described as a history of the Internet and the young fans who shaped it. The publisher’s website remarks that the author “makes a convincing, and often moving, argument that fangirls, in their ingenuity and collaboration, created the social internet we know today“. The Internet, especially in fandom spaces, was the Wild West back then (and honestly still is). It is on these early platforms that young women were creating new words and ways to interact in these digital spaces.
So when I read this summary, I was excited. I read this book expecting a comprehensive look at how early Internet culture has shaped the landscape that we’re wading in now. I was in middle school/high school during this time, and I remember the fandoms that dominated the Internet. However, the book is instead more of an analysis/mediation/personal essays on the One Direction fandom. For a book that was advertised as an analysis of Internet culture and how girl-led fandoms have shaped the Internet, the book mainly focuses on the One Direction fandom.
The 1D fandom was paramount to shaping the digital spaces we use today, but the descriptions of this book made this work seem like a comprehensive look at all of the fandoms and fans that dominated these spaces. Tiffany’s analysis of One Direction fans and history was good. The writing was great and she incorporated her personal anecdotes in a way that enhanced the storytelling. But it lacked any other in-depth analysis and history of other fandoms.
I appreciated how the author recounts the subject with the seriousness of any other historical movement. This era of fandom deserves attention, and I am glad to have read a small part of it. But this should have been marketing as a history of the 1D fandom. And because the marketing and the actual book did not mesh, I left feeling disappointed. Everything I Need I Get From You is a perfect example of how misaligned marketing for a book can derail a reader’s experience.
I don’t blame the author, as the marketing of a book is rarely up to the writer to decide. Publishing has teams of people tasked with marketing a book. But it is just sad how this otherwise great book is advertised as something it just quite isn’t.
If you are a die-hand 1D fan, you might enjoy reading this book and scrolling through memory lane. But if you are like me and are looking for something a bit more comprehensive about the early Internet fandom scene, then this probably won’t satiate your desire.
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