meme magic, hot mess eras, and digital d...

If you’ve spent any time on Instagram’s weird, wonderful and niche corners, chances are high that you’ve seen one of Aiden Arata’s memes. Her work moves past the usual surface-level social media irony and plunges into the intersection where humor, psychic distress, and cultural commentary meet. Aiden’s debut book You Have a New Memory has been making waves, and for good reason. It’s hard to describe exactly what it is. Part essay collection, part dream logic, but in the end it reads kind of like a portal. And in a world where all the content we see is polished, branded, and performed for the algorithmic gods, her voice cuts through all the bullshit in the best possible way. 

In this conversation, Aiden and I sat down to talk about how her book came to life, the strange intimacy of online performance, and the parts of ourselves we leave behind when we grow past a digital persona. We also dive into how platforms shape our identity, how performance can end up becoming our personality, and what it takes to create something that doesn’t need to sell itself. There’s a lot here about self-loathing, humor, privacy, and art-making in the hot mess of our current attention economy. If you’ve ever tried to integrate your past self into your current work, or felt haunted by the person people think you still are, this episode will likely hit for you in a major way. 

In this conversation, Aiden and I get into: 

• How “Hot Mess Aiden” shaped the tone and form of her writing
• Why the book mimics memory more than narrative
• The shift from confessional content to private creative process
• The internet’s shift from Tumblr girl energy to brand identity performance
• The loneliness of constant engagement and follower analytics
• What it means to stop oversharing without disappearing entirely
• How to live online without being consumed by it entirely
• The psychic pressure of being seen only through an old self

Explore Aiden’s work

Find Aiden on Instagram: @aidenarata

Subscribe to her Substack: aidenarata.substack.com

Buy her book You Have a New Memory and explore more at: aidenarata.com

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