What We Talk About When We Talk About Love in the Digital Age: Technology, Intimacy, and Affect in Olivia Sudjic’s Sympathy and Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article demonstrates how Olivia Sudjic’s Sympathy and Lauren Oyler’s Fake Accounts offer a critique of the networked society and culture by foregrounding these novels’ depiction of their characters’ affective and intimate experiences in contemporary digital culture. Whereas the former’s treatment of Instagram, dating apps, pornography, and cybersex emphasizes the contagious environment on the internet, the second one critiques the dating industry through deliberately evoking boredom. Further, drawing upon the works of affect theorists like Ahmed, Ngai, Berlant, and Paasonen, the article focuses on the emotions produced at the interface of digital technologies and human interactions in the everyday experience of intimacy. The article, however, finally argues that the novels’ emphasis on positive emotions such as hope and surprise indicates their renewed faith in the internet while renegotiating intimate experiences. This reading of the two novels suggests that contemporary fiction must take account of this complex entanglement of technology, emotions, and intimacy.