Unfriending My Ex: And Other Things I'll Never Do - Hardcover

Stolz, Kim

3.25

322 ratings by Goodreads

9781476761787: Unfriending My Ex: And Other Things I'll Never Do

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1476761787 ISBN 13: 9781476761787

Publisher: Scribner, 2014

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An incisive, hilarious, and brutally honest memoir about life online and about how our obsessive connectivity is making us more disconnected—from former reality show contestant, MTV VJ, restauranteur, and go-to voice for millenials.

Social media and technology have fundamentally altered the way we do business, couple and break up, develop friendships, and construct our identities and our notions of aspiration and fame. We make decisions about where we’ll go based on whether it’s Instagrammable. We don’t have friends, we have followers. For an entire generation, an experience not captured on social media might as well not have happened at all.

As someone whose identity has been forged by reality TV (as a contestant on America’s Next Top Model) and social media and mobile technology, Kim Stolz is deeply obsessed with the subject. She has a hard time putting her phone down. And yet she remembers what life was like before technology-induced ADD, before life had become a string of late-night texts, Snapchats, endless selfies, that sinking feeling you get when you realize you’ve hit reply all by mistake. It’s hard to imagine now, but there was once a time before we wasted a full hour emptily clicking through a semi-stranger’s vacation pictures on Facebook, a time before every ex, every meaningless fling was a mere click away.

Unfriending My Ex (And Other Things I’ll Never Do) is the first book to document the hilarity of the social media revolution from the inside; it chronicles a life filtered through our obsessive relationship with technology. The book is as eye-opening as it is entertaining as it proceeds through the various ways in which social media and mobile technology have generated empathy deficits and left us all with the attention spans of fruit flies...and the sad fact that in spite all of this, we find it impossible to switch our devices off.

Smart, hilarious, and completely relatable, Unfriending My Ex (And Other Things I’ll Never Do) captures our crazy moment, shining a bright light on the trials and tribulations of life online.

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Review:

The cliche holds that anyone south of 30 years old is enriched by digital devices, and happily spends their waking hours on Facebook and Twitter, expanding their network, becoming empowered as writers and thinkers, achieving fame, overthrowing corrupt governments. In this reader-friendly and cogently argued book, Kim Stolz shares another story -- of her digital addiction and how it enslaved her, fraying friendships, and attention spans, and making her and members of her generation less, not more, connected. Unfriending My Ex is a punch in the nose, meant not to knock out technology, but to jolt us to seek more balance in our lives. Because it is so personally honest, it will rivet your attention. --Ken Auletta, author of Googled"

In "Unfriending My Ex", Kim Stolz gives us a clear-eyed, exceptionally intelligent look at a phenomenon at once mystifying and unavoidable. The thrall in which social media holds us feels so enchanting, we may be losing control of the most valuable parts of our lives to it. The author, while respectful of both progress and of her generation, seeks to restore that control. Here is the work of a grown-up young woman, hip enough to live successfully in the world as it is, yet thoughtful enough to identify its follies and delusions. If our times may be defined by a smart phone, we should be grateful that Unfriending My Ex is a hell of a lot smarter. --Roger Rosenblatt, author of Rules for Aging: A Wry and Witty Guide to Life"

It s hard to believe the 1980 s once got slapped with the tag the Me Decade . What seemed like a materially indulgent era more than twenty years ago had nothing on the narcissism of the past ten years, the iDecade if you will, and those who made it so, the iGeneration . That group of look-at-me, listen-to-me, here s-what-I m-doing-right-now, poke-you, don t-delete-me, I-ought-to-famous-just-cuz young people are the subject of Kim Stolz s book. And if anyone ought to know the topic, it s Kim."--John Norris, MTV News Correspondent"

"The cliche holds that anyone south of 30 years old is enriched by digital devices, and happily spends their waking hours on Facebook and Twitter, expanding their network, becoming empowered as writers and thinkers, achieving fame, overthrowing corrupt governments. In this reader-friendly and cogently argued book, Kim Stolz shares another story -- of her digital addiction and how it enslaved her, fraying friendships, and attention spans, and making her and members of her generation less, not more, connected. Unfriending My Ex is a punch in the nose, meant not to knock out technology, but to jolt us to seek more balance in our lives. Because it is so personally honest, it will rivet your attention."--Ken Auletta, author of Googled

"In "Unfriending My Ex", Kim Stolz gives us a clear-eyed, exceptionally intelligent look at a phenomenon at once mystifying and unavoidable. The thrall in which social media holds us feels so enchanting, we may be losing control of the most valuable parts of our lives to it. The author, while respectful of both progress and of her generation, seeks to restore that control. Here is the work of a grown-up young woman, hip enough to live successfully in the world as it is, yet thoughtful enough to identify its follies and delusions. If our times may be defined by a smart phone, we should be grateful that Unfriending My Ex is a hell of a lot smarter."--Roger Rosenblatt, author of Rules for Aging: A Wry and Witty Guide to Life

"We spend more time with our Blackberries than we do with any member of our family. We really need to examine how this is affecting our social and mental growth. Kim's an expert on reality television, social networking, and the mobile addiction of the MTV generation. She's also one of the smart ones, who is self aware and therefore cautious of the social, mental and intellectual effects of such dependencies."--Alison Becker, VH1 Personality, actress, comedian

"It's hard to believe the 1980's once got slapped with the tag "the Me Decade." What seemed like a materially indulgent era more than twenty years ago had nothing on the narcissism of the past ten years, the "iDecade" if you will, and those who made it so, the "iGeneration." That group of look-at-me, listen-to-me, here's-what-I'm-doing-right-now, poke-you, don't-delete-me, I-ought-to-famous-just-cuz young people are the subject of Kim Stolz's book. And if anyone ought to know the topic, it's Kim."--John Norris, MTV News Correspondent

"Kim Stolz has written an exciting book about love and life in the era of the iPhone. Whether you're addicted to technology or totally anti-social media, she captures the reality of living a sexy, busy, buzzy life today. She's the ultimate cool chick, an authentic artist, and a natural born writer."--Alyssa Shelasky, author of "Apron Anxiety"

"Stolz explores a topic so current and impactful that I only checked my Twitter and Instagram twice while reading it!"--Caprice Crane, international best-selling author of "Stupid and Contagious" and "Confessions of a Hater"

"As a self-confessed Web-aholic I am well aware that social networks have preyed upon humanity's innate need to connect, and the result is nothing short of a planetary epidemic of info-addiction. We are not only content to live in the Matrix but are increasingly driven to be a cognitive cog in its functionality. Kim Stolz has the mind of a scientist in the body of Millennial. Her experiences on reality television and MTV have made her something of a Jane Goodall of digital culture: she lives among them, ever observant, to catalog and understand their behavior patterns while attempting to determine the landscape of Mankind's future. On its present course, the signs seem to indicate 'not great.'"--Chris Hardwick, host of Comedy Central's "@midnight" and author of "The Nerdist Way"

About the Author:

Kim Stolz is a former contest on America's Next Top Model, MTV News anchor, and current director of equities derivative sales at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. She is a graduate of the Brearley School and Wesleyan University. In 2012, she was named one of the 100 most compelling People of the Year by Out magazine. She lives in New York City.

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