BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.

Hello, I'm Tina Dehealy.

Welcome to Beyond Today from BBC Radio 4,

where we ask one big question about one big story every weekday.

Today, Gia Tolantino, is the internet fueling first time I used it at my dad's office

and thought it was the ultimate cool I wrote when I was 10 on an angel fire

sub page titled The Story of how Gia got her web addiction.

Self-Dilusion isn't necessarily a bad thing.

Sometimes it might actually present as hope, and that's a good thing. Sometimes it might actually present as hope and that's a good thing isn't it?

But the online world with its allure of perfect lives and false promises is fueling our self-deception and that's dangerous.

At least that's what Gia Tolantino says.

Hi, I'm Gia Tolantino,

and here's my essay, Always Be Optimizing, Abridged by Rowan Ralph.

She's a 31-year-old American writer who's been hailed as the voice of a generation.

Her pieces for the New Yorker magazine nail everything from feminism to capitalism and vaping.

Well now you can download her essays in a collection called Trick Mirror on BBC Sounds.

On the internet, a highly functional person is one who can promise everything to an indefinitely increasing audience at all times.

Gia was born in Texas and brought up in a southern Baptist community.

As a teenager, she starred in an American reality TV show. Later, she spent time working

for the U.S. Peace Corps in Kyrgyzstan.

Gia spoke to me from a studio in New York. On Monday we did an episode about the meme-making

app Tik-Tok, so I began by asking Gia about why she had chosen to write about Tik-Tok in the New Yorker recently.

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