Hey, it's Empire's Book of the Day. I'm Andrew Limbong. I don't know how to impress upon you that if you were at the right place and right time, in this case, the mid-2000s with a broadband connection, the internet felt like a beautiful utopia. It felt like freedom. I think it's fair to say that the average person's experience of

the internet today doesn't feel like that. In the new book, Racebook, writer Tochi Oniubuchi

tracks this change of the internet from when it was a place where people would joyously

share tips on getting through the water dungeon in Zelda to whatever it is now. He talks to NPR's

Wonders after the break. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the

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Remember when the internet was fun, a little less intense? Well, author Tochi Oniubuchi

does. His new book, Racebook, harkens back to that odd time in history when people started to realize

the power of the internet, but before things

got so serious. For him, the internet and the way he experienced it shifted in 2012.

It seemed as though prior to that moment, I existed on the internet as a sort of skinless,

raceless entity. It didn't seem as though I was a black man on the internet

until I started arguing with people about blackness on the internet. The moment he's referencing

is the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012 and the subsequent acquittal of the man who killed him.

Onyabuchi uses this moment and others to take stock of the internet, both past and present through his eyes,

those of a young black man finding community and navigating the changing and sometimes dangerous

world around him. I think one of the things that happened was there was this, there was this veil that had

come down. And it became apparent to me that there, I guess to put it diplomatically,

there was a much greater diversity of opinion on the internet than it had occurred to me there was in

the past. There were people, particularly people in my life, but people who I seem to be

primarily interacting with online, didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with the way

...