Lurking is far-reaching and ferociously smart, told from the hearts and minds of users rather than the profit and loss statements of tech conglomerates. In centering her research on the user experience of an ever-changing internet rather than the theatrics and myth-making of Big Tech, McNeil weaves a people’s history of the internet, making for a humane, big-hearted narrative of how the internet has changed—and how it changed us.

McNeil uses language that is incisive yet poetic to capture thoughtful insights about the internet.

... amazing.

By charting the evolution of many complex and divergent online communities, McNeil shows that lurking is not a passive activity but a productive one. Lurking isn't organized by the linear, deterministic framework that characterizes many accounts of how the Internet came to be. Rather, the history McNeil presents is idiosyncratic and contradictory.

Lurking is an impressionistic chronicle.

Its casual and quiet tone is reminiscent of the intimacy that characterized these early online chat rooms. The result feels like a small exhibition, full of pleasing digressions and well-curated associations. Some of the stories here will feel familiar to anyone who has read (or read reviews of) prior accounts of once-vibrant internet communities. But Lurking is more than a ghost tour. By attending to the Web’s neglected history, McNeil wants us to imagine how things might have been—and might still be—otherwise.

Joanne McNeil’s Lurking: How a Person Became a User defamiliarize[s] us with the Internet as we now know it, reminding us of the human desires and ambitions that have shaped its evolution.

... a thoughtful exploration of the development of technology, online identity and the essential elements of humanness that make it all possible.

... a lyrical, polemic account of our collective transmogrification from personhood to userdom.

McNeil uses an intriguing approach in this exploration of the culture inadvertently created by internet use.

McNeil bears witness to the process by which, as she puts it in the subtitle of the book, 'a person became a user,' a process that she seems to regard as both a historic inevitability and one that we can profoundly shape.

... conversational and idiosyncratic.

Art critic McNeil charts internet history in her thoughtful debut, critically examining how online platforms affect their users. Her account is impressively and even dizzyingly far-reaching, to the point that its many tidbits of information sometimes blur together. Those facts are, nevertheless, eye-catching.

Sharp, broad-ranging techno-criticism that merits attention..