meme magic, hot mess eras, and digital disappearance with aiden arata

If you’ve spent any time on Instagram’s weird, wonderful and niche corners, chances are high that you’ve seen one of Aiden Arata’s memes. Her work moves past the usual surface-level social media irony and plunges into the intersection where humor, psychic distress, and cultural commentary meet. Aiden’s debut book You Have a New Memory has been making waves, and for good reason. It’s hard to describe exactly what it is. Part essay collection, part dream logic, but in the end it reads kind of like a portal. And in a world where all the content we see is polished, branded, and performed for the algorithmic gods, her voice cuts through all the bullshit in the best possible way. In this conversation, Aiden and I sat down to talk about how her book came to life, the strange intimacy of online performance, and the parts of ourselves we leave behind when we grow past a digital persona. We also dive into how platforms shape our identity, how performance can end up becoming our personality, and what it takes to create something that doesn’t need to sell itself. There’s a lot here about self-loathing, humor, privacy, and art-making in the hot mess of our current attention economy. If you’ve ever tried to integrate your past self into your current work, or felt haunted by the person people think you still are, this episode will likely hit for you in a major way. In this conversation, Aiden and I get into: How “Hot Mess Aiden” shaped the tone and form of her writingWhy the book mimics memory more than narrativeThe shift from confessional content to private creative processThe internet’s shift from Tumblr girl energy to brand identity performanceThe loneliness of constant engagement and follower analyticsWhat it means to stop oversharing without disappearing entirelyHow to live online without being consumed by it entirelyThe psychic pressure of being seen only through an old selfExplore Aiden’s workFind Aiden on Instagram: @aidenarataSubscribe to her Substack: aidenarata.substack.comBuy her book You Have a New Memory and explore more at: aidenarata.com⟁ UNLOCK BONUS EPISODES, VOICE NOTES & THE FULL ARCHIVE // Join the BFTB  Patreon community and become a Premium Submarine, where you’ll unlock hundreds of hours of paywalled content I’ve been building since 2021. Visit backfromtheborderline.com for free resources, updates, and everything else I offer. Or go straight to patreon.com/backfromtheborderline to join now. Once you’re in, you’ll get a private feed you can add to Spotify, Apple, or your favorite podcast app, so you can listen to every episode I’ve ever released, all in one place. ⟁ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.