Relationships change over time spent online. Where I used to want to know everything about someone I loved, I now want to know only what he or she tells me. Anything I find out about that someone, from someone else, I rule inadmissible. In Tao Lin’s new novel, Taipei, his protagonist meets a girl and spends hours searching Facebook for any photos she might have untagged of herself. Reading this, I sympathized, and thought he had doomed his interest. It seemed unfair – both of and to Lin’s character – to not see her as she wanted to look.

me in the summer on Miranda July’s email project. Thought of it reading this. (via snpsnpsnp)

I can relate. I spent my first real relationship this way—not listening to what other people said, wanting his idea of himself to be the only one that I received. But the messages were mixed and in the end I could have used some help to discern them. These days I’m not sure which way is right.
Perhaps looking for someone’s untagged photos is akin to finding candid snapshots of someone when they’re unaware a photo is being taken, where—as Jennifer Egan once put it—you see how someone really looks.