I'm a Fan: A Novel

by Sheena Patel

an endless overlap of images and sound mimicking the way we take in stories on Instagram where you cut between dozens of peoples’ days within a minute, keeping up with the narrative of the way their lives are presented—this one has come out as non-binary, this one is moving in with their partner now, this one went on a date, is looking for love, puts up screenshots from Hinge for their six hundred followers and makes self-deprecating jokes about themselves, embarrassed about their search in this automated time where an algorithm has to get to know you before a human being can—where the algorithm gets to know you more intimately through the hundreds of false start conversations you have about what your favourite colour is and how many siblings you have—this one puts up a video of their progress in pole and then shows you the move they can do now so effortlessly with text laid on the clip saying time is everything! growth! You hear people you don’t know, in living rooms you’ll never be invited into, preparing meals you’ll never eat. The pace of Syms’ video is erratic, jerky, disorienting but familiar. We’re used to video being presented this way.