Digital Culture and Social Media in God I Feel Modern Tonight

The Thematic Claim: Online Validation as Modern Currency

In God I Feel Modern Tonight, Catherine Cohen satirizes the ways digital culture and social media have become the primary arenas for identity formation, emotional validation, and even romance. The speaker’s compulsive scrolling, tweeting, and Instagram-checking are not mere habits—they are the scaffolding of her modern selfhood. Cohen argues that online platforms promise connection but deliver anxiety, turning every experience into content and every relationship into a performance. The collection repeatedly shows that what “matters” is not the quality of one’s work but its online existence, and that the desire for likes, follows, and digital presence can both fill and hollow out a life.

Tracing the Theme Across the Collection

Chapter 1: Tweeting Makes Anything Political

The opening poem establishes the digital frame immediately. The speaker notes that “anything can be political if you tweet about it,” a line that reduces activism to a platform affordance while also acknowledging the power of online discourse. She sighs loudly enough to attract a stranger’s concern, then deflects with a confession: “my work isn’t good but it’s online / and that’s what counts.” This blunt admission is the book’s thesis—that online existence confers value independent of artistic merit. The tweetability of a sunrise or a sigh becomes more real than the experience itself. The speaker lives in a world where the digital record supersedes the analog moment.

Chapter 2: The Phone as Future and Escape

In “poem I wrote after I woke up at 6 a.m. as a joke,” the speaker gets stuck on a C train with her beaded bag, a symbol of vintage fashion that contrasts with her digital fixation. She imagines a future where everyone is late to therapy and restaurants don’t require the full party to be seated—a world whose logic is designed for distraction. Then she declares, “I can’t wait to check my phone.” The phone is not a tool but an event, an object of anticipation. She even imagines hearing “my daughter’s first podcast,” collapsing parenting into content creation. Throughout, the subway becomes a liminal space where the speaker’s boredom and desire collide, and the phone offers the only promise of relief.

Chapter 63: The Instagram Unfollow as Emotional Event

In “road trip poem #20,” digital culture directly causes an emotional spike. The speaker notices that a company that gave her free sunglasses has unfollowed her on Instagram. This tiny algorithmic slight registers as a genuine loss, a marker of modern anxiety where brands become social actors. She agrees with a companion that sunset is better than sunrise because after sunrise you must face a whole day—a wry comment on the relentless demands of online life (posting, maintaining, performing). The poem ends with her choosing to embrace the present road trip, but the Instagram unfollow lingers as a reminder of how social media’s fickleness can destabilize even a moment of contentment. The phone is never far away.

Character and Symbol Connections

The speaker is the constant filter through which digital culture is refracted. Her lover/partner and ex-boyfriend exist largely off-screen, yet their relationships are mediated by texting, Instagram stalking, and the fear of discovering an engagement online (chapter 53: “what’s it called when you have a sixth sense / that your ex is engaged?”). The therapist appears in the C-train poem, yet her advice is met with skepticism, suggesting that professional help is no match for the dopamine loops of a smartphone. The friend and stranger appear as audiences for the speaker’s sighs and confessions, but they too are often reduced to online avatars.

Key symbols reinforce the theme. The phone/smartphone is both a life raft and a poison—chapter 9 wonders if looking at it will cause death or, worse, “not die.” The beaded bag represents a lost analog elegance, carried into the subway only to become a prop for modern waiting. The subway C train is a space of enforced stillness where digital escape is most desired. And cold brew coffee (from chapter 3) joins the constellation of modern props—like the phone itself, it is a tailored, branded consumable that promises energy but often delivers jitters.

Complexity and Contradiction

Cohen does not simply condemn digital culture; she revels in its absurdity even as she critiques it. The speaker’s self-awareness is both her strength and her trap. She knows that her work is mediocre but online, and she accepts that trade-off. She longs for “the simple things” like emailing someone named Jen (chapter 48), yet that longing is itself expressed through a digital medium. She claims that “if you don’t have crippling anxiety you aren’t modern” (chapter 48), turning a symptom into a badge of authenticity. The contradiction is that the very technologies that produce her anxiety also provide the community, comedy, and self-expression that define her voice. The collection’s final chapter, “A Note About the Author,” blurs the line between persona and person by inviting readers to follow Cohen on Instagram, literally cashing in on the digital platform she has spent the book parodying. This self-aware move completes the circle: the critique is part of the performance, and the performance is part of the system it mocks.

Study Questions and Answers

1. How does the speaker critique online validation in the opening poem?

The speaker says her work “isn’t good but it’s online / and that’s what counts,” directly stating that digital existence outweighs quality. She also notes that “anything can be political if you tweet about it,” implying that the platform determines meaning rather than the content itself.

2. What does “I can’t wait to check my phone” reveal about the speaker’s emotional state in chapter 2?

Stuck on the C train and bored, the speaker treats the phone as an anticipated reward. The line reveals a dependency on digital stimulation to cope with mundane discomfort, and it ironically frames checking the phone as a future pleasure comparable to hearing a daughter’s first podcast.

3. How does the Instagram unfollow in road trip poem #20 exemplify modern anxiety?

The speaker notices a company that gave her free sunglasses has unfollowed her. This minuscule social-media action triggers a sense of rejection or loss. It shows that in a culture of online performance, even corporate interactions carry emotional weight, and that contentment can be undone by a single algorithmic change.

4. In what ways does the smartphone function as both a connection tool and a source of fear?

In chapter 9, the speaker says looking at her phone might make her die “or even worse, not die,” suggesting that the phone is a portal to existential dread. Yet throughout the collection it also connects her to others, stores her memories, and validates her existence. The symbol is contradictory—it provides intimacy and isolation simultaneously.

5. How does the final author biography complicate the book’s critique of digital culture?

The biography invites readers to follow Cohen on Instagram, embracing the very platform the poems mock. This move acknowledges that the author’s career depends on social media; the critique is delivered from inside the system. It suggests that digital culture is inescapable and that parody and participation are not mutually exclusive.