Author interview: Scary extent of how algorithms are now dominating our lives

Roisín Kiberd looks at the increasingly relentless pursuit of perfection and what it means to be normal now in her new book, she tells Marjorie Brennan how we’re always losing time, and that’s what the beauty industry preys on

Róisín Kiberd: ‘Sometimes, when we communicate one thing with how we look, we’re actually communicating something entirely different. And I think most of the time, we’re communicating fear.’

• The Most Normal Woman 
• Róisín Kiberd 
• Tramp Press, €16.00

Róisín Kiberd’s  first book,  The Disconnect: A Personal Journey through the Internet, was a fascinating and incisive collection of essays exploring our online lives, covering everything from the cult of energy drinks to midnight gym workouts.

Released in 2021, there was a distinctly dystopian flavour to the Dublin writer’s adventures in cyberspace. 

Since then, however, algorithms have come to dominate our lives to an even scarier extent, a theme that also underpins her latest book, The Most Normal Woman.

From an attempt to access the Mayo factory that produces Botox to developing a yoga addiction in Berlin, Kiberd looks at the increasingly relentless pursuit of perfection and what it means to be normal now.

“At surface level, this book looks like it’s about something much more shallow and trivial, yet I don’t think it’s all that different to tech.

“It can get extremely dystopian very quickly, and yet in a way it’s much older as a subject than that of The Disconnect. It’s around as long as civilisation.”

In a world where ‘tweakments’ and cosmetic surgery have become the norm, and ageing is increasingly verboten, it would appear that surface has won out over substance. For Kiberd, it is a bit more nuanced.

“I think all of the deeper things, the humanity, the subconscious, they’re all still in the mix.

“Sometimes, when we communicate one thing with how we look, we’re actually communicating something entirely different.

“And I think most of the time, we’re communicating fear. We’re always losing time, and that’s what the beauty industry preys on.”

Kiberd is well aware of how social media feeds this perceived lack in ourselves and in women especially.

“I can feel that window broadening out more and more now because I’m in my 30s, and according to algorithms, I’m basically hurtling towards 40. It’s like, ‘what, you’re not injecting salmon sperm under your eyes?’.

“Everything is apparently necessary now. I readily admit I don’t think it’s entirely healthy what’s going on in my mind. I wrote the book out of a curiosity, wondering if anyone else is experiencing these weird intrusive thoughts that they’re never enough?”

Choices to alter personal appearance

The claim that it’s a person’s own choice to alter their appearance is not straightforward either, says Kiberd.

“I couldn’t even tell you, do I really want something, or has it just been implanted in my head by the culture?

“The great mistake made by a lot of the internet feminism in the last 10 years was to claim that something was feminist just because a woman chose to do it.

“That’s a grey area. Did she really choose? Look how quickly third-wave feminism has crumbled away. It really shocks me just how quickly things can change.”

The Disconnect and The Most Normal Woman are part of a relatively small, if growing, body of Irish creative non-fiction, a genre that has traditionally been somewhat underrepresented on these shores.

“It doesn’t get enough love at all, it’s a well-established and illustrious genre of writing, and also a very demanding but rewarding one to work in. It genuinely can give you a new perspective on the world,” says Kiberd. 

“I don’t know, I think we might be in an awkward place, and what I had to my advantage in being able to write these pieces was that I’m writing about the awkward place.

“I don’t write from a place of certainty. If I see murky areas and ambiguities and ambivalence, that’s my cue to write about something.

“I can’t really write about something if it’s certain or fixed because where do you go from there?”

Female and confessional genre

As well as editing non-fiction for the literary journal The Stinging Fly, Kiberd also lectures in the essay and non-fiction at the University of Galway.

She says that in recent decades, the genre came to be branded as somehow female and confessional, an association which hasn’t been entirely to its benefit.

“The legacy of that image, for better or worse, really endured for a long time, and it became this big craze. And then, like any craze, it had to fall away. But it is still looming over this genre.

“I encounter people in workshops, in my classes, who think that they only should write about the worst thing that’s ever happened to them, that this whole form of writing only exists as a vessel for trauma.

“Yes, you can do really good writing on that, but one, take care of yourself, and two, it doesn’t have to be that at all.

“You can write about something that is only a weird, light, inkling that might actually be better material because then you can work it out on the page with the reader.”

There is, however, a personal element to The Most Normal Woman, especially in the excellent essay The Thin Place, about the time Kiberd has spent in Berlin with her partner, Rob Doyle, also a writer. 

She describes how the compulsion of an earlier eating disorder threatens to return in the guise of a growing obsession with going to yoga classes. 

Meanwhile, Doyle gets caught up in the Berlin clubbing scene and a ketamine habit. Was she hesitant about sharing such details of her life?

“Yes and no. It was interesting and complicated in its way, although it didn’t feel complicated to write at all. Rob was the first person who read it, and I was really nervous.

“At the same time, we’ve been in a relationship for so many years, we’ve appeared in each other’s writing, we’ve also appeared in other people’s writing, and other people have appeared in our writing.

“So I felt like that gave me permission in some way, and knowing that Rob was writing about this exact subject himself. It wasn’t some great outing or me attacking him in print. I wanted to write from a place of love.”

For Kiberd, it was also important to be authentic, and she was inspired in doing so by other writers she admires.

“I have a theory that you can sense dishonesty on the page, and some stories benefit from the personal.

“You have this whole field of really interesting writers out there like Leslie Jamieson, Emmanuel Carrère, and Mark O’Connell in Ireland — A Thread of Violence [about the murders committed by Malcolm Macarthur in 1982] is a mind-blowing book, and it would not be the same were it not for his personal involvement. 

“You don’t have to bring yourself to everything, it’s not a rule, but I also think some stories benefit and are told best when you put a little bit of yourself on the line.”

Kiberd says she had “lots of fun” writing The Most Normal Woman but her next move is to try something new, even if it means resisting her ingrained curiosity.

“I’m trying to move into fiction now, that’s my plan but I can’t stop over-researching. That’s the joy of writing for me — going down those rabbit holes.”