“Everything feels too intimate, too aggressive; the interfaces that were intended to cheerfully connect us to the world have instead spawned fear and alienation,” wrote Jia Tolentino in an essay for the New Yorker on 2016’s “Worst Year Ever” meme. “No, 2016 is not the worst year ever, but it’s the year I started feeling like the internet would only ever induce the sense of powerlessness that comes when the sphere of what a person can influence remains static, while the sphere of what can influence us seems to expand without limit, allowing no respite at all.”