She approaches her subject with a wry critical distance — which is actually, she argues, an underappreciated but common fan characteristic ... Tiffany traces the shifting status of fangirls in the culture at large ... Tiffany is at the height of her powers when she is describing, with touching specificity, why it might make sense for a person to invest serious time and money into a bunch of cute boys singing silly love songs. She contextualizes fandom as a culturewide coping mechanism and creative outlet ... Fandom can be a route toward cyberbullying a baby, or it can be a way of figuring some things out about yourself. Sometimes, it can even forge a writer as funny and perceptive as Kaitlyn Tiffany.

... wistful, winning, and unexpectedly funny ... the social event of fandom may finally be less compelling than its individual dimension. Being a fan, for Tiffany, is achingly personal. I loved her musings on why and how people pledge themselves to a piece of culture, and whether that commitment changes them ... My own fandom for the book caught fire in such moments, when Tiffany’s cultural analysis parted to reveal glimpses of memoir. Her book evokes the intimacy of the fan-artist relationship: how your chosen mania can become the lens through which you process the world ... In a way, Tiffany’s rendering of fandom as specific and incommunicable risks undermining her premise, which has to do with the massed power of people online. The groups she describes are rife with schisms—those who want Styles to be straight and those who want him to be gay, those who demand that he support Black Lives Matter and those who make racist comments at his concerts. Perhaps this is the predictable result of millions of individuals trying to fashion a pop star into a mirror. The collective narrative disintegrates faster than it can be spun. And yet the dream of interconnection, which is also the dream of the Internet, remains as irresistible as the sweetest guitar lick.

... a smart, empathetic work of nonfiction that examines young women and the ways they have innovated digital spaces ... Tiffany upends our biases about fangirls and shows them as the creative, tongue-in-cheek, freethinking individuals that they are ... When it comes to her personal connection with fandom, Tiffany is honest and forthcoming ... Though Everything I Need is primarily a critical examination, Tiffany’s self-effacing tone and sly humor cast her as a worthy memoirist as well ... Indeed, much of the book’s strength comes from its personal accounts ... To show that fangirls have invented the internet is a lofty task, especially for something as multifaceted as the internet. While she makes well-argued points about how women and minority groups have changed the interfaces and user experiences of today’s social media platforms, Tiffany’s experiences with the internet may not be yours. I found specific examples, such as the way Black Twitter innovated the platform, more persuasive in their own contexts than against the broader thesis. Everything I Need is the most compelling when it captures fangirls, both online and off.

... engaging and persuasive ... the kind of book you call 'well-researched' when you’re trying to say 'full of interesting surprises.' It’s an insightful, personal, and important testament to the power of fandom, and to the ways it has shaped Millennial lives and the new world of the Internet ... Tiffany is smart about the needs that fandom meets and the ways in which it can be a powerful force for both connection and destruction ... Tiffany offers a compelling look at the joys and dissatisfactions of growing up online.

That Tiffany is a One Direction fan and reflects on her fandom throughout validates her arguments. She is, like an experienced anthropologist, a participant observer in this retelling of how fangirls shaped Internet culture ... Tiffany’s casual writing style should not lead to an assumption that this is a flighty book about teens and young women and pop music...With her conversational commentary, she checks the boxes on cultural critics from Theodor Adorno to Nancy Baym and Henry Jenkins. Drawing on the existing literature of fandom research, Tiffany takes up the same concerns to address the extremely online generation and how the Internet has changed fandom ... thorough and readable.

... on the one hand, elegantly written, evidence-based, and rational, and on the other, off-kilter, animated by a profound and consuming, almost manic, loneliness. Tiffany’s fandom is not quite at the center of the book—which aims, by using One Direction fans as a case study, to show how internet fangirls have been misunderstood as a cultural force—but it’s enough of a presence to be persuasive ... Tiffany sets readers up to conclude that online fandoms are always microcosms: you could slice into One Direction fandom pretty much anywhere and see a complete cross section of life online. Any niche has its cranks and tricksters, its conspiracy theorists, its dilettantes, its day ones. They’re all here—fragile and wounded and seeking something semi-seriously—and Tiffany portrays them with sensitivity and humor. I have no choice but to stan.

Doling out droll insights alongside expertly dissected tweets, Atlantic staff writer Tiffany takes readers down the rabbit hole of the internet, One Direction, and rabid fandom in this immensely entertaining debut ... Well-versed in this subsect of internet culture thanks to her own passion for One Direction...Tiffany remains archly self-aware throughout, assuming an alternately waggish and reverential tone that perfectly captures the absurd genius of this influential army of women. Stans will want an encore.

Entertaining ... She tracks One Direction’s early fame from episodes of The X Factor to sold-out arenas around the world and deftly articulates the perfect storm of social media, hysteria, and mythmaking that made such a success possible ... An enthralling study of how some fans try to create juicy lore out of nothing, often with problematic results ... Despite its focus on One Direction, the text buzzes with broader relevance that should appeal to readers interested in the 'unlimited chaotic energy' of life online ... A finely balanced pop-culture investigation.