Dayna Carney

Reconstructing scents from the past isn’t easy. To create the “Follow Your Nose” exhibit in 2022, Museum Ulm partnered with  Odeuropa , a project that’s developing new methods—including artificial intelligence and sensory mining tools—to identify and preserve  Europe ’s heritage

smells.

I was entering adulthood and trying to live my childhood dream, but now, to be “authentic,” I had to be the product I had long been posting online, as opposed to the person I was growing up to be.

Before the Internet, if you were in need of some facts you might actually decide to consult an old person, like the one living in your finished basement.

Patience is chic.

YouTube soon became a game of “What’s the craziest thing you’d do for attention?”

My answer? Legally marry my sister’s boyfriend.   (It was meant to be a lighthearted joke. Our union has since been annulled.)

Nearly three million people have watched that video; by the numbers, I should consider it and others like it as successes. But there’s an

Even so, I was also a teenager, making decisions based on the visibility that our culture teaches us to desire. I knew that my audience wanted to feel authenticity from me. To give that to them, I revealed pieces of myself that I might have been wiser to keep private.