#nyc is Jeff Mermelstein's multifarious, comic and heartbreaking survey of contemporary life as learned through overseen text messages. Written in the new language of acronym and initialism, truncation and cipher wordplay, interrupted by the occasional longueur, people appear to have few inhibitions when faced only with their own reflection in a phone screen, such that they pour their heart-felt desire and lust and hate and vitriol in unfettered streams of text consciousness.

Chaucerian in its breadth and humor, this project reveals the complex inner lives of the city’s residents, and the intriguing richness of emotion that exists within the most innocuous moments of everyday life: on the train, a park bench, or in the street. Here, a short history of New York unfolds, as told directly by one resident to another.