In Operation Shylock, Roth mines the tension between the profound human desire for uniqueness and the equally powerful craving to see one’s self reflected in another person’s being. The latter of those drives is an aspect of doppelganger mystery that I have neglected so far. So it is certainly worth recalling that millions of people voluntarily upload their photographs to doppelganger-finder services like Twin Strangers, dearly hoping that the websites’ facial recognition software will locate their match somewhere in the world. Countless best friends spend hours “twinning” with one other: meticulously synchronizing their outfits and styles so that they appear as doubles. Evidently, a great many of us want nothing more than to find another person who knows precisely what it is like to live inside our bodies and minds—and that desire coexists with the drive to be unmistakably different.

XREF: Connects to the broader doppelganger literature the author is surveying, and to social media identity and self-presentation research.

Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, loc. 460