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‘I Hate the Internet’ … and I Hate the Book

November 5th, 2016 · No Comments · Books

It sounded promising.

I Hate the Internet, by a little-known author, Jarett Kobek. Self-published, self-publicized. Got a bit of traction when a photo of Bret Easton Ellis circulated showing him reading the book in bed.

The New York Times did a review, which was mostly complimentary. I checked Amazon, and the price was $7.

I pretty much hate the internet myself, even though you and I are communicating via the selfsame system, so I spent the money, and …

I pretty much hated “I Hate the Internet”.

Some of the issues:

1. It’s fiction. I thought it was an insider writing real-world stuff, rather than a semi tech-savvy guy inventing “colorful/zany/unbelievable” characters who have occasional interactions with the web. More than half the book is just daily stuff involving the characters and having little to do with the internet.

2. He hates and condemns just about everyone and everything. He seems to believe all opinions are sh*t — and so is his book, by his own admission.

3. He is a tiresome ideologue who caroms around a handful of memes — patriarchy, capitalism, Chinese “slave” labor, racism and how awful San Francisco has become.

Fulminate and repeat.

4. He has decided that all higher education is actually about priming young minds to help prepare for the next war. Humanities studies are just a cover for the military-industrial complex’s training of hard-science guys, especially engineers, who are desperate to contribute to killing other people.

5. The internet is particularly vile in the way corporations appropriate intellectual property, with a focus on comic-book pioneers — whose stuff is junk intended for stupid people but, hey, those comic-book guys were royally screwed.

The internet is not a place for equality and freedom of expression, despite what the owners of the leading sites might suggest … it’s just a collection of sites selling ads to multinationals who pay for hits.

The notion of “right-minded people” having debates — on the internet — about how good/bad the internet is self-defeating because it just makes more money for Mark Zuckerman, et al.

The biggest problem with his book?

He offers no solutions. Aside from a (perhaps serious) suggestion that women create their own internet, and ban men from having any access to it for at least 10 years — because men created the current woman-hating web and the whole of it is infected with their twisted preferences.

He knows the web, and his linkage of prominent Google executives with Greek gods small and large is a rare bit of fun in what is mostly a dark, hopeless and bilious book.

“I Hate the Internet” is not the most disappointing book I have read … but it might be in the top 10.

 

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