Jarett Kobek - I Hate the Internet

6. Memories.

Remembered my first visit to SF. Cat-called a different way in each neighborhood and then the blessed silence of the Castro. #love

7. This is just hilarious.

Journalist phoned. Writing about comics. Asked about Thrill. Talked for hour about a literal emotional rollercoaster in an amusement park.

8. Troubles with parenting.

My son sent me an email. He’s still embarrassed by my Twitter and again asked me to stop. Forgets I have baby pictures and am very proud.

9. Deep thoughts.

If art can be anything, then what’s all that other stuff sitting at the bottom of my closet?

10. She has friends!

Message from J. Karacehennem: “Staying a week in Vienna, the world’s most baroque monument to state oppression.”

11. It kind of is…

Isn’t it strange that @BretEastonEllis, an out gay man, is somehow a villain while everyone worships David Foster Wallace, a sexist jock?

12. Harsher.

Watching wedding video. Bride, groom, wedding party in choreographed song and dance numbers. Like tourism in Hell without any souvenirs.

13. What?

My great contribution to cinema scholarship: discovered Steeleye Span album Commoner’s Crown in Florida bedroom scene of The Shining.

14. LOL. Too true!

Yes, please, mansplain why astrology is bullshit. No, darling, I’ve not heard this before.

15. Definitely.

Most inappropriate Comic Con costume? MAUS cosplay. #ithappened #2009

16. Um, okay.

You think that I couldn’t possibly understand but I’ve been alive forever. I knew the people that used to be you and they were less boring.

17. Deeper thoughts.

Had a ride along the 101 today. Saw all the construction cranes hovering over the city, like elongated hammers waiting to strike.

18. Harshest.

Bay Area men + Eames lounge chairs. Simply can’t fathom why tech ppl might want to look as if they’re about to drop Napalm on Vietnam.

19. Don’t we all have this friend?

Old friend married a professional photographer. Certain it’s for inaccurate and well lit portrayal of her life on Facebook and Instagram.

20. They’ll get right on that…

Advice to young men: for easy love, build a time machine, volunteer for first Obama campaign and bring a copy of Everything is Illuminated .

There used to be a chapter in this space. It wasn’t very good.

The intention was a fine one.

But in the end, the chapter was terrible. So it’s gone.

The chapter did contain a few things of note.

Like a description of Thanksgiving as a holiday in which America celebrated the genocide of its indigenous peoples through the gathering of extended families for a meal during which young people were made to feel awkward by their elders expressing thoughts of casual racism and homophobia.

Like an exploration of the word homophobia, and how it literally, in the Greek, meant the opposite of its intent.

There was also some discussion of how homophobia derived from the word homosexual, which was an awkward mishmash of Latin and Greek invented by an Austrian named Karl-Maria Kertbeny.

The joke was that if the Twentieth Century had taught the human race anything, it was to avoid words invented by Austrians.

There was also a discussion about the class-based distinctions between the sizeable number of Americans who’d sublimated their unfulfilled sexual urges into gluttony.

The people who’d sublimated their unfulfilled sexual urges and had money were called foodies. Everyone else was called a fat fucking slob.

There was the suggestion that Southeastern Massachusetts was a region which, in times of international crisis, ensured that the world would never be without someone to paint FAGGOTS on the side of a mosque.

There was a discussion of how Clarence Thomas, a Supreme Court Justice with a lot of eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis, had been accused of sexual harassment by his underlings before his elevation to the court.

This discussion pivoted on the fact that Thomas was a devotee of Ayn Rand, and each year, his incoming crop of legal clerks came to his house, where he forced them to watch the film adaptation of Rand’s The Fountainhead.

The frisson of this discussion derived from the juxtaposition of Thomas’s history as a person known for practicing the art of sexual harassment and the presence, in both the mandatory film and the novel, of a rape scene.

Here’s Ayn Rand in a letter dated June 5, 1946, describing the rape scene to Waldo Coleman: “But the fact is that Roark did not actually rape Dominique; she had asked for it, and he knew that she wanted it.”

The problem with removing the chapter is that it served as the ideological heart of the book. It was where everything tied together.

The whole thing revolved around Adeline’s decision to tweet about a woman named Paula Deen, who, for a while in the Summer of 2013, was the scandal of the moment.

The reasons for the scandal were: (1) Paula Deen was famous and she didn’t have any eumelanin in the basale stratum of her epidermis. (2) Paula Deen was deponed in a sexual harassment lawsuit, where she freely admitted her use of the word %&$#?@ .

Paula Deen appeared on television, where she offered food-based pornography for foodies and fat fucking slobs. She was grotesque, but that wasn’t unusual. Everyone on television was grotesque.

%&$#?@ was a word which encapsulated America’s terrible history, and the country’s brutal dealings with its minority populations. %&$#?@ in particular carried the connotation of the raw deal and genocide that America had enacted on people like Jeremy Winterbloss and all of his relatives with eumelanin in the basale strata of their epidermises.

Anyway, in the deleted chapter, Adeline debates whether or not to tweet about %&$#?@ and racism.

This is after the Buzzfeed article had doubled her followers on Twitter, lowering her WaNks Index Score to 0.73.

In the Twenty-First Century, racism, like any formation of the human mind, was a useful product. Racism allowed for more advertisements.

The protesting of racism on social media was another formation of the human mind. It too was a useful product. It too allowed for more advertisements.

The system was perfect and self-contained. It was content neutral. It was designed to enhanced and induce inflamed human emotions.

On the Internet, you could be right. On the Internet, you could be wrong. You could love racism. You could hate racism. It didn’t matter.

In the end, everything was just money.

The sum total effect of Paula Deen admitting her use of the word %&$#?@ was this: she made money for Google. She made money for Facebook.

She made money for Twitter. All of these companies were founded and run by White people.

The chapter also contained a list of characters in this book who harbored racist opinions and thoughts. It was a list of every character in this book. Welcome to America.

There was also the suggestion that %&$#?@ served as a helpful device amongst educated White people for distinguishing themselves from uneducated White people.

The idea, which was not stated with much clarity, was the saying of %&$#?@ conveyed an impression that the speaker didn’t believe that the goal of any civil society was the inclusion of all its members and the extension of opportunity all of its peoples.