Reading 'I Hate the Internet' proved to be difficult for me. On one hand I liked the political correctness in the book and the way Kobek touches on many different subjects and manages to wonderfully intertwine fiction and fact, but the way the story is told, in the past tense, made me feel as if the author was mansplaining to me. The repetition of certain things instead becomes tiresome as the narrative continues and I feel the character of Adeline, who is a sort of protagonist, is not well developed whatsoever and seems truly dreadful despite trying to seem like a feminist icon. However the story was interesting and a great witty portrayal of the internet age, I just couldn't shake the notion of reading an almost 300 page article of 'why millenials and the internet generation sucks'.

Well, that was interesting.

Snark level: off the charts

More manifesto than novel, this book captures the current zeitgeist like nothing I've ever read before. It is brilliant and hilarious but also tiresome and ridiculous at times. I loved it and was frustrated by it at the same time.

"The internet was a wonderful invention. It was a computer network which people used to remind other people that they were awful pieces of shit."

3.5/5

This book certainly has it's moments of hilarity and incisive prose on the peculiar and at times outrageous world of San Francisco and the tech industry. Interspersed between those moments is the same whiny bitching you've heard from the self-proclaimed cool kids on whatever social media platforms you use. Kobek's choice to define common words for the reader through the prism of a pseudo-intellectual social activist is one example of a device that is at first hilarious, and then overused, and by the end grating.

The main tenet of the book is that for all the discussion of social justice through twitter revolutions or democracy of information through wikipedia, the only thing that is really accomplished on the internet is increased profit margins for Google, Twitter, etc. Instead of creating opportunity, the internet only enables an easier path for large companies to exploit content creators. Thus, as the creator of Mickey Mouse saw little profit from his drawings after selling the rights to Disney, those who tweet and blog see little while Google ads generate sizable profits. When the characters discuss these ideas with one another the conversations can be funny and endearing, but the main character's monologue form rants are tiring and over-the-top.

I do too, which might be a problem in real life, but which makes me the ideal audience for this book!

Of course, if being part of an audience solved anything I wouldn't be writing this review in the first place...

Wow. Now this is something. I Hate the Internet is a punch in the face that also made me laugh hysterically. Kobek’s book is didactic, experimental, accessible, and uncompromising. It names names and kicks ass. It’s vibrant and energizing. I call it a must-read.

Although it’s a very different book, I Hate the Internet reminds me in some ways of my intentions behind my first novel Death by Zamboni. In writing DbyZ, I wanted to break every rule of writing a proper novel that I could and did so mostly for the fun of it. For the frisson of breaking conventions. It was a fuck you to fiction writing as well as poking direct fun at sitcoms and advertising. I believe Kobek has a different motivation for his didactic in-your-face style that he calls out during the story: that the CIA funded the growth of literary fiction in the 60s. Here’s an article about that in Vice magazine, interviewing the author of the book How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers. Shocking indeed!

While this might be the inspiration for Kobek’s style, the content of the story is primarily an evisceration of the web elite, the big four (Google, Apple, Facebook and Twitter), and the internet that allows them to thrive. With incisive wit and brutal takedowns, Kobek demonstrates how corrupt and poisonous these corporate entities are for society within the context of a lightly plotted story set in San Francisco of a successful graphic novelist, her friends, and her relationships.

I really can’t praise this enough. I wish everyone would read it. I dare you. You’ll at least get a good chuckle out of it and perhaps a little bit of inspired rage at the machine. There is plenty of traditional fiction out there teaching empathy through believable characters in the standard literary approach. Blah-blah-blah. We need more books that just say fuck it, none of that has saved us from global warming, political fascism or dehumanizing Capitalism so let’s just do something different—because why not. Bravo.

This was a fun book, full of dark sarcasm about the digital world but I am sure I didn’t understand half the jokes. It’s full of San Francisco references.

3.5*