Books and Art

I just finished a book by Jason Pargin that more or less sums up how I’m feeling about the online universe. The novel? I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom.

A 26 year old not completely unsalvageable incel Lyft driver, whose social interactions are almost entirely online, gets a passenger who offers him $100k cash to drive her and her black steamer trunk from LA to DC

But there are rules:

He cannot look inside the box.
He cannot ask questions.
He cannot tell anyone.
They must leave immediately.
He must leave all trackable devices behind.

Sounds ultra dodgy but he reluctantly accepts and off they go. Hilarity, philosophy, the inherent insanity and desperation of humanity, and mayhem ensue.

Somehow a few Reddit communities get word of Abbott (AKA Abaddon) and Ether’s (AKA Butterflaps, AKA Karen) fraught cross-country odyssey. Whacked out conspiracy theories multiply like rabbits on vitamin v—the box contains a nuclear bomb, an alien (who may or may not be alive), the corpse of a woman who Abbot MAY have kidnapped, tortured and offed, etc. None-too-bright hero wannabes emerge. Mob mentalities ignite more chaos. Lots of shit blows up and there's more philosophizing.

I have this theory, that everything that happens on our screens is designed to do exactly what’s happening here, to repel us from one another, to create a war of all against all. It’s like a filter that only shows you others’ bad behavior, blocking the pure and letting through the poison, to make you scared of everyone who isn’t exactly identical to you. I think that, long-term, it traps your brain in a prison, that it’s designed to keep you inside, alone, with only those screens for comfort. A friend of mine came up with a name for it, for these algorithms, this media mind prison. We call it the black box of doom.
 ~~~
I felt like living my life through screens had trapped me in this dark little cell, my own black box of doom.

This was a fun, vastly engaging, thought inspiring book. Totally recommend.

Given the current state of America, it also felt a little on the nose. To preserve the thin shred of sanity that I, amazingly, still possess, I’ll be ducking social media and the black box of doom today…probably tomorrow too.

Here, have some interesting art instead:

Paul Jenkins

Chaibia Talal

Manuel Álvarez Bravo

Jónas Viðar