Further, his writing seems often dismissive of the concerns raised by activists whose beliefs he assigns to Tumblr culture. And to appeal to the hippies’ interest in exploring nature and the body, industry and marketing produced expanding waves of workout gear, cosmetics, and outdoor equipment. Un-coincidentally, one of the books that sparked the countercultural revolution, Herbert Marcuse’s 1964 One-Dimensional Man, happened to be on the subject of societal expectations and calibrating one’s own sense of inner gratification.

He is mistaken, however, to attribute so much causality to internet fora as if they, whether interpreted as reactions to a low-wage economy or vapid consumerism, were the cause of the Trump victory, rather than to see them as one part of a broader history of racism, sexism, and radical religious conservatism that all also contributed to Trump's particular right-wing populism. His recent article on Medium, 4chan: The Skeleton Key to the Rise of Trump, became a sensation that was shared and recommended by JK Rowling and Marc Maron, among many others. Read it with a critical eye, and it's something of a tragi-comic masterpiece for people who have wallowed too much amongst the internet meme-factories but still retained a flicker of hope. The Fisher school is so thoroughly invested in the all-encompassing awfulness of our lives under late capitalism that it can’t see anything else… including features of that awfulness that aren’t part of its pre-established menu of tropes and laments.

In other words, the more unsatisfying the substitution (for example, processed food for fresh), the more profitable the enterprise. I absolutely recommend reading this book if the above doesn't put you off, and ideally with a group to really parse out its content.

The amount of lurking required to see through this funhouse of references is prodigious—and rare among those who have not fallen through the looking glass themselves. He attended Anonymous’ anti-Scientology protest in Time Square in 2008—perhaps the first time 4chan came together offline en masse—but as a wannabe reporter rather than as a Guy Fawkes–masked agitator. Even the hippies’ boundless transcendence is chopped up and sold by the hour as meditative yoga sessions.

It's a blow-by-blow study of the devolution of American culture, especially during the past few years: the rise of the radical "proud boys"; the use of the word "cuck" to insult liberals; the proliferation of offensive memes; the seemingly endless racist, inflammatory rhetoric; and the death of 32-year-old Heather Heyer, who was hit by a car driven by a white supremacist in Charlottesville in 2017—an event that prompted Donald Trump to say there were good people on both sides. If you follow me on here you know that I've been reading a LOT of books trying to understand the modern alt-right and this is by far the most cogent and insightful. Properly adorned with the latest stereos, liquors, and the rest of the items advertised in the magazine, the pad was supposed to attract an endless procession of pretty young girls. He even touches on the way that billionaires like Thiel and Mercer are dark money funders and encourages of the manipulating of chan users.

He equates all feminism and gay rights politics with "counter-culture" (which he also associates with Hugh Hefner), towards the end, proclaiming that "who you sleep with" (just like "how you dress") doesn't threaten "the power structure". We can feel pity for the people sucked into the 4chan hate machine, though we still can't justify their actions. I consider myself a left-leaning person, but this book will not convince anyone that they're wrong about anything.

Beran benefits from his personal experience on 4chan and Tumblr - he views himself as one of the troubled Extremely Online men who could've become an alt-right nihilist. But in the succeeding years, capitalist marketing seized upon punk with eager relish, bisecting and chopping it up into bite-size segments. Hell, if you want to blame the internet for the many weaknesses of today’s left, tumblr wouldn’t be where I’d look- I’d look at Twitter, which Beran does little with, mostly treats as a neutral medium.