Full of Tabs

steve krappitz and olia lialina reading

“Epic Win for Anonymous” is a nice book, written by a well informed author, namely Cole Stryker. Through almost 300 pages he keeps a very comfortable relation of obscurity and obviousness. As a result, his book contains valuable facts and observations for those who never sticked their noses out of Facebook and /b/tards themselves. It would be of interest for BBS sysops, their daughters and their boyfriens, to us and the rest of us.

It is absolutely actual — may be even too actual. Being very descriptive, it belongs to the circle of books that have to be read the same month or at least the same year they were published. Like the user’s guide “The Whole Internet” published and read in 1994. Like “Creating GeoCities Websites”, that costed $39.99 in 1999 and $0.01 in 2011.

Anyway, I like the way Stryker narrates. He is very calm and in a very casual manner brings attention to the vital issues, like:

“While much of 4chan’s content is pure wankery, there’s something special at work there. 4chan allows its users to be jerks, but more importantly it provides a platform of social networking that focuses on what one is saying rather that who is saying it.” (p.277)

The author doesn’t explain things by analogies but uses them from time to time to bring some lyricism to the text. For example on the last page, comparing the high turnover rate for /b/tards with “hanging out down by the railroad tracks is only interesting for a summer or two”.

Stryker is much older than an average /b/tard, but still young enough to write with sentences that would look idiomatic for, lets say, my generation; though they are just statement of facts, no subtext.

I especially enjoyed this one:

“By the time I’ve fully explored the information, my browser is full of tabs.” (p.29)

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