imagine the footnotes

cherry

Sep 27, 2025 5:02 AM

i'm not sure books about the internet are going to have much staying power even if annotated for gen β illiterates in 2040, but i enjoyed this one for right now, one of the few years in human history it will be perfectly comprehensible. someday it will be consumed like a work of research-based art. there will be no other way to read it

a common thread through these stories, besides the obvious "holy shit we're way too online!" one, is a critique of liberal identity obsession. most reactions to this cultural thrust lately are given by anxious traditionalists, spiritually microwaved rightoids, rich white MLMists, and "alt" ivy dropouts who say the same shit as the previous three but with less saliva. tulathimutte is not writing in any of these currents--it's refreshing that his caricatures and criticisms are born of actual familiarity and knowledge, not spiteful disunderstanding birthed from a disgust response

thoughts for specific stories:

"the feminist"/"pics"--these complement each other. i laughed at the human caricatures as much as i felt sorry for them. when they're not totally misidentifying the real reasons for their suffering, they can't accept how powerless they are to change themselves or their situations; they can't even change their own feelings about them. they just hurt insolubly forever

"ahegao"--i first read this in paris review and had a larf imagining readers with real lives googling very online porn terms. the interlocking themes of shame and repression and masculine inadequacy are interesting, but they're totally buried under the avalanche of hentai maximalism

"our dope future"--laser-targeted satire about the horrors of dating a grindset bro. every stereotype rolled into one douchebag: libertarianism, technology fetishism, a hamster wheel of dumb startups, an unbreakable belief in his own greatness, a breeding kink. every numbered (and lettered!) edit to his tortured AITA post is funnier than the last

"main character"--just as i was getting kinda sick of current-year millennial caricatures i'd seen before, though not executed so skillfully as in this book, here comes the internet creature formerly known as bee. as an act of misanthropy (and, as i read it, suicide without dying) they mold themselves into a zombified netbeast in the vein of violentacrez--an ogrish dot com burnout who says they're laughing but is clearly having zero fun

most of "main character" is compelling. tulathimutte writes sharply and densely to get this much out of little real estate. he gives the narrator a strong voice with a very aughts-y distaste for categorization and an interesting biography. (oh wait but is it REALLY their biography??? girl the 4D chess!!!) it started losing me at the part where the sockpuppet twitter argument is recounted in prolonged detail--the sockpuppets' usernames are given in the introduction, so while bee couldn't know the shocking twist would have no effect on the reader, tulathimutte would know. not sure what his point was there

the conclusion and appendices are wearyingly meta. i guess everything is meta now, but that doesn't mean i have to love it. the house of leaves-y "but who was phone?!" thing doesn't work half as well in internet callout google doc format. the appendix discussing fringe explanations is especially weak and unreal-feeling, like tulathimutte never quite got a feel for how online conspiracy theorists think and where their heads usually go

"sixteen metaphors"--a little one-man-show digestif after the density of "main character." quick, smooth, and playful with language

"re: rejection"--tony preempts his own doubts about his work, and the white lib establishment's white lib demands for palatable authenticity, in the form of an imaginary rejection letter wherein he makes fun of himself for being overly metafictional and self-conscious and fearful of others' scrutiny, just so you know that he knows that you know what he's saying, know what i mean? you don't have to keep 4D chessing me, tony, i can barely play in 2D