FAIL! See I made an internets meme. But seriously, FAIL. This book is an ego-feeding experience for the author. "How Stories Live and Die in Viral Culture" is part of title, not "How fucking cool am I?" I stopped reading half way through because I was tired of reading the author talk about his exploits. I was looking for some interesting research into viral culture but instead got graphs about how many hits his endeavours got. Snoozapaloza.
Being fed up with 2.0 as a whole, this book isn't working for me and also it's more about the writer than it is about Viral Culture. Big surprise since, 2.0 is all about ego gratification.
While the topic was interesting and right up my alley, the writing style wasn't. Kinda dull really. But it's a short book that I would recommend as a good read. I wanted more meat and perhaps following a book by Dawkins and his keen playful intellect I was taken aback by Thompson's manifesto-esque penchant.
If Dawkins wrote stereo instructions, I’d buy the stereo just to read the instructions. When a man of such superior intellect and dry wit writes a book, it is your duty to read it. This book is all about demonstrating that evolution is a fact to all those creationists and history deniers who continue to distort history, science and common sense to promote their agenda. And of course it’s loaded with nerdy goodness about nature, biology and DUH! Evolution. If I weren’t such a hardcore atheist I would elect Dawkins to become God.
Though I really enjoy his first two books they were very much like listening to elevator music as a writing style. The content was great, the delivery – to me anyway – was a bit dull and it would take me longer than usual to read his books. With Outliers it was like listening to Progressive Rock, each chapter keeps escalating dramatically to his point and it unravels with intensity. As much intensity as this type of book can have. More interestingly it blows the cover story of success and shows you that there’s no such thing as a self-made man, that everything takes practice, even prodigy, that your heritage and birth date can have more influence on your future than you could have possibly conceived. Gladwell’s best work yet and a must read.
This book started out with a 5 star rating because it went to the root cause of nerdity; anti-immigration, anti-Semitism; muscle-Christianism and America’s tough guy attitude. And Benjamin Nugent went far back in history to make his point and going through literatures first nerds and even going through an intense birthing sequence of the very word NERD. The second part of the book promised to be a psychological profile of nerds but instead revolved around the authors own life experiences which is permeated with Dungeons and Dragons, boffing and Fantasy lit., something that I never took an interest in but yet a Nerd I still am but seems to be part of the nerd-building process for the Author. But it was still a consuming read and I thoroughly enjoyed it for the most part.
A more competent book than the other book on Cylon Philosophy I read; Battlestar Galactica and Philosophy: Knowledge Here Begins Out There. The essays had more depth and felt less like they had armchair philosophers in mind. But then again the Feminazi Chapter had me furious and enraged as with all feminist chapters, but this one went over the top because BSG has nothing but strong women and no gender issues exist in the BSG universe and yet they found issues with Starbuck because somehow she’s not girly enough. No matter what, you can never win with feminists, but I digress. The book also had plenty of chapters linking the old and new BSG together with philosophy which was a good twist.
How the hatred of the nerd caste by the non-nerds is tied into Immigrant resentment, anti-semticism, the fear of Asians and gross hatred of intellectualism. This book is NOT a cheery look at the life and tribulations of the nerds. So freaking awesome.
Definitely better than my previous read on BSG and philosophy. Short essays still but meatier.