“Why are we on this planet? Why are people here? Why do we lead our pointless lives? We are on Earth to make Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg richer.” Personally, if there is any quote that sums up Jared Kobek’s outlook on society and the internet, I would think it is this one.
In his novel, I Hate the Internet, Kobek takes his reader through the perilous journey of Adeline, a female comic book artist who illustrated Trill, as she makes “the one unforgivable mistake of the early Twenty-First Century”. As Adeline faces the consequences of her scathing reviews of the likes of Beyoncé and Rihanna being posted on YouTube, readers can get a sense of the disdain Kobek has for the way society handles the internet and social media, particularly Twitter.
In an interview with The Guardian’s Carole Cadwalladr, the Turkish-American author explains that it’s not necessarily Twitter itself that’s infuriating to him, what’s infuriating is what “very serious people take it way too seriously”. Kobek then goes on to explain in the interview that this seriousness that people place on platforms like Twitter is not an effective way to run society; in his words, “that’s not how to effect change”.
However, in Kobek’s novel, people taking things like Twitter way too seriously is exactly what readers can see. As readers get through the novel, the walk side by side with Adeline as she faces online hate and death threats. Though what she said may have not been great, the rest of the internet shows that their trues selves are not much better than Adeline. In his novel, Kobek shows the hypocrisy of people fighting for “justice” on the internet and shows readers that the internet has been detrimental to society. Kobek points out that the internet brings out the ugly in everyone, all while its creators who could can less make millions off of people who care too much in the wrong places.
Literature & the Internet 