Jarett Kobek’s I Hate the Internet, was probably one of the worst books that I have ever read.
He attempts to write this novel that follows the main character, Adeline, a comic book artist. The main purpose of Kobek’s book was to, I guess, “show” us his “accurate” representation of how social problems and technology has shaped/changed our society. An event occurs where Adeline makes a mistake that is considered the “one unforgivable mistake of the [21st] century”. Following this event, the story kind of shifts and focuses on Adeline’s mistake with the intention of illustrating the damage that the advancing technology has done to our society.
Throughout this short book, Kobek addressed some very serious topics, including porn and racism. However, it felt like he didn’t really care about these issues due to him going back and forth between the topics that he considered to be more of an issue. Some of the things that he discussed in this novel seemed extremely unimportant compared to the other topics that were included.
In conclusion, Kobek’s book basically just doesn’t make any sense. He mentions all of these different topics but doesn’t really explain them and go into depth like he should have. Anyone who reads this book will probably not like it, just like I did. This book was extremely hard to read, and I do not recommend it to anyone, honestly. Stay away from this book.
Literature & the Internet 