I Hate the Internet

by Jarett Kobek

  These sites tended to run breathless articles about Marvel’s latest exploitation of Jack Kirby’s intellectual properties. With the exception of Bleeding Cool, these sites did not run many articles about Jack Kirby being royally screwed.

  There were two reasons for this: (1) The necessity of maintaining a dialogue with Marvel. (2) The complete disinterest of comics fans in hearing about the way that Jack Kirby got screwed.

  Bleeding Cool ran an article with the title: “Trill artist M. Abrahamovic Petrovitch in Epic Rant!” The video was embedded in the article. The accompanying text was positive.

  Most readers of Bleeding Cool responded well to the display of wit and candor. Truth be told, most readers of Bleeding Cool liked Adeline’s general weirdness.

  Several negative responses appeared in the forums, employing the following words: ditzy, flighty, silly, goofy, whimsical, crazy, scattered, self-important.

  Only a handful of people called her a stupid bitch.

  READERS OF BLEEDING COOL shared the video. They sent emails. They posted links to Facebook and Twitter.

  A few submitted the video to reddit. Most comments were favorable. Instant karma. One of the submissions was upvoted to the front page.

  The video moved beyond the confines of comic book fans.

  SOMEWHERE IN HER MONOLOGUE, Adeline had suggested that she couldn’t understand why any woman would work in technology.

  “These deluded young gals,” she said, “who think that these companies will deliver them any single thing but grief need to see psychologists and explore the roots of their messy masochism. Probably something about Daddy, the poor darlings. These companies are the devil. Satan with a capital S. They’re anti-women and they emerge from that dreadful masculine trait of engineering. I’m old enough to know what engineering means. It means weapons for the military. All technologies end up in the hands of warmongers. I suppose if these girls want to kill other people with their labor, they can, but we should be mature enough to admit when we’ve allied ourselves with evil. These girls ain’t on the side of the angels. Many women have worked for the devil. It’s a tradition, darlings. How else does one explain that ghastly thing known as Sarah Palin? All these crazy young ones are lining up to burn in their very own Shirtwaist Factories, screaming that they’re empowered by the very technology that’s set them aflame. Remember, the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”

  THE TRIANGLE SHIRTWAIST FACTORY fire was one of the great disasters in American life. It happened in 1911 on Washington Square in New York City. It happened in a building that is now part of New York University’s campus.

  Back in New York, whenever Baby and Adeline had walked past the building in question, Adeline asked odd questions like, “Baby, when you’re attending classes in that building, do you ever feel as if a shade will reach out from the netherworld and clutch you in its grasp? If a shade does clutch you in its grasp, do you worry that its spirit will inhabit your body? If it does inhabit your body, what do you imaginate that you’ll think and feel? Will you want to work as a slave laborer? Will you gag on ectoplasmic smoke?”

  “Adeline,” said Baby, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “That’s simply delightful,” said Adeline. “Neither do I.”

  THERE WAS A GREAT WORRY amongst the owners of the Triangle company about their employees. They were worried that their employees would steal the same garments which they sewed for slave wages.

  Each day, all of the exits were locked, allowing managers to check for pilfered goods before the employees left the building.

  The system worked until it didn’t. One day the building caught fire. The women and men couldn’t escape. 146 people died.

  Burning, smoke inhalation, jumping out of windows and splattering on the pavement. They were immigrants and they were poor and they were illiterate and they had no other opportunities for employment and they had no vested interest in the fruit of their labors and now they were dead.

  Two of the deceased, a pair of teenaged brothers named Sam and Max Lehrer, had lived at 143 Essex Street. This was two doors away from 147 Essex Street.

  147 Essex Street was where, six years later, Jack Kirby was born as Jacob Kurtzberg.

  ADELINE HAD OFFENDED some of the women in tech.

  Because these women worked in tech, they were avid users of Twitter.

  Twitter was a system by which people broadcast short messages to computers and cellphones. Each of these messages was called a tweet.

  The vast majority of tweets were written by narcissists interested in letting other people know the wide range of their opinions on every possible subject.

  These subjects included: celebrities, the dinners that the narcissists were eating, politicians of the opposing party, celebrities, the names of people who were dumb assholes, the habits of Black people (pro and con), celebrities, the breakfasts that the narcissists were eating, celebrities, politicians, sports, the number of Asian-Americans on any given night in any given dance club in Los Angeles, corporations to which the narcissists held an allegiance as customers, fast food brands, celebrities, sports celebrities, celebrities, celebrities, celebrities, celebrities, celebrities, complex social and political trends, and the lunches that the narcissists were eating.

  All of the other tweets were written in the service of corporations and non-profits which had adopted Twitter as a method of public relations.

  On an average day, you might see: (1) Your sister tweeting about her salad. (2) Your boyfriend tweeting about Kobe Bryant. (3) The Los Angeles Public Library tweeting about different images of Hollywood through the decades.

  KOBE BRYANT was a basketball player with eumelanin in the basale stratum of his epidermis. He was paid tens of millions of dollars to create the illusion of meaning while throwing round rubber balls around rectangular spaces.

  Whenever he threw round rubber balls around a rectangular space, Kobe Bryant wore shirts that bore the name of the organization that paid him: the Los Angeles Lakers. These shirts also bore his last name, Bryant, and a number assigned to him by the organization.

  The ostensible purpose of these shirts was to differentiate players from each other on the rectangular court.

  The actual purpose of these shirts was to create objects imbued with an illusion of meaning that could be replicated on a mass scale.

  People who believed in the illusion would buy replicas of Kobe Bryant’s shirt. The prices of these shirts started at $34.95. Some shirts cost well over $100.

  THE FORMALIZED SYSTEMS in which grown men threw around balls were called sports. Sports were big money for the men who threw around balls, and even bigger money for the men who paid other men to throw around balls.

  Like any formalized system of control, sports were hugely contentious. Sports, like every formalized system of control, were about money.

  Typically the men who paid other men to throw balls around would find their employees amongst the poor and ill-educated, as the poor and ill-educated were more likely to sign bad contracts. This was also the organizing principle of the early comic book industry, which preyed on Jewish men who lived in ghettos.

  For the sake of both clarity and a lack of future headaches, a distinction should be made between being poor and ill-educated and being stupid.

  Anyone could be stupid. Most people were. Stupidity wasn’t the root cause of signing bad contracts.

  The poor and ill-educated signed bad contracts because they lacked a social background which educated them in both contract law and its implication for one’s future. The poor’s lack of understanding made them attractive targets for exploitation, which was the organizing principle of American life.

  IN THEORY, Twitter made its money by placing the tweets of its users alongside tweets which were paid for by advertisers. So the tweets about your sister’s salad, about Kobe Bryant, about Hollywood would appear alongside tweets about the new Ford F-150.

  The Ford F-150 was a truck. A
truck was an over-sized automobile.

  Automobiles were mechanized vehicles which transported human beings from one point to another while destroying the atmosphere and the planet.

  ONE OF THE CURIOUS ASPECTS of the Twenty-First Century was the great delusion amongst many people, particularly in the San Francisco Bay Area, that freedom of speech and freedom of expression were best exercised on technological platforms owned by corporations dedicated to making as much money as possible.

  People from all across the political spectrum loved Twitter. Instant activism with an instant response. There was the sensation that things were happening, that people were listening.

  IN FACT, all of the people who exercised freedom of speech and freedom of expression on Twitter were doing nothing more and nothing less than creating content that they did not own for a corporation in which they had no stake.

  In effect, they were working-for-hire like Jack Kirby. The only difference being that Marvel, like, you know, actually paid Jack Kirby before he was screwed. Twitter didn’t pay its creators.

  The only purpose of tweeting was the creation of new opportunities for advertisements. The only function of exercising freedom of speech and freedom of expression on Twitter was to make money for the people who had founded and invested in Twitter.

  The founders of Twitter were named Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Noah Glass and Evan Williams. There was no eumelanin in the basale strata of their epidermises.

  So that was radical activism in 2013. Hosted by a service owned by white dudes which displayed advertisements for Coca-Cola and Pepsi.

  ADELINE HAD OFFENDED women in tech. She had offended advocates of free speech. She had offended people who believed that copyright was copywrong. She had offended people on the Left. She had offended people on the Right.

  There was anger about her trivialization of the travails of women in the tech sector. There was anger on behalf of the victims of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire of 1911. There was anger on behalf of the Arabs, still locked in political struggle and still not liberated by Twitter or Facebook. There was anger on behalf of the US Constitution, an inanimate document without feelings that had doomed millions to slavery. There was anger on behalf of the victims of incest and sexualized violence.

  She’d only spoken for fifty minutes.

  SHE HAD EMAIL from friends, asking if she’d seen Twitter. She had email from journalists, asking for an interview. She had emails linking to articles that had been written about her epic rant. She had emails linking to other articles rebutting the previous articles.

  ADELINE’S REAL ERROR was criticizing both Beyoncé and Rihanna and their fans’ relationship to their achievements.

  Beyoncé and Rihanna were pop stars.

  Pop stars were musical performers whose celebrity had exploded to the point where they could be identified by single words.

  You could say BEYONCÉ or RIHANNA to almost anyone anywhere in the industrialized world and it would conjure a vague neurological image of either Beyoncé or Rihanna.

  Their songs were about the same six subjects of all songs by all pop stars: love, celebrity, fucking, heartbreak, money and buying ugly shit.

  IT WAS THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY.

  It was the Internet.

  Fame was everything.

  Traditional money had been debased by mass production. Traditional money had ceased to be about an exchange of humiliation for food and shelter. Traditional money had become the equivalent of a fantasy world in which different hunks of vampiric plastic made emphatic arguments about why they should cross the threshold of your home.

  There was nothing left to buy.

  Fame was everything because traditional money had failed. Fame was everything because fame was the world’s last valid currency.

  BEYONCÉ AND RIHANNA were part of a popular entertainment industry which deluged people with images of grotesque success.

  The unspoken ideology of popular entertainment was that its customers could end up as famous as the performers. They only needed to try hard enough and believe in their dreams.

  Like all pop stars, Beyoncé and Rihanna existed off the illusion that their fame was a shared experience with their fans. Their fans weren’t consumers. Their fans were fellow travelers on a journey through life.

  In 2013, this connection between the famous and their fans was fostered on Twitter. Beyoncé and Rihanna were tweeting. Their millions of fans were tweeting back. They too could achieve their dreams.

  Of course, neither Beyoncé nor Rihanna used Twitter. They had assistants and handlers who packaged their tweets for maximum profit and exposure.

  They were famous in a time when fame was the world’s last currency. Fame could purchase the illusion of being an Internet user without the purchaser ever touching a mobile phone or a computer.

  That was a difference between the rich and the poor.

  The poor were doomed to the Internet, which was a wonderful resource for watching shitty television, experiencing angst about other people’s salaries, and casting doubt on key tenets of Mormonism and Scientology.

  IF BEYONCÉ OR RIHANNA were asked about how to be like them and gave an honest answer, it would have sounded like this: “You can’t. You won’t. You are nothing like me. I am a powerful mixture of untamed ambition, early childhood trauma and genetic mystery. I am a portal in the vacuum of space. The formula for my creation is impossible to replicate. The One True God made me and will never make the like again. You are nothing like me.”

  IT IS WORTH NOTING that both Beyoncé and Rihanna had loads of eumelanin in the strata basale of their epidermises. The American media loved showing Black people who were successful at the performing arts and sports.

  The American media almost never showed Black people achieving success through education and professionalism. These were not interesting narratives.

  BACK WHEN she’d been in Kevin Killian’s class, one of the students had interrupted Adeline.

  “But, like, don’t you like, think that, you know, Facebook and Twitter can serve, like, a role in the pursuit of, like, social progress?” asked the student.

  “Pray tell, sweet flower, what is social progress?” asked Adeline. “Social progress might have had meaning twenty years ago when I was but a young thing, but these days it’s become the product of corporations. But what do you people know, anyway? You’re a lost generation. Even your drugs are corporate. You spend your lives pretending as if Beyoncé and Rihanna possess some inherent meaning and act as if their every professional success, which only occur because of your money and your attention, is a strike forward for women everywhere. Which is sheer nonsense and poppycock, oh my wretches.”

  A WIDE RANGE of humanity believed that Beyoncé and Rihanna were inspirations rather than vultures. Adeline had spit on their gods.

  This wide range of humanity responded by teaching Adeline about one of America’s favored pastimes, a tradition as time-honored as police brutality, baseball, race riots and genocide.

  They were teaching Adeline about how powerless people demonstrated their supplication before their masters.

  They were tweeting about Adeline.

  chapter ten

  Adeline called her friends. She asked for advice.

  THE FIRST PERSON she called was Jeremy Winterbloss.

  Jeremy Winterbloss and his wife Minerva lived in San Venetia, up in Marin County across the Golden Gate Bridge. It was half an hour from the city, traffic permitting.

  Jeremy answered the phone. Minerva wasn’t home.

  When she and Adeline met, Minerva had been an anarchist punk who’d escaped the Soviet Union. They’d both been students at the Parsons School of Design. Now Minerva was a registered nurse.

  Minerva wasn’t at home. She was at a hospital, tending the broken bodies of the ill.

  “I was waiting for your call,” said Jeremy. “My email is going crazy.”

  “No one’s put the frighteners on you, have they?”

  “This is all y
ou.”

  “What does one do?” asked Adeline. “They’re saying so many cruel, cruel things about yours truly! You can’t imagine the sheer frenzy of Beyoncé’s fans!”

  “Did you read the YouTube comments?” asked Jeremy.

  “No,” said Adeline.

  “Promise me that you won’t,” he said.

  EACH VIDEO hosted on YouTube was surrounded by an apparatus through which its users could comment upon the hosted video. This apparatus fostered debates between YouTube’s users.

  Typically these debates were about: (1) Whether or not the person in the video, who was often a 13 year old girl, was an ugly fucking slut who deserved to die. (2) Whether or not President Obama was destroying the country and/or sucking cocks in Hell. (3) Whether or not the other users commenting on the video were dumb assholes. (4) Whether or not Black people were %&$#?@s. (5) Whether or not Asian men had small penises. (6) How wetback Mexicans were stealing good jobs.

  To participate in these debates, in which powerless people attacked other powerless people, YouTube’s users would return to each video many times over.

  Each time that the users returned to the video, renewed in their intentions of calling someone an ugly fucking slut deserving of death, Google served more advertisements and earned more money.

  Google was making money off debates about whether or not President Obama sucked cocks in Hell while destroying America. Lightly sprinkled with comments about whether or not Black people were %&$#?@s.

  That was okay. YouTube had the same reputation as Twitter. It was an activist tool that fostered freedom of speech and freedom of expression. It had brought Spring to the Middle East.