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1aaa23f
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The only people who think the Internet is a calamity are people whose lives have been hurt by it; the only people who insist the Internet is wonderful are those who need it to give their life meaning.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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cd177e8
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By now, everyone I know is one of seven strangers, inevitably hoping to represent a predefined demographic and always failing horribly. The Read World is the real world is The Real World is the read world. It's the same true story, even when it isn't.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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4f417dd
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Maybe I don't need a relationship after all, she thought. Maybe thinking about these conversations was just as good as having them. She could sit in her Honda in the dark and experience whatever kind of life she wanted. Sometimes you think, Hey, maybe there's something else out there. But there really isn't. This is what being alive feels like, you know? The place doesn't matter. You just live.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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2c411ec
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What are the things that make adults depressed? The master list is too comprehensive to quantify (plane crashes, unemployment, killer bees, impotence, Stringer Bell's murder, gambling addictions, crib death, the music of Bon Iver, et al.) But whenever people talk about their personal bouts of depression in the abstract, there are two obstructions I hear more than any other. The possibility that one's life is not important, and the mundane p..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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14cff02
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There was a time in our very recent history when it was "interesting" to be a Star Wars fan. It was sort of like admitting you masturbate twice a day or that your favorite band was They Might Be Giants. Star Wars was something everyone of a certain age secretly loved but never openly recognized"
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Chuck Klosterman |
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9683183
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On the third play he dropped back to pass, and it was unadulterated chaos: The pocket was immediately collapsing, people were yelling, everything was happening at the same time, and it felt like he was trying to defuse a pipe bomb while learning to speak Cantonese." "He believed it was his destiny to kill faceless foreigners for complex reasons that were beyond his control, and to deeply question the meaning of those murders, and to kill de..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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91d54ae
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I care about strangers when they're abstractions, but I feel almost nothing when they're literally in front of me.
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care
abstractions
chuck
they-re
wear
when
klosterman
the
i
black
hat
strangers
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Chuck Klosterman |
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a1dd2dd
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But it goes without saying that Michael Jordan could never date Pamela Anderson. That would cause the apocalypse.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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3df4868
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It appears that countless women born between the years of 1965 and 1978 are in love with John Cusack. I cannot fathom how he isn't the number-one box office star in America, because every straight girl I know would seel her soul to share a milkshake with that motherfucker.
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pop-culture
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Chuck Klosterman |
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b18a084
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History is a creative process (or as Napoleon Bonaparte once said, "a set of lies agreed upon"). The world happens as it happens, but we construct what we remember and what we forget. And people will eventually do that to us, too."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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b378188
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What my mom failed to understand was that I didn't even want long hair -- I needed long hair. And my desire for protracted, flowing locks had virtually nothing to do with fashion, nor was it a form of protest against the constructions of mainstream society. My motivation was far more philosophical. I wanted to rock.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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d800650
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The most wretched people in the world are those who tell you they like every kind of music 'except country.
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music
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Chuck Klosterman |
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95cba31
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The mass media causes sexual misdirection: It prompts us to need something deeper than what we want. This is why Woody Allen has made nebbish guys cool; he makes people assume there is something profound about having a relationship based on witty conversation and intellectual discourse. There isn't. It's just another gimmick, and it's no different than wanting to be with someone because they're thin or rich or the former lead singer of Whis..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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9a21326
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The year you spent 'killing yourself' to make me love you...I thought that was us being best friends. We had all those intimate conversations and you sent me all those long e-mails and we watched all those movies involving Eric Stoltz--I thought that was us having fun. But you see that kind of behavior as the work you're forced to do in order to sleep with the people you want to sleep with.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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992b8bc
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It's peculiar what you remember when you're not trying.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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d5b037b
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The things he did on purpose were usually no different from the mistakes he made by accident.
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downtown-owl
klosterman
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Chuck Klosterman |
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9451be3
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There's one kind of writing that's always easy: Picking out something obviously stupid and reiterating how stupid it obviously is. This is the lowest form of criticism, easily accomplished by anyone. And for most of my life, I have tried to avoid this. In fact, I've spend an inordinate amount of time searching for the underrated value in ostensibly stupid things. I understand Turtle's motivation and I would have watched Medelin in the theat..
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writing
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Chuck Klosterman |
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000e878
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First, you must love yourself. And if you do that convincingly enough, others will love you too much.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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05edcba
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I've spent the last fifteen years of my life railing against the game of soccer, an exercise that has been lauded as "the sport of the future" since 1977. Thankfully, that future dystopia has never come."
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future
humor
soccer
sports
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Chuck Klosterman |
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30be313
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But whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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1dc4356
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It might sound chauvinistic, but there is a sad reality in rock music: Bands who depend on support from females inevitably crash and burn.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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6859855
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The ultimate failure of the United States will probably not derive from the problems we see or the conflicts we wage. It will more likely derive from our uncompromising belief in the things we consider unimpeachable and idealized and beautiful. Because every strength is a weakness, if given enough time.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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4681e88
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Even the invisible are insecure. It's the most universal problem we have. It's so universal, it might not even count as a problem.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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2c729a8
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Americans have become conditioned to believe the world is a gray place without absolutes; this is because we're simultaneously cowardly and arrogant. We don't know the answers, so we assume they must not exist. But they do exist. They are unclear and/or unfathomable, but they're out there. And--perhaps surprisingly--the only way to find those answers is to study NBA playoff games that happened twenty years ago. For all practical purposes, t..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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11b5867
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But this is how popular culture works: You allow yourself to be convinced you're sharing a reality that doesn't exist.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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ca8b9a7
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I want fake love. But that's all I want, and that's why I can't have it.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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8016d31
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Just watch any husband arguing with his wife about something insignificant; listen to what they say and watch how their residual emotions manifest when the fight is over. It's so formulaic and unsurprising that you wouldn't dare re-create it in a movie. All the critics would mock it. They'd all say the screenwriter was a hack who didn't even try. This is why movies have less value than we like to pretend -- movies can't show reality, becaus..
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stereotypes
reality
films
film
movies
gender-stereotypes
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Chuck Klosterman |
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9c12a53
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All the world's stupidest people are either zealots or atheists. If you want to truly deduce how intelligent someone is, just ask this person how they feel about any issue that doesn't have an answer; the more certainty they express, the less sense they have. This is because certainty only comes from dogma.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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e0f3f5d
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The desire to be cool is--ultimately--the desire to be rescued.
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cool
self-esteem
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Chuck Klosterman |
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ecfc5b6
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Real people are actively trying to live like fake people, so real people are no less fake. Every comparison becomes impractical. This is why the impractical has become totally acceptable; impracticality almost seems cool.
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relationship
life
truth
media
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Chuck Klosterman |
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0b119bc
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there's no such thing as middle-class. The middle class does not exist. If you believe you are part of the middle class, it just means you're rich and insecure or poor and misinformed.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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38d02dc
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We're starting to behave as if we've reached the end of human knowledge. And while that notion is undoubtedly false, the sensation of certitude it generates is paralyzing.
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knowledge
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Chuck Klosterman |
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eaea86f
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Everything (N.W.A.) attempted had to possess criminal undertones. I can only assume they spent hours trying to deduce villainous ways to microwave popcorn (and if they'd succeeded, there would absolutely be a song about it, assumedly titled "Pop Goes the Corn Killa", or "45 Seconds to Bitch Snack")."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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cd6ef07
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Here's in extreme example: the possibility of life after death. When considered rationally, there is no justification for believing that anything happens to anyone upon the moment of his or her death. There is no reasonable counter to the prospect of nothingness. Any anecdotal story about "floating toward a white light" or Shirley MacClain's past life on Atlantis or the details in Heaven Is for Real or automatically (and justifiably) dismis..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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bf5a13c
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Let's face it: Sadness and evil are always more believable than happiness and love. When a movie reviewer calls a film "realistic," everyone knows what that means--it means the movie has an unhappy ending."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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85ee813
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There are very few Americans who honestly care who Lindsay Lohan is dating. But it's still information they need to have. This is because those people care about something else entirely; they're worried about the possibility of everyone else understanding something that they're missing.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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07dac28
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Being a sexual icon is sort of like being the front man for an Orange County punk band: As soon as you can explain why you're necessary, you're over.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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abd7e64
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Is there anything more attractive than a polite person with limitless self-belief? There is not.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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51769c7
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outlining how certain fans of 'NSYNC like to imagine Justin Timber lake getting fisted by Lance Bass. Glenn Dixon surmised that much of the Contemporary Christian genre is driven by artists who literally want to fuck Jesus Christ.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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6d5cdc5
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Toby Keith writes songs like 1993's "Should've Been a Cowboy," and what's compelling is that you can't deconstruct its message. "Should've Been a Cowboy" is not like Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive," where Jon Bon Jovi claimed to live like a cowboy; Toby Keith wants to be a cowboy for real."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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f51e5f3
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The reason behind everything always has to be something else entirely.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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4b5f9b7
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Instead, we were given a publication called the Weekly Reader, which was like a newspaper for four-foot illiterates.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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15aaa45
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Punk was perfect for lazy people, because anyone could do it--you didn't even need to know how to play your instrument, assuming you knew how to plug it in. There was really no difference between Sid Vicious and anyone in London who owned a bass.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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23a5d02
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The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably.
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Chuck Klosterman |