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13470af
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machine powering the modern world is too complicated for the average person to fix or calibrate. And they know this. This is what makes an IT guy different from you. He might make less money, he might have less social prestige, and people might look at him in the cafeteria like he's a morlock -- but he can act however he wants. He can be nice, but only if he feels like it. He can ignore the company dress code. He can lie for
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Chuck Klosterman |
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3064ed2
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I don't think we have any idea who we are. I think we're engaged in a constant battle to figure out who we are.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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4a293be
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There is a new song on Top 40 radio right now that's so good I want to kill myself. I'm not sure why exceptionally good hip-hop singles make me want to commit suicide, but they often do. I don't know what the title of the song is, but it's that religious woman with the perfect stomach from Destiny's Child and Jay-Z doing a duet featuring a horn riff from the '70s that I've never heard before (but that sounds completely familiar), and the ch..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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634b9bc
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I'm still alive, but I feel myself dying, person by person by person by person.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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f5f7b6d
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the increasingly common ideology that assures people they're right about what they believe.... is, however, socially detrimental . It hijacks conversation and aborts ideas. It engenders a delusion of simplicity that benefits people with inflexible minds. It makes the experience of living in a society slightly worse than it should be.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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08d3e13
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The defining line from Frank Herbert's Dune argues that the mystery of life "is not a question to be answered but a reality to be experienced." My fantasy offers the opposite. Nothing would be experienced. Nothing would feel new or unknown or jarring. It's a fantasy for people who want to solve life's mysteries without having to do the work."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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b94e110
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In any situation, the villain is the person who knows the most but cares the least.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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08f059b
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Some say that time is like water that flows around us (like a stone in the river) and some say we flow with time (like a twig floating on the surface of the water).
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nostalgia
time
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Chuck Klosterman |
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6df0c1c
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My personal war against the so-called "soccer menace" probably reached its peak in 1993, when I was nearly fired from a college newspaper for suggesting that soccer was the reason thousands of Brazilians are annually killed at Quiet Riot concerts in Rio de Janeiro, a statement that is--admittedly--only half true. A few weeks after the publication of said piece, a petition to have me removed as the newspaper's sports editor was circulated by..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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7f41c24
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Part of the reason forward-thinking media networks like Twitter succeed is because people3 want to believe that every immaterial thing they do is pertinent by default; it's interesting because it happened to them, which translates as interesting to all.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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fa773e8
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In baseball and sex, cliches are usually true: pitching beats hitting, and people always want to be loved by anyone who doesn't seem to care.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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757d5af
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She said to me, "How is it going, Mitch?" I said, "Okay." But this is not really true, because she did not specify what "it" was and I did not immediately assume "it" referred to any preexisting situation in my life. I'm sure she didn't have any idea what "it" was either. She just said, "How is it going, Mitch," because she wanted to say something aloud in public. Basically, she asked a question she didn't understand, and I gave an affirmat..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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847f377
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I also need to prepare myself for the inevitability of utter boredom: Very often, single people don't do shit. They do nothing, all night long. They sit in a recliner and watch TV. I've probably watched more television than anyone you've ever met, and I don't even own one. Terrible shows, good shows, Golf tournaments in Cancun. C-SPAN. Hours of Oprah. Law and Order. Lonely people love Law and Order, for whatever reason. They prefer the stra..
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lonely-people
novel
visible-man
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Chuck Klosterman |
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392baed
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I've obliterated three days trying to come up with an elegant way to write what I'm about to write, but I think the least elegant way is probably best: I like Kanye West.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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6425d63
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Not all crazy people are brilliant, but almost all brilliant people are crazy.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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84b3114
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People who are wrong during particularly important moments inevitably spend the rest of their lives trying to explain how their wrongness was paradoxically correct, or--at the very least--why their wrongness "felt right at the time," which is very, very different from being authentically correct."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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184905b
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They [dolphins] are my least favorite member of the animal kingdom. Everyone seems to think dolphins are cute and "intelligent," but they're best described as ugly and impractical. I don't want to come across as insensitive, but show me a person whose intelligence equates to that of a dolphin and I will show you a fucking retard."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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83fb858
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Self-deception allows us to create a consistent narrative for ourselves that we actually believe. I'm not saying that the truth doesn't matter. It does. But self-deception is how we survive.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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faca5ed
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The only modern narrative that handles the conundrum semi-successfully is Richard Kelly's Donnie Darko, where schizophrenic heartthrob Jake Gyllenhaal uses a portal to move back in time twelve days, thereby allowing himself to die in an accident he had previously avoided. By removing himself from the equation, he never meets his new girlfriend, which keeps her from dying in a car accident that was his fault.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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20ee1fa
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Both lyrically and sonically, glam metal is the sensible accompaniment for removing one's pants for money.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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57b9e7f
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But regardless of the direction you move, the central problem is still there: Why do it? What's the best reason for exploding the parameters of reality? With the possible exception of eating a dinosaur, I don't think there is one.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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8e64f21
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It starts from the premise that black connotes evil and death in all cultures and hopes to figure out if "these associations influence people's behavior in important ways. For example, does wearing black clothing lead both the wearer and others to perceive him or her as more evil and aggressive? More importantly, does it lead the wearer to actually act more aggressive?"
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Chuck Klosterman |
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2bef26f
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According to the director, Primer is a movie about the relationship between risk and trust. This is true. But it also makes a concrete point about the potential purpose of time travel--it's too important to use only for money, but too dangerous to use for anything else.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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9b41d0d
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If I were an adult, I would be drinking coffee; as it is, I'm drinking Mountain Dew.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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45a575d
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This is a consistent theme in stories about traveling to the future: Things are always worse when you get there. And I suspect this is because the kind of writer who's intrigued by the notion of moving forward in time can't see beyond their own pessimism about being alive. People who want to travel through time are both (a) unhappy and (b) unwilling to compromise anything about who they are. They would rather change every element of society..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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a141744
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Nothing is completely authentic. Even the guys who kill themselves are partially acting.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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b3ad12f
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According to population expert Dr. Paul Ehrlich, we should currently be experiencing a dystopian dreamscape where "survivors envy the dead," which seems true only when I look at Twitter. Yet"
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Chuck Klosterman |
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cd0e5ca
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The Constitution is awesome, but still overrated; it's like Pet Sounds. The wide-scale adoption of political correctness was silly, but not unreasonable. The freedom that was lost was mostly theoretical and rarely necessary. No one is significantly worse off.
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politics-of-the-united-states
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Chuck Klosterman |
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6670d28
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The mere recognition of an extrinsic reality damages the intrinsic merits of one's own reality. In other words, it's a mistake to (consciously) do what everyone else is doing, just as it's a mistake to (consciously) do the opposite.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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a65a3e0
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According to population expert Dr. Paul Ehrlich, we should currently be experiencing a dystopian dreamscape where "survivors envy the dead," which seems true only when I look at Twitter." --
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Chuck Klosterman |
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237195c
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The reason something becomes retrospectively significant in a far-flung future is detached from the reason it was significant at the time of its creation--and that's almost always due to a recalibration of social ideologies that future generations will accept as normative.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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727fdb2
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If someone publishes an essay, or tells a joke, or performs a play that forwards a problematic idea the U.S. government generally wouldn't try to stop that person from doing so. Even if they could. If the expression doesn't involve national security the government generally doesn't give a shit. But, if enough vocal consumers are personally offended, they can silence that artist just as effectively. They can petition advertisers and marginal..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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2c1dd5d
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We are remembered for the totality of our accomplishments, but we are defined by the singularity of our greatest failure. It does not matter what you have been right about, and it does not matter how often that rightness is validated by others. We are what we cannot do.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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2963d89
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History is defined by people who don't really understand what they are defining.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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c97c9f2
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It is impossible to examine questions we refuse to ask.
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society
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Chuck Klosterman |
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e860870
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I try to be rational (or at least my imaginary facsimile of what rationality is supposed to be). I try to look at the available data objectively (fully aware that this is impossible). I try to extrapolate what be happening now into what be happening later. And this, of course, is where naive realism punches me in the throat. There's simply no way around the limited ceiling of my own mind. It's flat-out impossible to speculate on the fut..
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objectivity
prediction
rationality
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Chuck Klosterman |
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0e7120b
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I do not know how much money Britney Spears earned last year.. However, I do know that it's not enough for me to want her life, were I given the option to have it. Every day, random people use Britney's existence as currency; they talk about her public failures and her lack of talent as a way to fill the emptiness of their own normalcy. She -- alone with Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton and all those androids from The Hills -- are the unifyin..
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celebrity
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Chuck Klosterman |
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7211c72
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Now, obviously, all old people seem cool whenever we see black-and-white images of their younger selves. It's human nature to inject every old picture with positive abstractions. We can't help ourselves. We all do it. We want those things to be true, because we all hope future generations will have the same thoughts when they come across forgotten photographs of us.
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memories
nostalgia
photographs
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Chuck Klosterman |
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6b87f18
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Julia's fake love for Vance was exhilarating and idiotic; it was the kind of love you can only feel toward someone you don't actually know.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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23468ee
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We are remembered for the totality of our accomplishments, but we are defined by the singularity of our greatest failure. It does not matter what you have been right about, and it does not matter how often that rightness is validated by others. We are what we cannot do.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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8496666
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The reason shadow histories remained in the shadows lay in the centralization of information: If an idea wasn't discussed on one of three major networks or on the pages of a major daily newspaper or national magazine, it was almost impossible for that idea to gain traction with anyone who wasn't consciously searching for alternative perspectives. That era is now over. There is no centralized information, so every idea has the same potential..
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conspiracies
history
media
narratives
truth
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Chuck Klosterman |
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54556a0
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Sports are among the increasingly rare moments of totally unscripted television. The human element informs everything, in confounding and inconsistent ways. And since these are only games, and since all games are ultimately exhibitions, the stakes are always low. Any opinion is viable. Any argument can be made. It's a free, unreal reality. Yet everything about the trajectory of analytics pushes us away from this. The goal of analytics is to..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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a10ccea
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So I surrendered. I joined Facebook. And you know what? It turns out the only reason they wanted me to join was so they could show me pictures of their children without having to ask if I was interest in seeing them. This is why Facebook caught on with adults: It's designed for people who want to publicize their children without our consent.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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13505f4
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If you don't quit following me, I will kill every man you've got. I'll burn down your house and rearrange your furniture. I will not pray for you and not for your children and not for your children's children. I'll get inside your dreams. I will contact Roberto Duran. We're very close friends. Did you know that? Do you understand me? Good.
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Chuck Klosterman |