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46dd63e
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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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1eaad10
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We secretly know that being seen as nice is the same as being nice in actuality. If you present yourself as a nice person, that becomes the prism for how your other actions are judged. The deeper motives that drive you can only be questioned by those who know you exceptionally well, and (most of the time) not even by them. If you act nice, you're nice.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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244351b
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An author I know once explained why writing became so much more difficult in the twenty-first century: "The biggest problem in my life," he said, "is that my work machine is also my pornography delivery machine."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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ef847aa
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And I'm probably wrong. Maybe not completely, but partially. And maybe not today, but eventually.
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society
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Chuck Klosterman |
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fbd32b3
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The practical reality is that any present-tense version of the world is unstable. What we currently consider to be true--both objectively and subjectively--is habitually provisional.
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society
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Chuck Klosterman |
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ec0c69e
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Ohio is a scale model of the entire country, jammed into 43,000 square miles. Cleveland views itself as the intellectual East (its citizens believe they have a rivalry with Boston and unironically classify the banks of Lake Erie as the North Coast). Cincinnati is the actual South (they fly Confederate flags and eat weird food). Dayton is the Midwest. Toledo is Pittsburgh, before Pittsburgh was nice. Columbus is a low-altitude Denver, minus ..
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ohio
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Chuck Klosterman |
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bf66ad5
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And the quality all these reasonable failures share is an inability to accept that the statue quo is temporary.
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society
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Chuck Klosterman |
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3cdf31d
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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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society
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Chuck Klosterman |
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a57fe55
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And if something is only itself, it doesn't particularly matter.
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society
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Chuck Klosterman |
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b673b32
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It's difficult to cope with the infinite variety of the past, and so we apply filters and settle on a few famous names.
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society
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Chuck Klosterman |
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ebb85f7
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I don't need to personally agree with something in order to recognize that it's true.
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truth
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Chuck Klosterman |
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2cca543
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Literary posterity may
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Chuck Klosterman |
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7602723
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Normal consumers declare rock to be dead whenever they personally stop listening to it (or at least to new iterations of it), which typically happens about two years after they graduate from college.
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rock-music
taste
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Chuck Klosterman |
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5175886
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So this, I suspect, is where we really begin: 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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063041a
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My goal is not to contradict conventional answer "X" by replacing it with unconventional answer "Y." My goal is to think about the present in the same way we think about the past, wholly aware that such mass consideration can't happen until we reach a future that no longer includes us. And why do I want to do this? Because this is--or should be--why we invest time into thinking about anything that isn't essential or practical or imperative...
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predicting-the-future
summary-of-book
mission-statement
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Chuck Klosterman |
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cac40f0
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A book becomes popular because of its text, but it's the subtext that makes it live forever. For
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Chuck Klosterman |
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b76eff4
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Well, that's how it always seems, until it doesn't.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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0863807
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We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you'll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there's still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that defin..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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d05c4b6
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So this, it seems, is the key for authors who want to live forever: You need to write about important things without actually writing about them. I
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Chuck Klosterman |
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30b639f
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Before the 1975 fight in Manila, Ali bragged about attending a Ku Klux Klan meeting; he met with the KKK's leadership because they agreed on the issue of interracial marriage (both sides saw it as an atrocity). The
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Chuck Klosterman |
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326b433
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Necessity used to be the mother of invention, but then we ran out of things that were necessary.
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pop-culture
technology
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Chuck Klosterman |
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3abd390
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However, I suppose VH1 *is* selling me something; they're selling nostalgia, which means they're selling my own memories back to me, which means they're selling me to me.
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humor
nostalgia
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Chuck Klosterman |
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a2e3625
|
Once people decide they want you to do something, they don't really care what your qualifications are. However you describe yourself becomes proof that you're the ideal candidate. This is true in journalism, and in life.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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9897a9e
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People will look at the world without seeing anything beyond their unconscious expectation.
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see
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Chuck Klosterman |
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50fdec2
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If you aspire to be truly open-minded, you can't just try to see the other side of an argument. That's not enough. You have to go all the way. Over
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Chuck Klosterman |
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017d30c
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The first moment someone calls for a revolution is usually the last moment I take them seriously.
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revolution
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Chuck Klosterman |
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f63000d
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The future is always impossible.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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acf990b
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The Disco Group ABBA": They were beards and teeth and natural breasts and whiteness. I"
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Chuck Klosterman |
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5187e70
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There are things we cannot control about ourselves. One of these things is the degree to which we find something to be funny. It
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Chuck Klosterman |
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6018f7f
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Priscilla, Queen of the Desert needed ABBA to invent gay Australians. The
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Chuck Klosterman |
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4475177
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No one has ever honestly said, "I hate that this joke exists, even though it's clearly hilarious." It"
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Chuck Klosterman |
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fea0d18
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American football] fanbase resemble that of contemporary boxing: rich people watching poor people play a game they would never play themselves.
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football
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Chuck Klosterman |
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d3d3b99
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The uncomfortable, omnipresent reality within any conversation about representation is that the most underrepresented subcultures are the ones that don't even enter into the conversation.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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2b04497
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Once people decide they want you to do something, they don't really care what your qualifications are.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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608c56f
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It"s easier to believe there's a monster under the bed if you've spent the last six months arguing with a monster."
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Chuck Klosterman |
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3f96f9e
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The Constitution is awesome, but still overrated; it's like Pet Sounds. The
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Chuck Klosterman |
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239745a
|
The men and women who forged this nation [USA] were straight-up maniacs about freedom. It was just about the only thing they cared about, so they jammed it into everything. This is understandable, as they were breaking away from a monarchy. But it's also a little bonkers, since one of the things they desired most desperately was freedom of religion, based on the premise that Europe wasn't religious and that they needed the freedom to live..
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freedom
establishment-of-religion
freedom-of-religion
religious-freedom
religious-intolerance
theocracy
hypocrisy
tyranny
religious-extremism
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Chuck Klosterman |
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340f5e8
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It's someone who views life as a game where the rules are poorly written and designed for abuse.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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282150c
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When deployed in rap vernacular, the word feels slightly anachronistic, particularly when prefaced by the adjective . It's a little old-timey. But there simply wasn't a word that better described N.W.A's public aspirations with such accuracy. I suppose is the only other word that came close, a modifier so flexible it could even be used to describe how rappers operated their cars. If you lowered the seat and tilted your body toward the ..
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Chuck Klosterman |
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86b64c0
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The reason things unacceptable in life are acceptable in fiction is because fiction is often the only way we can comfortably examine the morally obscene. For
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Chuck Klosterman |
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f49cc77
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take solace in the fact that you can quit at any time. I cannot.]
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Chuck Klosterman |
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7706297
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There's even an 1892 novel called Golf in the Year 2000 that (somewhat incredibly) predicts the advent of televised sports.
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Chuck Klosterman |
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280208a
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The solution to this paradox (according to Palahniuk) is the theory of splintered alternative realities, where all possible trajectories happen autonomously and simultaneously (sort of how Richard Linklater describes The Wizard of Oz to an uninterested cab driver in the opening sequence of Slacker).
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Chuck Klosterman |
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d76da85
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I always thought the time machine is the device that's missed most. Without even saying it out loud, that's the thing people want the most: The ability to take whatever it is that went wrong and fix it.
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Chuck Klosterman |