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54556a0 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.. Chuck Klosterman
a10ccea 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. Chuck Klosterman
13505f4 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. Chuck Klosterman
46dd63e 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. Chuck Klosterman
1eaad10 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. Chuck Klosterman
244351b 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." Chuck Klosterman
ef847aa And I'm probably wrong. Maybe not completely, but partially. And maybe not today, but eventually. society Chuck Klosterman
fbd32b3 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. society Chuck Klosterman
ec0c69e 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 .. ohio Chuck Klosterman
bf66ad5 And the quality all these reasonable failures share is an inability to accept that the statue quo is temporary. society Chuck Klosterman
3cdf31d 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. society Chuck Klosterman
a57fe55 And if something is only itself, it doesn't particularly matter. society Chuck Klosterman
b673b32 It's difficult to cope with the infinite variety of the past, and so we apply filters and settle on a few famous names. society Chuck Klosterman
ebb85f7 I don't need to personally agree with something in order to recognize that it's true. truth Chuck Klosterman
2cca543 Literary posterity may Chuck Klosterman
7602723 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. rock-music taste Chuck Klosterman
5175886 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. Chuck Klosterman
063041a 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... predicting-the-future summary-of-book mission-statement Chuck Klosterman
cac40f0 A book becomes popular because of its text, but it's the subtext that makes it live forever. For Chuck Klosterman
b76eff4 Well, that's how it always seems, until it doesn't. Chuck Klosterman
0863807 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.. Chuck Klosterman
d05c4b6 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 Chuck Klosterman
30b639f 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 Chuck Klosterman
326b433 Necessity used to be the mother of invention, but then we ran out of things that were necessary. pop-culture technology Chuck Klosterman
3abd390 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. humor nostalgia Chuck Klosterman
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. Chuck Klosterman
9897a9e People will look at the world without seeing anything beyond their unconscious expectation. see Chuck Klosterman
50fdec2 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 Chuck Klosterman
017d30c The first moment someone calls for a revolution is usually the last moment I take them seriously. revolution Chuck Klosterman
f63000d The future is always impossible. Chuck Klosterman
acf990b The Disco Group ABBA": They were beards and teeth and natural breasts and whiteness. I" Chuck Klosterman
5187e70 There are things we cannot control about ourselves. One of these things is the degree to which we find something to be funny. It Chuck Klosterman
6018f7f Priscilla, Queen of the Desert needed ABBA to invent gay Australians. The Chuck Klosterman
4475177 No one has ever honestly said, "I hate that this joke exists, even though it's clearly hilarious." It" Chuck Klosterman
fea0d18 American football] fanbase resemble that of contemporary boxing: rich people watching poor people play a game they would never play themselves. football Chuck Klosterman
d3d3b99 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. Chuck Klosterman
2b04497 Once people decide they want you to do something, they don't really care what your qualifications are. Chuck Klosterman
608c56f It"s easier to believe there's a monster under the bed if you've spent the last six months arguing with a monster." Chuck Klosterman
3f96f9e The Constitution is awesome, but still overrated; it's like Pet Sounds. The Chuck Klosterman
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.. freedom establishment-of-religion freedom-of-religion religious-freedom religious-intolerance theocracy hypocrisy tyranny religious-extremism Chuck Klosterman
340f5e8 It's someone who views life as a game where the rules are poorly written and designed for abuse. Chuck Klosterman
282150c 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 .. Chuck Klosterman
86b64c0 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 Chuck Klosterman
f49cc77 take solace in the fact that you can quit at any time. I cannot.] Chuck Klosterman