Baby, it’s on

And yes, there will be a review — I'm cracking the spine now and have put aside the day to read it. (I don't want to undercut my own work, but I may share some thoughts in this thread.)

If you've never read my reviews of his work before, well... enjoy. https://slate.com/culture/2015/07/armada-by-ernest-cline-follow-up-to-ready-player-one-reviewed.html

Oh boy. Page 1: We learn that Aech, his friend he thought was a white dude but found out a fat black lesbian and GRACIOUSLY accepted anyway by saying that her true identities “didn’t matter,” immediately disappears to Senegal because she is Black in case you forgot she is Black

In case you were wondering if Ernest Cline is still being Ernest Cline, I present to you Page 3:

thanks i hate it

Great news Ready Player Two just solved poverty in the most horrifying Silicon Valley way imaginable

Why actually feed poor people when they can just buy your tech and pretend to have dinner in their minds

Let those fuckers eat digital cake

I am walking to the store for snacks so in the meantime feel free to read this piece I wrote about how Ready Player One is a roadmap that leads directly to the digital dystopia of the present; I feel it is about to become freshly relevant https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/19/17250892/ready-player-one-book-facebook-internet-dystopia

See this is why I won't make parody jokes about RP2; per Poe's law they feel destined to come true https://twitter.com/david_wolkin/status/1331280051090952194

This is how the third chapter begins.

I’m going to take a walk.

Ernest Cline writing about sex is exactly how you would imagine Ernest Cline writing about sex

Aech, who went to Senegal because she is Black in case you forgot she was Black, returns to shout an 80s catchphrase and immediately disappears to Africa again

After solving world hunger with digital cake, our hero decides to reboot the US police as a force of drones and tactical robots, because as ever the billionaire tech CEO motto is: “I just can’t foresee anything going wrong with this so why bother worrying about how it could?”

I can’t tell what bothers me more: the way Aech, the queer Black lady, pops up on cue to agree with the hero’s shitty ideas and paper-thin understanding of the world, or how the ideas that Cline puts in her mouth are so unintentionally stupid it also feels like doing her dirty

To be clear, I am only on page 34 of 377 https://twitter.com/megan_nicolett/status/1331341606071439362

Lol he programs his robot butler BELVEDERE never to speak to him because he’s 1) an asshole 2) he’s afraid of robot servants turning on their masters?

side note, this is four pages after he replaced the entire American police force with robots

The only good thing that’s happened is his now ex-gf dumped him bc he sucks, then RINSED him in the press when he spent a gajillion dollars on an elite space bunker he and his friends can bail to leaving the earth and everyone else on it to die

he “doesn’t see it that way” lmao

Hahahahaha the main character sucks so fucking bad

Eventually Aech gives him a speech about having “an attitude of gratitude” and he goes to a simulated therapist that looks like Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting

Hmmmmmm

Ready Player One tricked me into thinking this many times but... is this self-awareness?

Nope incorrect he is right back at it

why is this so appropriate

I have returned from my reading break to find our hero spying on the account of a female player who gives him a quest tip so he can watch her conversations with her friends

Check out this authentic feminist dialogue they’re having

Then he taps into her camera to spy on her IRL, and digs up her private documents to learn that in addition to being hot and naturally, his biggest fan, she’s trans — which he assures us does not make him feel weird about having a crush on her! Shitty!

As a general concept I think it’s cool that completely immersive brain interface VR could let people experience and express gender and sexuality in different ways, but ofc Cline immediately makes it clear that he doesn’t get it

“Thanks to the OASIS Neural Interface, your gender and your sexuality is no longer constrained — or confined to — the body you are born into”

Uhhhh that is true right now my man

You did not “solve” sex and gender with your startup

This is how our hero describes the brain-interface VR research and development process, and just want to note that while this is not how science works, it *is* how H.H. Holmes built his murder castle

I slept, I ate, I’m back. So after 100 pages of backstory/80s references, the QUEST begins. It is exactly what you expect.

One puzzle in the quest is solved by the hero narrating a first-person walkthrough of the game Sega Ninja/Ninja Princess that goes on for 7 pages.

Subsequent quests involve going to a simulated Shermer, Illinois and reenacting every John Hughes movie simultaneously, and fighting seven different versions of the musician Prince.

But I’m not going to talk about that. I’m just going to post this.

Actually I lied, I am going to share one excerpt from your extremely long battle with Prince

At one point, and this is amazing, the sociopathic serial killer/terrorist/bad guy shows up and offers a pretty cogent analysis about the pitfalls and diminishing returns of obsessing uncritically over nostalgia and everyone is like GET OUT OF HERE YOU VILLAIN

Well, I finished the book. There were moments when Wade was so unbelievably shitty I thought it HAD to be setting him for some sort of awakening. He does eventually acknowledge, for example, that there was racism/sexism in the 80s, and his former hero actually sucked.

After treating his ex like shit bc she DIDN’T UNDERSTAND the genius of his new technology and had super legit concerns, a potentially apocalyptic catastrophe makes him realizes he was wrong and he apologizes. Not for stalking her. Still, a step in the right direction, you'd think

You would think wrong. By the end of the book, we learn that Wade was COMPLETELY RIGHT the whole time, that the technology unlocks digital immortality and THANKS TO HIM humankind has now conquered death for eternity. His ex apologizes, says how grateful she is, and marries him.

The immortal AIs created from their VR brains scans get uploaded to a ship searching for a new Earth, along with AIs created from millions of OASIS users without their permission, because our stalker hero is now AWARE of consent but still doesn't actually care about it.

He and his girlfriend and their buddies get to live forever in space with all the ‘80s books and movies and games they love, and he never has to deal with aging, moving on, or losing anything ever again. He wins the “game” of life.

T H E E N D

Thank you for taking this terrible journey with me, old friends and new. I'm gonna take a long walk and stare at a pond or something, then write the review I am actually being paid for. Trust me, I saved some good stuff. I'll post it at the end of this thread whenever it goes up.

Well mine is cached but people are telling me this is happening

Very curious to see if the image that is just a page of dialogue from The Princess Bride goes down

Relatedly, here are a few quotes where the hero talks about how he used to be a huge asshole who would silence his critics and how he eventually stopped doing that and grew and became better, just to revisit the “was anything actually learned” theme

Excited for these to go down

I’m actually not kidding, I appreciate the additional material for my review! I couldn’t make this up and it is perfect

Since this has apparently happened a lot, it you have ever been DMCAed by Ernest Cline for being a big MEANIE please jump in my replies and tell me about it. I am curious to learn more