What do you think?
Rate this book
[NSFW]
An experimental horror-lit set in the near future about connection and isolation.
The Office meets A Clockwork Orange.
Set in the world of social media moderators, @Sa>ag3 and @Jun1p3r must survive their first 90 days to qualify for benefits and a life-changing mystery bonus. As they flag a nonstop torrent of the most heinous [NSFW] videos, their coping mechanisms expand to include on-the-job sex, drugs, and a jellyfish.
But when copium is no longer an option, @Sa>ag3 & @Jun1p3r turn to a more bizarre form of therapy: intimacy. Meanwhile a stream of ominous warning videos keeps popping up... COMING SOON... hinting at an event that will alter the American landscape.
@Sa>ag3 & @Jun1p3r are on the digital front line with their finger on the DELETE button. Will love survive in this new age?
The Office meets A Clockwork Orange.
Set in the world of social media moderators, @Sa>ag3 and @Jun1p3r must survive their first 90 days to qualify for benefits and a life-changing mystery bonus. As they flag a nonstop torrent of the most heinous [NSFW] videos, their coping mechanisms expand to include on-the-job sex, drugs, and a jellyfish.
But when copium is no longer an option, @Sa>ag3 & @Jun1p3r turn to a more bizarre form of therapy: intimacy. Meanwhile a stream of ominous warning videos keeps popping up... COMING SOON... hinting at an event that will alter the American landscape.
@Sa>ag3 & @Jun1p3r are on the digital front line with their finger on the DELETE button. Will love survive in this new age?
464 pages, Paperback
Published February 28, 2023
5 people are currently reading
336 people want to read
About the author
David Scott Hay
10 books48 followersDSH is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. As a novelist, he is a 2x Kirkus Prize Nominee.
He makes a mean old-fashioned and the best ribs on the block.
He currently lives with his wife and son and dog and chickens and a dozen typewriters in a valley between the ocean, the mountains, and the desert.
He makes a mean old-fashioned and the best ribs on the block.
He currently lives with his wife and son and dog and chickens and a dozen typewriters in a valley between the ocean, the mountains, and the desert.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
March 23, 2023
This "experimental" literary horror was pitched to me as "The Office meets A Clockwork Orange" and I'll be honest with you... I had no idea what to expect from this. Somehow this fucked up novel manages to be a workplace romance, a dystopian horror, and a scifi tech thriller all at once. I can see people comparing this to classics like Fahrenheit 451 and 1984 (though I will not cause I just read the sparknotes in highschool lol) with how this book looks at humanity's current shortcomings and takes them to horrifying extremes.
NSFW is written in such a unique style of prose that it jarred me at first. Once I found a flow, I absolutely loved the witty short form story telling. It seemed like every single sentence was packed with meaning - even if the meaning wasn't clear until many pages later. I truly never knew what to expect from one page to the next. I got a huge kick out of how both the lactorium and @oKra's bike came into play in the end!
The formatting of this book is DELICIOUS and I loved the sprinkling of images through out, they added so much to the reading experience. When I saw that final spider I'm pretty sure I whispered "oh no..." aloud.
There's no way for me to properly express how all around weird this book is and this review is NOT doing justice. But I loved the shit out of this book and I can't wait to go through the sucker with a highlighter and catch everything I missed.
I wish I could give it more stars. I laughed, I gasped, I gagged... #CherryMacaMocha
NSFW is written in such a unique style of prose that it jarred me at first. Once I found a flow, I absolutely loved the witty short form story telling. It seemed like every single sentence was packed with meaning - even if the meaning wasn't clear until many pages later. I truly never knew what to expect from one page to the next. I got a huge kick out of how both the lactorium and @oKra's bike came into play in the end!
The formatting of this book is DELICIOUS and I loved the sprinkling of images through out, they added so much to the reading experience. When I saw that final spider I'm pretty sure I whispered "oh no..." aloud.
There's no way for me to properly express how all around weird this book is and this review is NOT doing justice. But I loved the shit out of this book and I can't wait to go through the sucker with a highlighter and catch everything I missed.
I wish I could give it more stars. I laughed, I gasped, I gagged... #CherryMacaMocha
May 15, 2024
Дум и глум в духе Воннегута 2.0 - ну или некст-геновые "Микросёрфы" с толикой Пинчоновой "Энтропии", с которой списана одна ветвь сюжета, и оттенком Делиллова "Белого шума", с которого списана другая. Конечно, это твит-роман, по сравнению с которым дискретность повествовательского голоса Дженет Уинтерсон - положительно бубнеж Толстого. Ну или фейсбук-роман, где длина высказывания определяется лимитом на объем внимания аудитории.
Очень злая и приятная книжка о фабрике троллей. Злободневность ее - буквально на уровне "газеты и куплета": переводить про террористические группы джихадистов, устраивающих планерки по итогам съемок своих терактов, в дни "Крокуса"... ну сами понимаете. Не говоря уже про "Батаклан", который там в анамнезе.
Очень злая и приятная книжка о фабрике троллей. Злободневность ее - буквально на уровне "газеты и куплета": переводить про террористические группы джихадистов, устраивающих планерки по итогам съемок своих терактов, в дни "Крокуса"... ну сами понимаете. Не говоря уже про "Батаклан", который там в анамнезе.
July 26, 2023
This was absolutely brilliant -- the best book I've read all year so far. Because I was so enamored of it on a first read, I gave it a second read just to see if it still held up. It still held up.
Proper Review:
I don't even know how to review this masterwork. I want to image JG Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, Al Bester, the KLF, and James Joyce all sitting around sipping port and wondering how they could write, with one voice, a novel about the very near future in America. But if that would ever happen, I don't think even that incredible group could produce something as shiningly brilliant as Nsfw.
Hyperbole aside, I could not put this book down. I know people say that all the time, but I'm one of those who actually mean it. Hay uses a quirky approach to get the reader acquainted with the way the novel is told. We're immediately immersed in this universe of quick soundbites and short video segments, with essentially a serf-class of employees watching, their fingers poised over a kill switch-style button to cut the continuous live feed of information. Employees (Reviewers) who survive 90 days are rewarded (!) with health insurance. But who can tell day from day where they are in the process?
The "company family" is made up of people only known by their @handles, but Hay has drawn all of these avatars with a loving grace and realism that I practically mourned by the time the novel was over. To say the book draws you in is a complete understatement.
So, with a dystopian but realistic setting, a experimental narrative told in fragments but easily read, and characters that made me want to rip my heart out, Hay has created a modern classic that likely won't be appreciated for a decade or so. Read it now, so you can be one of the cool first-adopter kids.
(My honest opinion is that THIS BOOK is what "House of Leaves" wanted to be, but failed at. If you liked the IDEA of HoL, but hated the execution, you'll love Nsfw.)
Proper Review:
I don't even know how to review this masterwork. I want to image JG Ballard, Philip K. Dick, Robert Anton Wilson, Al Bester, the KLF, and James Joyce all sitting around sipping port and wondering how they could write, with one voice, a novel about the very near future in America. But if that would ever happen, I don't think even that incredible group could produce something as shiningly brilliant as Nsfw.
Hyperbole aside, I could not put this book down. I know people say that all the time, but I'm one of those who actually mean it. Hay uses a quirky approach to get the reader acquainted with the way the novel is told. We're immediately immersed in this universe of quick soundbites and short video segments, with essentially a serf-class of employees watching, their fingers poised over a kill switch-style button to cut the continuous live feed of information. Employees (Reviewers) who survive 90 days are rewarded (!) with health insurance. But who can tell day from day where they are in the process?
The "company family" is made up of people only known by their @handles, but Hay has drawn all of these avatars with a loving grace and realism that I practically mourned by the time the novel was over. To say the book draws you in is a complete understatement.
So, with a dystopian but realistic setting, a experimental narrative told in fragments but easily read, and characters that made me want to rip my heart out, Hay has created a modern classic that likely won't be appreciated for a decade or so. Read it now, so you can be one of the cool first-adopter kids.
(My honest opinion is that THIS BOOK is what "House of Leaves" wanted to be, but failed at. If you liked the IDEA of HoL, but hated the execution, you'll love Nsfw.)
unfinished
October 22, 2024This was a cross between Chuck Paluniak and Clockwork Orange. That in itself seems perfect for me, but there was something missing. I couldn’t work up the least bit of connection with any of the characters and I found myself checking the time left on the listen more than I should’ve. Maybe it’s me. I should have loved this book.
March 10, 2023
Wonderfully weird and unsettling. Hay knows how experimental prose styles can be used to enhance a story and dives into a sort of hypermodern internet style of storytelling that fits the theme perfectly.
Like the best science fiction writers, Hay looks around at the world we're currently in, a world of social media and desensitization and bizarre coping mechanisms and weaves and experimental horror story of what happens when everything collapses. There's lots of sex, drugs, and existential rock and roll in this book, and for a long time it seems like it's bouncing around the theme without necessarily going forward too fast, plot-wise, but then in the end everything all comes together in very surprising ways and it ends up being unsettling and satisfying and all the best ways. 4.5 stars and a hell of a ride.
Like the best science fiction writers, Hay looks around at the world we're currently in, a world of social media and desensitization and bizarre coping mechanisms and weaves and experimental horror story of what happens when everything collapses. There's lots of sex, drugs, and existential rock and roll in this book, and for a long time it seems like it's bouncing around the theme without necessarily going forward too fast, plot-wise, but then in the end everything all comes together in very surprising ways and it ends up being unsettling and satisfying and all the best ways. 4.5 stars and a hell of a ride.
September 21, 2023
The setting of this present-day dystopian novel is the office of a corporation known as the face (led by a not fully human Zuckerberg-type, with apt sliminess). People work at the office as contract workers who are told that if they make it past the first 90 days of their jobs as video monitors, they will earn a bonus. Otherwise, they are not “employees,” as legally defined. The bonus will be full employment, with such perks as health care, paid vacation, retirement, and/or stock in the parent company—or so the contract employees believe but do not know for sure. The bonus is left deliberately up in the air, TBD.
This novel-as-warning takes on the social media corporations that monetize our personal information and improve techniques for keeping users online for longer and longer periods, including the circulation of increasingly shocking and depraved materials. [NSFW]’s characters prefer to remain anonymous to everyone—including friends, co-workers and lovers—preferring to be referred to only by their online names—@Sa>ag3 for the narrator and @Jun1p3r for his girlfriend, for instance.
The videos the monitors watch are the worst of the worst: beheadings, rapes, tortures, murders, and other forms of mayhem. All live-video feeds have a 70-second lag that give the monitors time to determine if they are real or staged. Seventy seconds that come in handy when trying to determine if something that looks like, say, a massacre of school children is actually occurring. Two underlying principles guide the awfulness of the videos that are allowed through: (1) any sense of communal sacrifice for a common good is a sign of unfettered fascism and (2) engaging in unconstrained violence every American’s Constitutional right. Or, as presented in these two exchanges from [NSFW],
No one remembers victory gardens. Any sacrifice made for country is now an assault on personal liberties.
That’s an old headshot, you [@Jun1p3r] say. I took it with a Nikon.
Your husband also took a lot of headshots with an AR-15.
Psychologically, the job takes its toll on the monitors, which they counter with a battery of drugs (mainly anti-depressants and micro-doses of mushrooms) and lots of aggressive, on-the-job sex, usually inside their department’s lactorium, a private chamber ostensibly for lactating mothers. Most people only last a few days or weeks on the job and either don’t come back or commit suicide after a steady diet of viewing human atrocities. Those who endure do so just for the chance to have healthcare benefits.
Soon after taking the job, @Sa>ag3 and @Jun1p3r move in together. In addition to frequent bouts of angry sex and a daily diet of micro-dosing shrooms, they place their phones in a chamber that blocks all electronic signals coming in and going out, and cover the floor of their apartment with sod and plants to achieve some semblance of sylvan quietude.
Could things get any worse? You bet they can. I won’t spoil anybody’s read, but the book offers a pathway to hope. Consider this your 70-second warning.
This novel-as-warning takes on the social media corporations that monetize our personal information and improve techniques for keeping users online for longer and longer periods, including the circulation of increasingly shocking and depraved materials. [NSFW]’s characters prefer to remain anonymous to everyone—including friends, co-workers and lovers—preferring to be referred to only by their online names—@Sa>ag3 for the narrator and @Jun1p3r for his girlfriend, for instance.
The videos the monitors watch are the worst of the worst: beheadings, rapes, tortures, murders, and other forms of mayhem. All live-video feeds have a 70-second lag that give the monitors time to determine if they are real or staged. Seventy seconds that come in handy when trying to determine if something that looks like, say, a massacre of school children is actually occurring. Two underlying principles guide the awfulness of the videos that are allowed through: (1) any sense of communal sacrifice for a common good is a sign of unfettered fascism and (2) engaging in unconstrained violence every American’s Constitutional right. Or, as presented in these two exchanges from [NSFW],
No one remembers victory gardens. Any sacrifice made for country is now an assault on personal liberties.
That’s an old headshot, you [@Jun1p3r] say. I took it with a Nikon.
Your husband also took a lot of headshots with an AR-15.
Psychologically, the job takes its toll on the monitors, which they counter with a battery of drugs (mainly anti-depressants and micro-doses of mushrooms) and lots of aggressive, on-the-job sex, usually inside their department’s lactorium, a private chamber ostensibly for lactating mothers. Most people only last a few days or weeks on the job and either don’t come back or commit suicide after a steady diet of viewing human atrocities. Those who endure do so just for the chance to have healthcare benefits.
Soon after taking the job, @Sa>ag3 and @Jun1p3r move in together. In addition to frequent bouts of angry sex and a daily diet of micro-dosing shrooms, they place their phones in a chamber that blocks all electronic signals coming in and going out, and cover the floor of their apartment with sod and plants to achieve some semblance of sylvan quietude.
Could things get any worse? You bet they can. I won’t spoil anybody’s read, but the book offers a pathway to hope. Consider this your 70-second warning.
August 13, 2023
This book is choppy and bounces all over. It hard to really care about characters; I feel the story line could have been done better.
September 16, 2023
I wanted to like this book, but I just couldn’t get into it. None of the story grabbed my interest.
April 16, 2024
The life of a social media "agent", i.e. someone who watches horrible videos all day and decides if they are too horrible and blocks them, or not quite too horrible and lets them through. As an ex-Twitter employee it was painful to read parts of this.
The blurb was right that this is a future cult classic. It is unconventionally written and often painful to contemplate, but well worth my time.
The blurb was right that this is a future cult classic. It is unconventionally written and often painful to contemplate, but well worth my time.
June 7, 2024
This book is so much! It’s great, it’s poetic, it’s prophecy, it’s dismal, it’s uplifting, and it never pulls any punches! Def worth a reread someday! So much to take in. 🪼
February 28, 2025
This is one of those books where it’s totally legitimate to say: “WTF did I just read?” but in the best possible way!
Described as “Clockwork Orange meets The Office”, it also reminded me a bit of the tv series “Sick Note”, and I believe this book perfectly manages to portray the society we currently live in like the titles mentioned, with lots of dark humour and just utter craziness and nonsense.
I listened to the audiobook, so I wasn’t aware of the non conventional writing format of the book (that some reviews report), although given the fantastic production and performance of Brian Alan Hill, I can actually see why. The different sounds and distortions, alarms and all the in between made this narration truly unique and it very well transports the reader into the book and author’s mind.
As I said, this story is just a perfect reflection of our current society, where social media has taken over real life, so much so to constitute a true danger to the whole of society. To try and prevent this, the protagonists moderate social media content, exposing themselves for hours day after day to everything the human brain can conjure up, not realising how detrimental this is. Because of this exposure, @Sa>ag3 and @Jun1p3r, and the whole office, start slowly ramping up drug use, extreme sex and everything in between.
They soon realise though, that the only way to protect themselves, and to come back to reality is not projecting outwards but inwards, trying to disconnect from the plastic and fictitious world by finding true human connection, cultivating the most profound emotions instead of a quick pleasure fix.
I loved this story, for not just its meaning, but for how damn real the characters are! If this book is not on your radar, then make sure to add it on your list now as it will make you laugh, disgust, think and tear up without your brain not even realising it!
Thanks to the author for the audiobook and this is my honest opinion.
Described as “Clockwork Orange meets The Office”, it also reminded me a bit of the tv series “Sick Note”, and I believe this book perfectly manages to portray the society we currently live in like the titles mentioned, with lots of dark humour and just utter craziness and nonsense.
I listened to the audiobook, so I wasn’t aware of the non conventional writing format of the book (that some reviews report), although given the fantastic production and performance of Brian Alan Hill, I can actually see why. The different sounds and distortions, alarms and all the in between made this narration truly unique and it very well transports the reader into the book and author’s mind.
As I said, this story is just a perfect reflection of our current society, where social media has taken over real life, so much so to constitute a true danger to the whole of society. To try and prevent this, the protagonists moderate social media content, exposing themselves for hours day after day to everything the human brain can conjure up, not realising how detrimental this is. Because of this exposure, @Sa>ag3 and @Jun1p3r, and the whole office, start slowly ramping up drug use, extreme sex and everything in between.
They soon realise though, that the only way to protect themselves, and to come back to reality is not projecting outwards but inwards, trying to disconnect from the plastic and fictitious world by finding true human connection, cultivating the most profound emotions instead of a quick pleasure fix.
I loved this story, for not just its meaning, but for how damn real the characters are! If this book is not on your radar, then make sure to add it on your list now as it will make you laugh, disgust, think and tear up without your brain not even realising it!
Thanks to the author for the audiobook and this is my honest opinion.
December 21, 2024
This audiobook (audio immersion?) is an enveloping, provocative, tensely entertaining experience. When it was playing I was COMPLETELY RIVETED.
@Sa>ag3 and @Jun1p3r are hired as part of a “pod” of social media moderators. For 90 days the pod is pushed towards unattainable goals and promised healthcare and a bonus. There is sex and BDSM and drugs and lactation and found family and dysfunction and obsession, as this group struggles on the frontlines, monitoring depravity and violence caught on live feeds throughout the world.
This is a love story, an awkward comedy comparable to The Office, an indictment of our reliance on “devices,” a judgment of the Billionaire Boy Genius and a shattering portrayal of the unraveling of a man struggling with PTSD.
Wild, unpredictable and completely new, along the lines of other shocking reads like Maeve Fly by CJ Leede and Posthaste Manor by Toomajian and Winter, NSFW takes you on a journey examining flaws within modern society and ourselves.
Remember the first time you saw Pulp Fiction? When you were both “WHAT THE EFF IS GOING ON” and “wait a minute, something new and amazing is happening here” and then everything comes together at the end and you are gasping and awestruck? Yeah. That’s here.
NSFW (which stands for Not Safe For Work) adroitly manipulates, mind bends, forces examination and smashes your heart.
Get ready. Listen closely. It is AWESOME.
@Sa>ag3 and @Jun1p3r are hired as part of a “pod” of social media moderators. For 90 days the pod is pushed towards unattainable goals and promised healthcare and a bonus. There is sex and BDSM and drugs and lactation and found family and dysfunction and obsession, as this group struggles on the frontlines, monitoring depravity and violence caught on live feeds throughout the world.
This is a love story, an awkward comedy comparable to The Office, an indictment of our reliance on “devices,” a judgment of the Billionaire Boy Genius and a shattering portrayal of the unraveling of a man struggling with PTSD.
Wild, unpredictable and completely new, along the lines of other shocking reads like Maeve Fly by CJ Leede and Posthaste Manor by Toomajian and Winter, NSFW takes you on a journey examining flaws within modern society and ourselves.
Remember the first time you saw Pulp Fiction? When you were both “WHAT THE EFF IS GOING ON” and “wait a minute, something new and amazing is happening here” and then everything comes together at the end and you are gasping and awestruck? Yeah. That’s here.
NSFW (which stands for Not Safe For Work) adroitly manipulates, mind bends, forces examination and smashes your heart.
Get ready. Listen closely. It is AWESOME.
March 11, 2024
Raunchy, anti-gun, cry-baby attempt at being a shocker. Wannabe Fight Club, John Dies At the End edginess. Can't say I recommend. I don't usually love the cyberpunk genre/style anyway, listening mostly for the fascinating technological bits, but I honestly just didn't think this was a good book.
Solid narration, I thought some of the voice modulations were going to be a bit much, but I don't recall there being any beyond the intro.
Me and several classmates had guns in our vehicles in the HS parking lot. My principal walked out with me and a buddy to see a new gun when he got it. My HS never had a shooting. Guns aren't the problem. Demographics, multiculturalism, unconstitutional laws and poor training are the problem. Despite the ease of stopping school shootings, they won't end any time soon. They're emotional, they get a reaction. And if there were a certain entity... gosh I dunno who... interested in turning the population against guns, it would be in their best interest for these tragedies to continue.
This book calls out some of the real-life operations our government has carried out against citizens and then wants to cry about the citizenry having guns...
Rant over.
Solid narration, I thought some of the voice modulations were going to be a bit much, but I don't recall there being any beyond the intro.
Me and several classmates had guns in our vehicles in the HS parking lot. My principal walked out with me and a buddy to see a new gun when he got it. My HS never had a shooting. Guns aren't the problem. Demographics, multiculturalism, unconstitutional laws and poor training are the problem. Despite the ease of stopping school shootings, they won't end any time soon. They're emotional, they get a reaction. And if there were a certain entity... gosh I dunno who... interested in turning the population against guns, it would be in their best interest for these tragedies to continue.
This book calls out some of the real-life operations our government has carried out against citizens and then wants to cry about the citizenry having guns...
Rant over.
March 22, 2023
This book was brilliant and creative. The style of writing won’t be for everyone but if you enjoyed A Clockwork Orange this shouldn’t be too hard for you to comprehend. It’s witty and raw and I really enjoyed it. This was a step outside of my typical genre and I was not disappointed.
Side note: I really like that the characters are all referred to by their internet handles.
Side note: I really like that the characters are all referred to by their internet handles.
April 26, 2023
Brilly-brills!
April 18, 2023
David Scott Hay was kind enough to send me a copy of NSFW months ago (along with a dope shirt 😎) and I finally have been focused enough to get back on the reading train!
NSFW is a deeply satirical and equally disturbing look at certain social media companies 😉 and the groups of people employed to review and flag videos posted there. Is it a nipple? A beheading? A school shooting? Maybe all three. DSH deals with the moral quandary of subjecting humans to repetitive acts of horror and the trauma it causes, especially when it is done on the cheap for a multi-billion dollar company.
This book comes with the caveat that it requires basically every trigger warning you could imagine. It’s a book that is meant to be subversive and show the absurdity and horror of our society’s technological co-dependence and addiction. It’s a book of full of (mostly) bad people watching horrible things in hopes that they’ll make it to a more stable position in the company and receive full benefits.
Certain aspects of the formatting didn’t land for me, but that should be no surprise to anyone who knows me. Experimental books are typically a harder sell for me, but NSFW hit for me more often than it didn’t.
This book is beyond fucked up, but then again, so is the world we live in.
4/5 ⭐️
NSFW is a deeply satirical and equally disturbing look at certain social media companies 😉 and the groups of people employed to review and flag videos posted there. Is it a nipple? A beheading? A school shooting? Maybe all three. DSH deals with the moral quandary of subjecting humans to repetitive acts of horror and the trauma it causes, especially when it is done on the cheap for a multi-billion dollar company.
This book comes with the caveat that it requires basically every trigger warning you could imagine. It’s a book that is meant to be subversive and show the absurdity and horror of our society’s technological co-dependence and addiction. It’s a book of full of (mostly) bad people watching horrible things in hopes that they’ll make it to a more stable position in the company and receive full benefits.
Certain aspects of the formatting didn’t land for me, but that should be no surprise to anyone who knows me. Experimental books are typically a harder sell for me, but NSFW hit for me more often than it didn’t.
This book is beyond fucked up, but then again, so is the world we live in.
4/5 ⭐️
June 28, 2024
The Fight Club sentiments of office culture... falling in love with someone and realising you don't even know their real name, only their @screenname... alternating between soothing productivity and earthy, messy rituals to cope with modern society... digital and organic impulses melding together... the virtual smooshing up against our skin, drawing blood... the fact that corporations are indeed people; glitchy, empty characterisations of nationalistic and capitalistic interests...
NSFW addresses how these things suck on our souls, bully us into disassociation, and force our hands on the master's tools to maintain stability -- while simultaneously compelling us to reinvigorate our reality by ripping the nasty little habits coerced into us out of our (nervous) systems -- and replacing them with painful, stimulating human (re)actions we aren't great at managing anyway / that have fucked us up in the past: ritual, obsession, paranoia, chosen families, love. We try, try again though.
The casual psychosis of daily life in the modern age is introduced to the reader so smoothly, in yummy, bite-sized chapters, and every desperate character feels real and familiar. I didn't finish this book feeling hopeless though; it emphasises the passion behind the mechanisms and the constant questioning that keeps us from becoming braindead in this era.
NSFW addresses how these things suck on our souls, bully us into disassociation, and force our hands on the master's tools to maintain stability -- while simultaneously compelling us to reinvigorate our reality by ripping the nasty little habits coerced into us out of our (nervous) systems -- and replacing them with painful, stimulating human (re)actions we aren't great at managing anyway / that have fucked us up in the past: ritual, obsession, paranoia, chosen families, love. We try, try again though.
The casual psychosis of daily life in the modern age is introduced to the reader so smoothly, in yummy, bite-sized chapters, and every desperate character feels real and familiar. I didn't finish this book feeling hopeless though; it emphasises the passion behind the mechanisms and the constant questioning that keeps us from becoming braindead in this era.
December 8, 2025
it took a bit for the terse, choppy prose style to land for me, but when I began to pick up on the way the prose changes at certain moments of clarity, and how the fragmented style reflects our own short-form content cognition, only pierced by moments of joy or pain or contentment or often painful self reflection, I began to really appreciate it.
I read this as part of a thematic grouping of books I've been exploring that included Negative Space, Amygdalatropolis, rekt, and Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, and I enjoyed it as an entry in commenting on contemporary life along those lines. there's some funny and unique exploration of social media and tech ubiquity, and I loved how there are multiple conspiracies kind of unraveling at once, this invisible push and pull where no grand narrative or truth wins out, each faction exerts control but victory is never clear, and in the long run, things only continue to get worse for the person caught up in it all, trying to get by and safeguard the only happiness they have, the love story at the heart of it all.
I read this as part of a thematic grouping of books I've been exploring that included Negative Space, Amygdalatropolis, rekt, and Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, and I enjoyed it as an entry in commenting on contemporary life along those lines. there's some funny and unique exploration of social media and tech ubiquity, and I loved how there are multiple conspiracies kind of unraveling at once, this invisible push and pull where no grand narrative or truth wins out, each faction exerts control but victory is never clear, and in the long run, things only continue to get worse for the person caught up in it all, trying to get by and safeguard the only happiness they have, the love story at the heart of it all.
November 22, 2024
Meh. Review and cover overhyped this. A little too weird and gross. Not my style.
October 11, 2023
Near-future--or just the frightening now--techno-horror/love story, with a semi-anonymous protagonist temp worker seeking health insurance and comfort in a world packed with trauma by way of social media. There are parts where I couldn't stop reading, and parts where I had to walk away (and then come back). Bring your own mushrooms and jellyfish (as food and pets, behave.)
December 1, 2023
I don’t even know how to review this book or explain it. It definitely had The Office vibes, but a much darker, f**ked up version that is quirky, raw, and unsettling, and bizarre. It’s genius!
The writing style is unique. It took me a few pages to get used to it, but then I loved it. It’s told in little snippets and kinda bounces around but it works! I can’t explain how but it just does and really adds to the overall experience. That’s what this book was…an experience.
It’s filled with kinky sex scenes, drugs, and violence. There’s also a look at trauma, PTSD, co-dependency, social media addiction, and society’s obsession with death and violence.
It’s dystopian but doesn’t seem too outlandish or too far off from where we are now as a society. I appreciated the romance and comedy mixed in. No way can my review do it justice. I immediately want to read it again. Highly recommend!
The writing style is unique. It took me a few pages to get used to it, but then I loved it. It’s told in little snippets and kinda bounces around but it works! I can’t explain how but it just does and really adds to the overall experience. That’s what this book was…an experience.
It’s filled with kinky sex scenes, drugs, and violence. There’s also a look at trauma, PTSD, co-dependency, social media addiction, and society’s obsession with death and violence.
It’s dystopian but doesn’t seem too outlandish or too far off from where we are now as a society. I appreciated the romance and comedy mixed in. No way can my review do it justice. I immediately want to read it again. Highly recommend!
March 27, 2025
Not sure if this will make sense, but something about this fascinating dystopian satire gave me “Southland Tales” vibes. If you’ve seen that movie, you might understand what I mean. Definitely felt a strong Palahniuk aura in here as well and as a guy who’s loved a lot Chuck’s stuff, I definitely appreciated the satirical elements.
I’m hoping this will get more attention at some point because it’s a unique story with a unique format. In terms of genre, it’s definitely not easy to classify. There’s aspects of comedy mixed in with romance, horror, and sci-fi. I love a good genre-bending tale! Weird, but cool!
I’m hoping this will get more attention at some point because it’s a unique story with a unique format. In terms of genre, it’s definitely not easy to classify. There’s aspects of comedy mixed in with romance, horror, and sci-fi. I love a good genre-bending tale! Weird, but cool!
July 24, 2024
Has anyone else on the planet read this? I feel like I read it in a dream and only remember it in weird LSDesque flashbacks. 10/10 would recommend tbh - weird, gross, weird, unnerving, heart warming, weird, and gross!
March 5, 2023
Would like to thank David Scott Hays for sending me an ARC of his novel, but I promise that my review is unbiased.
Main Review
This is the second book by David Scott Hay that I have read, and I'm truly blown away by his writing prowess and style that remains so different from other writers.
Overall, I found the book to be quite unconventional (in a good way), for it served as a parable for the information age and commentary on social media. It combined many different ideas from classics like 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and Catch-22. The writing style flowed very well with many modern ideas and topics. A few of the hashtags definitely went over my head and required research on my part, but it was much-needed research.
When I first heard the title, I, frankly, had no idea what this book would be about. I thought it was going to be some workplace romance (which it was somewhat), but nothing more than that. Since I rarely read prose that doesn’t offer elaborate scenes or figurative language, the pacing of the book and use of frequent breaks caught me off-guard, as I struggled to determine what was going on. However, after maybe 20 or so pages, the book grew on me.
One of my favorite literary devices implemented is synecdoche and metonymy, with each sentence being so short yet packed with so many ideas. Many readers might disagree, but I appreciate having to work to understand, since not all the ideas are presented in a hand-holding manner. There is a lot to be interpreted, and I will be needing to read this again to gain all that insight.
World-Building
Incredible. From Wiccans to the face, everything about the novel engrossed the imagination, encapsulating dystopian yet progressive(?). I appreciated the subtle nods to past events of information censorship, building up to the Live Feed Event with ideas of the Cold War and modern-day involution. Besides the GoDrones, I found the new types of “devices” that can be charged through bioelectric charge to be quite a novel idea
There is also a layer of absurdity from the Cherry Maca Mochas, the BDSM silent auction, the Twins breast-feeding @MOM, and @OrKa’s continual pedaling
I also appreciate how the characters became more and more desensitized to the atrocities and violence they had to “flag” with some very real consequences, . It is quite a difficult thing to do.
Plot
Taking a simple idea of contractors trying to enter a conglomerate to survive and flagging NSFW videos turned into a massive conspiracy theory with “planned” terrorist attacks and the loss of love for @Sa>ag3 in Paris as he undermines the company only to escape and try to survive, then potentially caught.
Everything escalated much faster than I realized
From then on, I didn’t know what to expect (granted, the whole book was quite unpredictable, which was similar to The Fountain, DSH's other book).
Stylistic Effects and Concepts I Enjoyed
• For the [Termination] section, I appreciated seeing the numbers count down to zero.
• The
Main Review
This is the second book by David Scott Hay that I have read, and I'm truly blown away by his writing prowess and style that remains so different from other writers.
Overall, I found the book to be quite unconventional (in a good way), for it served as a parable for the information age and commentary on social media. It combined many different ideas from classics like 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, and Catch-22. The writing style flowed very well with many modern ideas and topics. A few of the hashtags definitely went over my head and required research on my part, but it was much-needed research.
When I first heard the title, I, frankly, had no idea what this book would be about. I thought it was going to be some workplace romance (which it was somewhat), but nothing more than that. Since I rarely read prose that doesn’t offer elaborate scenes or figurative language, the pacing of the book and use of frequent breaks caught me off-guard, as I struggled to determine what was going on. However, after maybe 20 or so pages, the book grew on me.
One of my favorite literary devices implemented is synecdoche and metonymy, with each sentence being so short yet packed with so many ideas. Many readers might disagree, but I appreciate having to work to understand, since not all the ideas are presented in a hand-holding manner. There is a lot to be interpreted, and I will be needing to read this again to gain all that insight.
World-Building
Incredible. From Wiccans to the face, everything about the novel engrossed the imagination, encapsulating dystopian yet progressive(?). I appreciated the subtle nods to past events of information censorship, building up to the Live Feed Event with ideas of the Cold War and modern-day involution. Besides the GoDrones, I found the new types of “devices” that can be charged through bioelectric charge to be quite a novel idea
There is also a layer of absurdity from the Cherry Maca Mochas, the BDSM silent auction, the Twins breast-feeding @MOM, and @OrKa’s continual pedaling
I also appreciate how the characters became more and more desensitized to the atrocities and violence they had to “flag” with some very real consequences, . It is quite a difficult thing to do.
Plot
Taking a simple idea of contractors trying to enter a conglomerate to survive and flagging NSFW videos turned into a massive conspiracy theory with “planned” terrorist attacks and the loss of love for @Sa>ag3 in Paris as he undermines the company only to escape and try to survive, then potentially caught.
Everything escalated much faster than I realized
From then on, I didn’t know what to expect (granted, the whole book was quite unpredictable, which was similar to The Fountain, DSH's other book).
Stylistic Effects and Concepts I Enjoyed
• For the [Termination] section, I appreciated seeing the numbers count down to zero.
• The
HTML formatting between each chapter
• The redaction of “real names” and the black highlighted boxes
• The COMING SOON sections
• The placement of the plug, spider, ant, and jellyfish
• I appreciate the reference to the old Apple ad of the “sledgehammer to the black and white screen”
• I never thought of “feed” as what humans ingest through our phones as also what is given to animals before slaughter…this really got me.
July 3, 2023
Dystopian fiction is so hot right now. Hot like teen vampires before it. And child wizards before that. Hot like Chris Pine, and Michael B. Jordan, and J-Law. Hot like a Ron DeSantis book-burning. In Florida. In July. Hot like our annually warming planet.
Speaking as someone who read The Giver, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, Z for Zachariah, Ender’s Game, Lord of the Flies, 1984, Animal Farm, The Handmaid’s Tale, Anthem, and even A Clockwork Orange all within the state-sanctioned strictures of the Georgia public school system (that last one was a Directed Study pick, but it was still very much on the taxpayer’s dime), it’s hard not to look back and think my teachers weren’t trying to tell us something. There were years where our entire lit curriculum was little more than a series of increasingly relevant warnings, written years before we were born about years we were about to reach; about the country we were growing up in and, presumably, expected to save. I don’t know if I even realized at the time how lucky I was to have had two of the most liberal-minded English teachers in the (then-red, now-purple) state (along with a couple of very progressive history teachers), all of whom I fear would have a hard time staying employed amidst our current educational/political climate (they are all, thankfully, long retired).
Now I don’t want to get too “back in my day whippersnapper …” with this framing device—I haven’t read The Hunger Games or any of the other buzzworthy apocalyptica that’s taken YA shelves by storm in recent years. But the sense I get is that much of it leans heavily into the surfacey sci-fi/adventure elements that most of the aforementioned classics employed more as a kind of candy-coating to help the medicine go down (ie—it’s there, but it’s not the point, and it’s certainly not supposed to be fun). And the very fact that the genre has become commodified in this way—spawning a commercial behemoth of endless copycat book series and assembly-line TV and film adaptations—can definitely sometimes feel a bit like self-fulfilling prophecy; like the very snake we were warned about gobbling up its own tail. If anything’s changed, it’s the directive. Twenty-five years ago, these ideas still felt manageable (the panda/whale/rainforest-centric environmentalism of my youth seems laughably quaint today) but now, most of them have arrived at our doorstep, extremely unmanaged, knocking loudly, asking for our votes, or worse yet, asking us to accept that our votes no longer matter. If the dystopian message of the 90s was “look out, this is coming” then the dystopian message of the 2020s is decidedly closer to “buckle up, this is here.”
Put another way, perhaps the true challenge in writing meaningful dystopian fiction in 2023 comes in recognizing that the distant future is, in all likelihood, simply not going to be a thing; in respecting readers enough to acknowledge that, and still working to find the hope amid our collective hopelessness. After all, 1984 was nearly 40 years ago. And 2049 (the year in which Fahrenheit 451 is set) is just around the corner. Go much further than that, and you’re more-or-less dutybound to get apocalyptic, rather than functionally dystopic. We all know too much—about what’s already happened, and what’s yet to come—and with our Damoclean ozone layer hanging dark over our heads, the intervening unraveling of the world is what Hay sets out to explore. His new novel NSFW is, in many ways, (and by its own epigraphed admission), a Frankensteinian monster of endtimes prophecy, bioengineered to rise up and meet our specific historical moment.
NSFW’s future—though clearly tongue-in-cheek—never feels all that far off, nor does it strike this reader as particularly unlikely. Imagining a world shaped both by the continued fallout from the Coronavirus pandemic, as well as some nebulous, global gamechanger cyberattack referred to only as “the hack” (something that, on some queasy gut level, we all know is probably coming, and have been quietly dreading amongst ourselves at least since 9/11)—one in which people are no longer glued to their phones, but essentially parasitic hosts for them—one in which the Cronenbergian melding of off- and online life posited last year in David Leo Rice’s groundbreaking essay “Long Live the Heroic Pervert” is not only a reality, but one so long-past as to no longer even warrant comment—Hay dares to jump still further ahead, to the catastrophe-after-next—to predict beyond the predictable—to boldly envision the symphonic, cacophonic, kakistocratic culmination of all the shit we failed to deal with the first (and second) (and third) time around and say yes, this too is in the cards.
Ferociously funny, right up until it’s not (as only the best satire can be), his merry band of microdosing content warriors bring to dizzying, miraculous life a most visceral expression of that ‘it’s-already-too-lateness’ that has come to define our still-young century. Logging unconscionably long hours as real-time internet censors, furiously pedaling in place toward the dangling, rotten, “15-Million Merit” carrot of socioeconomic stability, they comprise a makeshift dysfunctional family as relatable as any office sitcom. In his reluctant hero @Sa>ag3 we are gifted a true successor to Winston Smith, the ultimate go-along-to-get-along hardcase moved to question, and care, and risk, and revolt, all for a taste of true happiness the likes of which he’d long ago given up any hope of knowing. His partner-in-passionate-crime @Jun1p3r is an avenging angel of the dark web, equal parts Greek Fury and Matrix Trinity, her pyroclastic rage against the fall of mankind, and her flickering hope in one final man conspiring to set her aflame. Together (along with their beloved pet jellyfish), they do their best to bear witness to the dying of the light; their compatriots shuffled off, one-by-one, snuffed out by big business, bigger tech, and extreme overexposure to the daily banalities of uploaded evil, until there’s both nowhere left to go, and nothing left to do but run.
Less a paint-by-numbers map to ruin than a multi-tabbed browser window into the fracturing of reality, NSFW is a fatidic cyberwitch’s brew of dark matter and darker art—a concession to the slow-dawning, but fast-snowballing realization that this cherished concept we have called ‘the truth’ is not only passé and naïve; but that it’s over. That our ongoing lust for more of it has led to the irrevocable destabilization of all of it. That there is, in fact, no one single ‘there’ there, and likely never has been; that the only real fight left is the one between the truth you’re fed, and the truth you create for yourself. I think this, more than anything, is what my wonderful teachers wanted me and my generation to learn from all those great dystopian works.
In the same way, by plotting out our prospective fates, from consumptive consumerism and technofascist anarchy, to self-care hedonism and class war Armageddon, Hay’s last (and greatest) message still somehow emerges, above all that societal fray, as one of fervid belief in the deepest, rawest aspects of human love. In adding his outrageous countercultural philippic to a tradition that includes A Clockwork Orange, Brazil, Fight Club, and Mr. Robot, he will break your brain, and then he will break your heart. And while not hopeful in his conclusions—scientific, narrative, or otherwise—he remains steadfastly hopeful in his telling; in his trying; in his warning. Indeed, in the very existence of a book like NSFW, one has to glimpse a gleam of hope. That it’s not too late. That there is still time. And that, though unsparing and unflinching in its predictions for our selfie-immolating world and its foul devices, it is still, after all, (as only the best satire can be), a love story.
Speaking as someone who read The Giver, Fahrenheit 451, Brave New World, Z for Zachariah, Ender’s Game, Lord of the Flies, 1984, Animal Farm, The Handmaid’s Tale, Anthem, and even A Clockwork Orange all within the state-sanctioned strictures of the Georgia public school system (that last one was a Directed Study pick, but it was still very much on the taxpayer’s dime), it’s hard not to look back and think my teachers weren’t trying to tell us something. There were years where our entire lit curriculum was little more than a series of increasingly relevant warnings, written years before we were born about years we were about to reach; about the country we were growing up in and, presumably, expected to save. I don’t know if I even realized at the time how lucky I was to have had two of the most liberal-minded English teachers in the (then-red, now-purple) state (along with a couple of very progressive history teachers), all of whom I fear would have a hard time staying employed amidst our current educational/political climate (they are all, thankfully, long retired).
Now I don’t want to get too “back in my day whippersnapper …” with this framing device—I haven’t read The Hunger Games or any of the other buzzworthy apocalyptica that’s taken YA shelves by storm in recent years. But the sense I get is that much of it leans heavily into the surfacey sci-fi/adventure elements that most of the aforementioned classics employed more as a kind of candy-coating to help the medicine go down (ie—it’s there, but it’s not the point, and it’s certainly not supposed to be fun). And the very fact that the genre has become commodified in this way—spawning a commercial behemoth of endless copycat book series and assembly-line TV and film adaptations—can definitely sometimes feel a bit like self-fulfilling prophecy; like the very snake we were warned about gobbling up its own tail. If anything’s changed, it’s the directive. Twenty-five years ago, these ideas still felt manageable (the panda/whale/rainforest-centric environmentalism of my youth seems laughably quaint today) but now, most of them have arrived at our doorstep, extremely unmanaged, knocking loudly, asking for our votes, or worse yet, asking us to accept that our votes no longer matter. If the dystopian message of the 90s was “look out, this is coming” then the dystopian message of the 2020s is decidedly closer to “buckle up, this is here.”
Put another way, perhaps the true challenge in writing meaningful dystopian fiction in 2023 comes in recognizing that the distant future is, in all likelihood, simply not going to be a thing; in respecting readers enough to acknowledge that, and still working to find the hope amid our collective hopelessness. After all, 1984 was nearly 40 years ago. And 2049 (the year in which Fahrenheit 451 is set) is just around the corner. Go much further than that, and you’re more-or-less dutybound to get apocalyptic, rather than functionally dystopic. We all know too much—about what’s already happened, and what’s yet to come—and with our Damoclean ozone layer hanging dark over our heads, the intervening unraveling of the world is what Hay sets out to explore. His new novel NSFW is, in many ways, (and by its own epigraphed admission), a Frankensteinian monster of endtimes prophecy, bioengineered to rise up and meet our specific historical moment.
NSFW’s future—though clearly tongue-in-cheek—never feels all that far off, nor does it strike this reader as particularly unlikely. Imagining a world shaped both by the continued fallout from the Coronavirus pandemic, as well as some nebulous, global gamechanger cyberattack referred to only as “the hack” (something that, on some queasy gut level, we all know is probably coming, and have been quietly dreading amongst ourselves at least since 9/11)—one in which people are no longer glued to their phones, but essentially parasitic hosts for them—one in which the Cronenbergian melding of off- and online life posited last year in David Leo Rice’s groundbreaking essay “Long Live the Heroic Pervert” is not only a reality, but one so long-past as to no longer even warrant comment—Hay dares to jump still further ahead, to the catastrophe-after-next—to predict beyond the predictable—to boldly envision the symphonic, cacophonic, kakistocratic culmination of all the shit we failed to deal with the first (and second) (and third) time around and say yes, this too is in the cards.
Ferociously funny, right up until it’s not (as only the best satire can be), his merry band of microdosing content warriors bring to dizzying, miraculous life a most visceral expression of that ‘it’s-already-too-lateness’ that has come to define our still-young century. Logging unconscionably long hours as real-time internet censors, furiously pedaling in place toward the dangling, rotten, “15-Million Merit” carrot of socioeconomic stability, they comprise a makeshift dysfunctional family as relatable as any office sitcom. In his reluctant hero @Sa>ag3 we are gifted a true successor to Winston Smith, the ultimate go-along-to-get-along hardcase moved to question, and care, and risk, and revolt, all for a taste of true happiness the likes of which he’d long ago given up any hope of knowing. His partner-in-passionate-crime @Jun1p3r is an avenging angel of the dark web, equal parts Greek Fury and Matrix Trinity, her pyroclastic rage against the fall of mankind, and her flickering hope in one final man conspiring to set her aflame. Together (along with their beloved pet jellyfish), they do their best to bear witness to the dying of the light; their compatriots shuffled off, one-by-one, snuffed out by big business, bigger tech, and extreme overexposure to the daily banalities of uploaded evil, until there’s both nowhere left to go, and nothing left to do but run.
Less a paint-by-numbers map to ruin than a multi-tabbed browser window into the fracturing of reality, NSFW is a fatidic cyberwitch’s brew of dark matter and darker art—a concession to the slow-dawning, but fast-snowballing realization that this cherished concept we have called ‘the truth’ is not only passé and naïve; but that it’s over. That our ongoing lust for more of it has led to the irrevocable destabilization of all of it. That there is, in fact, no one single ‘there’ there, and likely never has been; that the only real fight left is the one between the truth you’re fed, and the truth you create for yourself. I think this, more than anything, is what my wonderful teachers wanted me and my generation to learn from all those great dystopian works.
In the same way, by plotting out our prospective fates, from consumptive consumerism and technofascist anarchy, to self-care hedonism and class war Armageddon, Hay’s last (and greatest) message still somehow emerges, above all that societal fray, as one of fervid belief in the deepest, rawest aspects of human love. In adding his outrageous countercultural philippic to a tradition that includes A Clockwork Orange, Brazil, Fight Club, and Mr. Robot, he will break your brain, and then he will break your heart. And while not hopeful in his conclusions—scientific, narrative, or otherwise—he remains steadfastly hopeful in his telling; in his trying; in his warning. Indeed, in the very existence of a book like NSFW, one has to glimpse a gleam of hope. That it’s not too late. That there is still time. And that, though unsparing and unflinching in its predictions for our selfie-immolating world and its foul devices, it is still, after all, (as only the best satire can be), a love story.
July 17, 2023
NSFW by David Scott Hay
-summary: described as “the office meets a clockwork orange,” NSFW follows two budding social media moderators navigating the horrors of the internet and the overwhelming worlds of corporate greed + chaotic digital experiences. (i //really// don’t want to give too much away!)
-my thoughts: this book is EVERYTHING i wanted from “We Had to Remove this Post” (Bervoets) but never got— it’s twisted, experimental, and riddled with hidden symbolism, romance, tech-horror, and so much more! this is one of those books that NEEDS to be read in a physical version bc of the formatting— highly recommend!
-tysm to David for the plethora of stickers (some are holographic!) and matching button ♥️
-Whisk(e)y Tit Books
-the author scored me a discount code to save 30%!— DSYAY
full post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CuEzqLSO_-_/
-summary: described as “the office meets a clockwork orange,” NSFW follows two budding social media moderators navigating the horrors of the internet and the overwhelming worlds of corporate greed + chaotic digital experiences. (i //really// don’t want to give too much away!)
-my thoughts: this book is EVERYTHING i wanted from “We Had to Remove this Post” (Bervoets) but never got— it’s twisted, experimental, and riddled with hidden symbolism, romance, tech-horror, and so much more! this is one of those books that NEEDS to be read in a physical version bc of the formatting— highly recommend!
-tysm to David for the plethora of stickers (some are holographic!) and matching button ♥️
-Whisk(e)y Tit Books
-the author scored me a discount code to save 30%!— DSYAY
full post: https://www.instagram.com/p/CuEzqLSO_-_/
August 5, 2023
I thought this near-future dystopian novel was clever, visceral, raw, and compelling. The bulk of it is written as a sort-of stream-of-consciousness ramble, which I would have found irritating if it weren't so captivating. As it stands, I devoured it.
It may be the strangest book I've ever read, both in terms of its own structure and the truly bizarre mores and relationships between the characters, all of whom are postmodern eccentrics contracted as video content moderators for the Facebook-surrogate social media conglomerate that the world to an outsized degree.
The things they see are traumatizing, and they respond to the trauma by retreating farther and farther from the conventions of mainstream society.
It may be the strangest book I've ever read, both in terms of its own structure and the truly bizarre mores and relationships between the characters, all of whom are postmodern eccentrics contracted as video content moderators for the Facebook-surrogate social media conglomerate that the world to an outsized degree.
The things they see are traumatizing, and they respond to the trauma by retreating farther and farther from the conventions of mainstream society.
July 18, 2024
~dnf page 60~
not the worst book ever, but it kinda just jumped right in, and there was a scene where he like... suckled from this random coworkers boob??? it was really weird but not the engaging weird just... weird! it lowkey threw me into a slump😭💔
not the worst book ever, but it kinda just jumped right in, and there was a scene where he like... suckled from this random coworkers boob??? it was really weird but not the engaging weird just... weird! it lowkey threw me into a slump😭💔
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
December 19, 2025
As darkly hilarious and prescient as anything I’ve recently read. A perfect soundtrack for our exciting new distopia. Utterly unique and not a little savage, I have kept thinking about it months after reading, and what better compliment is there in such dissonant times?
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews