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Mean Boys: A Personal History
For readers of Monsters and Gay Bar , a ferocious inquiry into art and desire, style and politics, madness and salvation, and coming of age in our volatile, image-obsessed present.
You know them when you see mean boys take up space, wielding cruelty to claim their place in the pecking order. Some mean boys make art or music or fashion; others make memes. Mean boys stomp the runways in Milan and Paris; mean boys marched at Charlottesville. And in the eyes of critic and style expert Geoffrey Mak, mean boys are the emblem of our an era ravenous for novelty, always thirsting for the next edgy thing, even at our peril.
In this pyrotechnic memoir-in-essays, Mak ranges widely over our landscape of paranoia, crisis, and frenetic, clickable consumption. He grants readers an inside pass to the spaces where culture was made and unmade over the past decade, from the antiseptic glare of white-walled galleries to the darkest corners of Berlin techno clubs. As the gay son of an evangelical minister, Mak fled to those spaces, hoping to join a rootless, influential elite. But when calamity struck, it forced Mak to confront the costs of mistaking status for belonging. Fusing personal essay and cultural critique, Mean Boys investigates exile and return, transgression and forgiveness, and the value of faith, empathy, and friendship in a world designed to make us want what is bad for us.
You know them when you see mean boys take up space, wielding cruelty to claim their place in the pecking order. Some mean boys make art or music or fashion; others make memes. Mean boys stomp the runways in Milan and Paris; mean boys marched at Charlottesville. And in the eyes of critic and style expert Geoffrey Mak, mean boys are the emblem of our an era ravenous for novelty, always thirsting for the next edgy thing, even at our peril.
In this pyrotechnic memoir-in-essays, Mak ranges widely over our landscape of paranoia, crisis, and frenetic, clickable consumption. He grants readers an inside pass to the spaces where culture was made and unmade over the past decade, from the antiseptic glare of white-walled galleries to the darkest corners of Berlin techno clubs. As the gay son of an evangelical minister, Mak fled to those spaces, hoping to join a rootless, influential elite. But when calamity struck, it forced Mak to confront the costs of mistaking status for belonging. Fusing personal essay and cultural critique, Mean Boys investigates exile and return, transgression and forgiveness, and the value of faith, empathy, and friendship in a world designed to make us want what is bad for us.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published April 30, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 77 reviews
May 24, 2024
3.5 / 5 rounded up for me personally, but fwiw, I think most people will probably rate this a 3/5. let's start with the positives: the parts that stood out to me the most were Mak's descriptions of the Berlin art scene / nightlife / the strange social status games that he witnessed. I've also personally wanted to see someone write about the incel phenomenon from a gay Asian male perspective, which made the last essay, "mean boys," particularly interesting for me. also, as any good essayist is, mak is capable of sharp honesty and vulnerability - he discusses his experience of psychosis, his neuroses and anxieties, and romantic failures.
where this collection fell short for me is in its analysis. Mak admits to being the kind of person who was obsessed with signaling the right kinds of knowledge to the right kinds of people, and sometimes it feels like he's flexing references to theorists just because he can. i wanted more class analysis, i wanted political commitments, i wanted close reading (we see Mak do this in "Mean Boys" to great effect). Mak is eager to talk about all the people he's read, less so to discuss the substance of what they're saying. Mak is perhaps weakest when he begins to make grand philosophical statements about what it means to be human or the purpose of empathy - again, these statements sometimes feel untethered to substance. show, don't tell! let the reader connect the dots and form their own conclusions!
overall, a fascinating read about someone who occupied a world i will likely never be a part of (well, never say never) but have always been curious about.
where this collection fell short for me is in its analysis. Mak admits to being the kind of person who was obsessed with signaling the right kinds of knowledge to the right kinds of people, and sometimes it feels like he's flexing references to theorists just because he can. i wanted more class analysis, i wanted political commitments, i wanted close reading (we see Mak do this in "Mean Boys" to great effect). Mak is eager to talk about all the people he's read, less so to discuss the substance of what they're saying. Mak is perhaps weakest when he begins to make grand philosophical statements about what it means to be human or the purpose of empathy - again, these statements sometimes feel untethered to substance. show, don't tell! let the reader connect the dots and form their own conclusions!
overall, a fascinating read about someone who occupied a world i will likely never be a part of (well, never say never) but have always been curious about.
May 4, 2024
"Is the personal essay simply a work of solipsism?" Geoffrey Mak asks in the forward to this collection. In an age when social media and the digital world have commodified selfhood, turning our online personas into algorithmic cash-cows, Mak's reflection on the genre of the personal essay is also a critique of contemporary narcissism—instagram vanity, blogpost onanism, Twitter-trolling tirades. For Mak, the personal essay is nothing like these vapid forms of self-expression. It is something more noble and more useful, something in which the self is not curated for public consumption but for self-exposition and social critique. The essay is more than just some clickbait tell-all or think-piece column. Mak programmatically places his collection of essays in the American tradition of first-person writing—James Baldwin and Joan Didion. Geoffrey Mak's collection is a powerful work of cultural criticism, hitting all the touchstones of the 21st century. Interweaving discussions of fashion, literature and politics, these essays make broader insights into race, colorism, coming out, kink and sadism, the Great Financial Crisis, the Obama years, Kanye, the content industrial complex of modern media, neoliberal capitalism and consumerism, "a culture industry based entirely on a mode of psychosis". In this, as he explains in one essay, Mak takes inspiration from queer autotheorists, Wayne Koestenbaum and Trisha Low, combining academic theory with lyrical first-person memoir.
Like Joan Didion, Mak has a gift for turning conventional stories and sentiments upside-down. In "My Father, the Minister", Mak tells the story of his experiences as the closeted son of a conservative Chinese-American Evangelical pastor. As soon as he graduated school, he ran away to New York and severed contact with his father. In some ways, it is an all-too-familiar story of a gay child who has to repress his identity, to flee in order to feel safe, whether excommunicated or self-excommunicating. Mak recapitulates the traditional story of the gay kid who remakes himself in a new city. But things change when, years later, his father comes to him for forgiveness: it is a conflicted moment of redemption. His father has repudiated his homophobic views but he also cannot tell his church that his son is gay because that would compromise his standing in his congregation—and it is precisely this moral weakness that allows Mak to forgive him. Mak can forgive his father paradoxically only because of this cowardice, because his father does not have the courage to stand up for him, and because he can recognize that they both shy away from confrontation. His father isn't forgiven because he has turned 360 and become a PFLAG activist; his father is forgiven because he is released from those very moral obligations. It is not a heartwarming story like "Prayers for Bobby" but perhaps a more relatable one which captures the real logic of forgiveness, an act which more often requires empathy than recompense.
In a similar way, "Mean Boys" turns platitudes inside-out. The essay begins with Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian car-bomb terrorist. Breivik is an early example of what would come to be known as an "incel", the stereotypically resentful, misogynistic, involuntary celibate, feverishly posting online hate-speech, falling for far-right extremism as the panacea for all his personal grievances. Reviewing Breivik's online manifesto, Mak starts his analysis with a curious detail: his obsession with Lacoste polo shirts. This brings Mak to reflect on his and his brother's childhood fishing for those same popular brands which signified American privilege, hoping that an Urban Outfitter sweater or Harrington jacket would confer on them the status that they craved. It is the genesis of Mak's own early adulthood, a sweeping journey from LA to New York to Berlin to Milan, visiting invite-only techno clubs, mixing with international artists, pursuing a life of international glamor. While it might seem like an absurd juxtaposition, this leads Mak to come back to the mass-murder manifesto, reflecting on Elliot Rodger, the half-white, half-Asian killer who went on a rampage killing women and Asian men. In his manifesto, he recalled a childhood of ostracism and bullying, ridiculed for being half-Asian. Elliott Rodger blamed his virginity on his race. While Mak unambiguously condemns Rodger's violence and targeted killing, he feels a sense of empathy. Doesn't his own search for cosmopolitan aristocracy, to be photogenic, hyper-intellectual, worldly, stem from a similar pain of ostracism? For both of them, there is a deeply internalized shame about their Asian heritage (in the American social hierarchy, to be Chinese is to be "forgettable, replaceable, indistinguishable"). It is a sprawling essay that surprisingly but cogently links incel resentment, internalized racism, misogyny and queer haut-couture.
This is a compelling, rich collection of essays. I strongly recommend it.
Like Joan Didion, Mak has a gift for turning conventional stories and sentiments upside-down. In "My Father, the Minister", Mak tells the story of his experiences as the closeted son of a conservative Chinese-American Evangelical pastor. As soon as he graduated school, he ran away to New York and severed contact with his father. In some ways, it is an all-too-familiar story of a gay child who has to repress his identity, to flee in order to feel safe, whether excommunicated or self-excommunicating. Mak recapitulates the traditional story of the gay kid who remakes himself in a new city. But things change when, years later, his father comes to him for forgiveness: it is a conflicted moment of redemption. His father has repudiated his homophobic views but he also cannot tell his church that his son is gay because that would compromise his standing in his congregation—and it is precisely this moral weakness that allows Mak to forgive him. Mak can forgive his father paradoxically only because of this cowardice, because his father does not have the courage to stand up for him, and because he can recognize that they both shy away from confrontation. His father isn't forgiven because he has turned 360 and become a PFLAG activist; his father is forgiven because he is released from those very moral obligations. It is not a heartwarming story like "Prayers for Bobby" but perhaps a more relatable one which captures the real logic of forgiveness, an act which more often requires empathy than recompense.
In a similar way, "Mean Boys" turns platitudes inside-out. The essay begins with Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian car-bomb terrorist. Breivik is an early example of what would come to be known as an "incel", the stereotypically resentful, misogynistic, involuntary celibate, feverishly posting online hate-speech, falling for far-right extremism as the panacea for all his personal grievances. Reviewing Breivik's online manifesto, Mak starts his analysis with a curious detail: his obsession with Lacoste polo shirts. This brings Mak to reflect on his and his brother's childhood fishing for those same popular brands which signified American privilege, hoping that an Urban Outfitter sweater or Harrington jacket would confer on them the status that they craved. It is the genesis of Mak's own early adulthood, a sweeping journey from LA to New York to Berlin to Milan, visiting invite-only techno clubs, mixing with international artists, pursuing a life of international glamor. While it might seem like an absurd juxtaposition, this leads Mak to come back to the mass-murder manifesto, reflecting on Elliot Rodger, the half-white, half-Asian killer who went on a rampage killing women and Asian men. In his manifesto, he recalled a childhood of ostracism and bullying, ridiculed for being half-Asian. Elliott Rodger blamed his virginity on his race. While Mak unambiguously condemns Rodger's violence and targeted killing, he feels a sense of empathy. Doesn't his own search for cosmopolitan aristocracy, to be photogenic, hyper-intellectual, worldly, stem from a similar pain of ostracism? For both of them, there is a deeply internalized shame about their Asian heritage (in the American social hierarchy, to be Chinese is to be "forgettable, replaceable, indistinguishable"). It is a sprawling essay that surprisingly but cogently links incel resentment, internalized racism, misogyny and queer haut-couture.
This is a compelling, rich collection of essays. I strongly recommend it.
June 3, 2024
A grrreeeeaatttt title that makes you wanna read ALL about these MEAN BOYS, like yes, boys are mean aren't they... BUT there's only one essay that really sort of goes there, for the most part the book isn't really about mean boys. It's a good title though, so I'm not going to complain about how misleading it is.
What it really is, is actually strangely a great companion piece to Lauren Oyler's No Judgment—a series of personal essays about internet culture, vulnerability, being a journalist and doing personal writing, moving to Berlin (no really?? it's like they each got the same assignment). But idk unlike that one, I really enjoyed Mak's essays. All of them. They're introspective and self-examining but also well-researched and educational which is exactly what I like in personal essays. He also writes about topics I just personally happen to find interesting like sexuality and religion, fashion, and ofc mean boys.
I especially enjoyed the essays on the online menswear community and incels (two separate essays, the latter being the actual essay "Mean Boys"). I'd love to read a whole book on incels that is as nuanced as the essay tbh.
What it really is, is actually strangely a great companion piece to Lauren Oyler's No Judgment—a series of personal essays about internet culture, vulnerability, being a journalist and doing personal writing, moving to Berlin (no really?? it's like they each got the same assignment). But idk unlike that one, I really enjoyed Mak's essays. All of them. They're introspective and self-examining but also well-researched and educational which is exactly what I like in personal essays. He also writes about topics I just personally happen to find interesting like sexuality and religion, fashion, and ofc mean boys.
I especially enjoyed the essays on the online menswear community and incels (two separate essays, the latter being the actual essay "Mean Boys"). I'd love to read a whole book on incels that is as nuanced as the essay tbh.
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November 5, 2024I special ordered this book from the nearby queer bookstore (yes I’m a card-carrying, dues paying GAY guy) after hearing about it on a podcast. I hoped that I would be an early endorser of a book that would call out the problems with the 2024 gay community and change everything! Certainly not…
As a Gen Z gay guy with an interest in techno, gay club culture, art, dissociation, etc. I could not have been a more primed audience and STILL Mak fell short of inviting me into his world. He’s clearly lived an interesting life, but seems much more interested in telling me how glamorous it was than actually helping me understand it or distilling a virtue or judgement on whether these worlds are worth the attention they get. He’s got stories to tell - I wish I heard more about his thoughts on why gay culture is the way it is and the lessons learned from going insane and coming back from the brink and less about random art people he met and why people thought they were cool.
He says he believes that art is inherently social, and that art made with integrity will stand the test of time, what to say about the art that is this book? He experienced rejection from the art world but instead of questioning its value he leaves out just enough detail or explanation of his references and name drops so that the reader feels like they’re on the outside. If most of these started as Facebook posts for friends, I almost wish they stayed that way, since I don’t see what purpose they serve people outside his circle other than for him to say he wrote a book. Is that too harsh? Trying my hand at writing a serious review and trying not to make it about the author… but I am disappointed with this one!
PS. Finishing it on Election Day, hearing him write in the past tense about the ‘Trump years’ feels deeply foreboding. Fingers crossed!
2024
October 7, 2025Memoir March TBR
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing
📱 Thank you to NetGalley and Bloomsbury Publishing
January 21, 2025
I almost cry in the bus, finishing this book (ok, I did)
Geoffrey Mak give some personal (personal personal !!!) essays and I was so scared of it. Like who is he and how am I supposed to relate ? But he talk about universal topics like breaking up with your family values, sexuality, drugs and alcohol abuse (trigger warning, babes), fashion, race, social classes and more!
I related so bad, wondering if this was my own personal journal. He wrote in a way that is so intimate and so vulnerable that it became impossible to not feel connected to him. Or at least, I did cause our experience in life was similar at some point.
I am sad this book is done, but can't wait to see what's next for him.
Geoffrey Mak give some personal (personal personal !!!) essays and I was so scared of it. Like who is he and how am I supposed to relate ? But he talk about universal topics like breaking up with your family values, sexuality, drugs and alcohol abuse (trigger warning, babes), fashion, race, social classes and more!
I related so bad, wondering if this was my own personal journal. He wrote in a way that is so intimate and so vulnerable that it became impossible to not feel connected to him. Or at least, I did cause our experience in life was similar at some point.
I am sad this book is done, but can't wait to see what's next for him.
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June 9, 2024Mind-blowing.
Definitely buying a copy so I can re-read.
Definitely buying a copy so I can re-read.
May 11, 2025
It’s queer discourse. It’s desirability politics. It’s misogynist. It’s racist. It’s catty. It’s concrete. It’s concept. It’s calamity. it’s capitalism. It’s privilege. It’s toxic. It’s current.
September 24, 2024
‘what i read in the bible and what i saw in cruising bars were never all that different, but this is who i worshipped now: gods in all those saunas and sex clubs who had fallen short of the glory, moaning, groping each other, pissing on my head as i knelt down in the bathroom, opened by mouth, ready to be born again.’
and:
‘to go insane is to burn up against the edges of ones own mind, where thinking ends and grace begins.’
and:
‘to go insane is to burn up against the edges of ones own mind, where thinking ends and grace begins.’
July 29, 2025
boooo. grandstanding and pseudo-self-aware.
idk its engaging on the sentence level but i just kept thinking 'why am i reading the memoir of someone who, as far as i can tell, hasn't ever really done anything except for party and claw after status?' there is obviously nothing wrong with partying, but consumption isn't art. he didn't have anything super insightful to say about art either (weird-- he is an art critic). it was just the diary of a familiar and desperate someone who believes that proximity to intrigue and power make one intriguing and powerful, and so they spend their life chasing it from bushwick to berlin (cliché cliché cliché).
he also says things that are just kind of dumb and wrong: 'after all, shame is ridiculous. Only conceited people feel shame: It's performative and masturbatory.'
are you kidding me?
not sure how many times can someone say 'aesthetic' before it loses any meaning whatsoever.
he does shit like writing 'characterological defect’ and meaning the exact same thing as 'character defect.'
the name dropping reminds me of the endless 'catalogue of ships' from homer's iliad where they list the names of ships for about 300 lines; i skipped that passage when translating it and i skipped the volumes of names in this book.
idk its engaging on the sentence level but i just kept thinking 'why am i reading the memoir of someone who, as far as i can tell, hasn't ever really done anything except for party and claw after status?' there is obviously nothing wrong with partying, but consumption isn't art. he didn't have anything super insightful to say about art either (weird-- he is an art critic). it was just the diary of a familiar and desperate someone who believes that proximity to intrigue and power make one intriguing and powerful, and so they spend their life chasing it from bushwick to berlin (cliché cliché cliché).
he also says things that are just kind of dumb and wrong: 'after all, shame is ridiculous. Only conceited people feel shame: It's performative and masturbatory.'
are you kidding me?
not sure how many times can someone say 'aesthetic' before it loses any meaning whatsoever.
he does shit like writing 'characterological defect’ and meaning the exact same thing as 'character defect.'
the name dropping reminds me of the endless 'catalogue of ships' from homer's iliad where they list the names of ships for about 300 lines; i skipped that passage when translating it and i skipped the volumes of names in this book.
March 11, 2025
There were parts of this book that I really liked. I liked the stories about his family, especially his father. I liked the stories of Germany. I've never been but having just finished I Make Envy On Your Disco which features a fun Berlin storyline, I'm jealous of anyone who has. Sex and drug stories kept my interest but I didn't care for the crowd that Geoffrey ran with and parts of the book just lagged (for me, maybe not for you). I give it 3.5 stars.
May 11, 2024
this was very good! i think it was at its best, most electric, where more personal and particular and immediate—the higher theory felt a little, idk, squeezed in, or beside the point.
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May 24, 2024Geoff is my friend and I got to workshop one of these essays in grad school so <3
July 5, 2024
What a painstaking yet effortlessly beautiful treatise on art, belonging, gender, humanity, struggle, and culture. 4.5 stars—I loved the way Mak unravels complex ideas, but certainly needed to chew on bits of it. And the parts about clubbing/techno, while necessary to the narrative, were not for me.
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March 6, 2025I really liked the concept but, despite the books name or maybe because of it, this read like it was written by the most pretentious gay boy from college lit class
June 15, 2024
This memoir of essays is so well-written that I know I need to revisit it to fully appreciate its depth. On my first read, I found my favorite essay was definitely the last one, which shares the book's title. There were so many insights and reflections in that final essay that really resonated with me.
Overall, I thought the memoir’s approach was unique. I enjoyed the author's exploration of the art and Berlin night scenes, as well as his comparisons and deep dives into assimilation. This led to a fascinating deconstruction of his identity, evolving into an intriguing dialogue and even merging of other and self.
Mak, a Chinese American queer author, weaves aspects of his identity throughout the memoir in various ways. It's a memoir worth checking out for its rich narrative and thought-provoking themes.
Overall, I thought the memoir’s approach was unique. I enjoyed the author's exploration of the art and Berlin night scenes, as well as his comparisons and deep dives into assimilation. This led to a fascinating deconstruction of his identity, evolving into an intriguing dialogue and even merging of other and self.
Mak, a Chinese American queer author, weaves aspects of his identity throughout the memoir in various ways. It's a memoir worth checking out for its rich narrative and thought-provoking themes.
October 16, 2025
So I actually tend to really hate when people attempt to intellectualize the scene and try to make more out of “degeneracy and hedonism”. However, Geoffrey Mak’s stories of partying in Berlin and raw vulnerability in the latter half really changed my mind on how I see things. Throughout my reading, I kept pausing and looking up the artists he would name drop. I think Geoffrey Mak partially changed my outlook on how I see the scene for the better :)
July 24, 2024
The kinda book you put down and go damn 😅😮💨😔🙂
January 5, 2025
Mak writes with brutally won perspicacity. These essays are a tough read because they show humans in an extremely raw state, and Mak never recuses himself from those states. He has a remarkable perception of his racing thoughts and Lucy Pevensian, paranoid musings about what others think about him and what they think he is thinking about them. He dumps philosophical jargon, but infuses it into his syntax with ease and grace, and you don't really need to truly know the "real" meaning to understand the global place those terms and expressions hold in their narratives. He explores a lot of extremely difficult, one could argue obdurately, "hallmarkedly" salacious topics without making any definitive claims beyond the humility of the most storied journalists: we don't really know, and it is arrogance to pompously assume there is a derivable, marketable moral from the morass of human strivings.
I can't really describe his conclusions as aloof, because they certainly are not and come with an arsenal of lived-in, messily human experience, but I sometimes struggled to coalesce the feelings I had reading the essays. I was clearly reading articulate, unflinching prose, but some part of me had trouble accepting the broad societal sweepings that color the "propulsion" of Mak patiently laying out his theses? I honestly couldn't tell you exactly what it is I am hesitant about, but that is to say, I devoured this collection in one day, and I felt grateful that another Asian-American, raised-Christian writer was thinking about a lot of the same difficult, miasmic thoughts I have periodically stumbled upon. I don't think we think or feel the same at all and therefore I am grateful to have read so deeply into another's experience. Not that I need to boil all writings into identity-bastions, but it's nice to read about the unique paranoia of recognizing, but perhaps not being able to fully live the easy stereotypes and genres we like to fling around like monkey shit in modern, viewable society.
Definitely worth a read, it's pretty brutal though so prepare yourself with... emotional safety. A difficult, illuminating text that friends could work through together! Over hot oolong tea in a gong fu set!
I can't really describe his conclusions as aloof, because they certainly are not and come with an arsenal of lived-in, messily human experience, but I sometimes struggled to coalesce the feelings I had reading the essays. I was clearly reading articulate, unflinching prose, but some part of me had trouble accepting the broad societal sweepings that color the "propulsion" of Mak patiently laying out his theses? I honestly couldn't tell you exactly what it is I am hesitant about, but that is to say, I devoured this collection in one day, and I felt grateful that another Asian-American, raised-Christian writer was thinking about a lot of the same difficult, miasmic thoughts I have periodically stumbled upon. I don't think we think or feel the same at all and therefore I am grateful to have read so deeply into another's experience. Not that I need to boil all writings into identity-bastions, but it's nice to read about the unique paranoia of recognizing, but perhaps not being able to fully live the easy stereotypes and genres we like to fling around like monkey shit in modern, viewable society.
Definitely worth a read, it's pretty brutal though so prepare yourself with... emotional safety. A difficult, illuminating text that friends could work through together! Over hot oolong tea in a gong fu set!
September 11, 2024
These essays confused and excited me. It was fascinating to read about the art worlds of New York and Berlin, media culture of the 2010s, and of course the church that is Berghain. Mak’s perspective felt refreshingly honest and new. My favorites were “My Father, the Minister” and “Mean Boys.” His take on empathy as the only way forward for us took me by surprise and at the same time, seemed obviously evident as the call to action for our times of radicalization and isolation. I’ll be interested in returning to this book in a few years to see how much of these essays captured the current culture and how much still rings true.
Standout quote:
Only in literature, nor politics, can empathy truly be this reckless, this promiscuous, Anyone's experience is up for grabs; no subjectivity is off-limits. In literature, one opens oneself up to this absolute unconditionality, widespread arms welcoming the range and totality of experience, the good and the evil, with an ambivalence so extreme as to appear like moral anarchy. All suffering is opportunity for use in literature's disinterested quest to capture the range of life in its fullness; to survey the sacred and the profane, and declare, with impiety, that all is human. All is human: in awareness of love.
Standout quote:
Only in literature, nor politics, can empathy truly be this reckless, this promiscuous, Anyone's experience is up for grabs; no subjectivity is off-limits. In literature, one opens oneself up to this absolute unconditionality, widespread arms welcoming the range and totality of experience, the good and the evil, with an ambivalence so extreme as to appear like moral anarchy. All suffering is opportunity for use in literature's disinterested quest to capture the range of life in its fullness; to survey the sacred and the profane, and declare, with impiety, that all is human. All is human: in awareness of love.
September 1, 2024
What did I want? Free sex, loads of it, and parties and parties and parties. "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom," writes William Blake, yet I was still looking for that palace. I aligned the political queer project with a narcissistic consumerism by trying to have all the sex I could get and being public about it, because I was Out! and Proud! and after years of repression, wasn't sex and more sex the whole point of gay liberation? I hadn't thought this one through.
Wounded, I was too hurt and bitter to make any of the sacrifices demanded by love. I didn't know how to love. I kept any potential lover at bay. I never put anything on the line. I had foreclosed the love of my parents, and then found myself unable to love anyone else. The only kind of love I knew was disappearing into my own unfulfilled and exasperating desires, nursing my grievances on my own, suffocated by my needs, my unsettled scores.
What the absence of God revealed in my life were the habits and structures I'd built around him, which would stay where they were once God was removed, like wax melted from the inside of a sculptural mold. I still suffered from all my Christian vices: melancholia, cowardice, zeal for argumentation, a capricious generosity, a habit of hovering just outside of accessibility, paranoia, inflexible conviction, a kink for self-sacrifice, narcissistic self-effacement, corrosive self-doubt, obsequious submission.
The world tells so many rumors about identity to convince us to dispossess it: that we can love only those who share some aspect of our identity, that our identity is visible only under the lights of violence and persecution, or that if we are assigned more than one—Asian and queer—we have to choose which one to emphasize.
Except I didn't really hate myself, I was just tired. Tired of talking to people who had gone through worse (which made me feel like I was overreacting) or to people who did not understand the gravity of what did happen to me (which made me feel like I was overreacting) or to people who suggested I was overreacting.
. . . in trauma all thoughts are ad hoc . . .
There isn't a "point" to this, at least not any more than there is ever a point to life. Your existence justifies itself; you don't need a reason. That's the thing: You never need a reason.
At twenty-five, all I wanted were "new experiences," which can feel like purpose to a twenty-five-year-old.
What the club had for me, a skinny Chinese kid from the suburbs, were rules I still live by. Freedom is in discretion, and discretion is in good taste. You can communicate only with someone who wants to communicate with you. When you see something, don't assume you understand what's going on. Stay loyal to your tribe. Everyone is on their own journey, unless they're in trouble—then you intervene. If you can: Solve every problem yourself before calling for help. These were pragmatic before they were ethical and served as a fairly useful guideline, I would learn, to navigating Berlin at large. Especially the last and most important rule: Know when it's time to leave the party.
When did things go bad? Like all fantasy narratives, there's another story—such as clandestine agents working behind the scenes—on whose effacement the fantasy necessarily depends.
In the kingdom of Instagram, there is no caste: Everything is smushed into content, and everyone gets to decide what they like.
While the optics of Instagram are coded as autofictional, it isn't our generation's hunger for authenticity that fuels the demand for influencers (we know they are a simulation) so much as a collective thirst for the visual representation of leisure at a moment when neoliberal capitalism has made of everyone a total entrepreneur of the self. Today professional influencers are a visualization of the myth that even vacation can be monetized. There is no "free time" outside of capital.
Addicts are people for whom love comes easily. We ooze desire, barely able to conceal our battle against our forbidden drives.
Everyone knows that the key to enjoying life is to be on nodding terms with tedium, but it took me a long time to figure that out. After psychosis and after addiction, I knew that whether I would recover came down to a single test: Could I again find grace in the ordinary? Would I find something in dailiness that was sacred, instead of trying to flee from it with drugs or conspiratorial delusions?
I am someone who might benefit from avoiding extremes, lest I, by rubbing too hard to remove the rust, break the vessel.
. . . my mind's eye had zoomed outward and glimpsed one of the great social truths about status that everyone knows, but needs to witness for themselves to truly understand: that the mighty rise and fall, and vultures will come for the picking. I'm describing a compulsory ritual, whose existence it seems paramount that people in the game not remark upon, by which I mean the game itself, and all the punishing intricacies with which it regulates its elusive but brute decrees of status.
Unlike class and identity—which can be associated with material substance—status, one's social rank, is entirely relational. It can be based on lifestyle, education, social capital, and even sexual capital. Status is extroverted, ephemeral, speculative, gossipy, competitive, mercurial. It is a way to get what we want, and is also what we want. Status can be signaled by a price tag, but isn't fixed to one. Its affinities can appear to be random, but they are fiercely defended once attained. Its totems, always arbitrarily assigned, are subject to change. Status isn't stable, it's always in flux: You're either accruing or depleting; there's no equilibrium. You can have it one day and lose it the next. You can lack the privileges of class or identity but still have status, as I and many people in the art world did.
But the self is a transparent vase; though its edges are hard, you can see through them. It is possible to look beyond one's self into another's, even if it is only a projection. Empathy is both an extension of solipsism and a way out of solipsism. Pain makes this happen.
When I was young, I was convinced I was ugly. Once I outgrew my youth, I discovered I could hide my ugliness by designing my own allure, yet I felt the need to hold on to my adolescent irritants and tics that, in each new relationship, would sting the people I cared most about: a test to see if people, hurt, would still return to me.
Wounded, I was too hurt and bitter to make any of the sacrifices demanded by love. I didn't know how to love. I kept any potential lover at bay. I never put anything on the line. I had foreclosed the love of my parents, and then found myself unable to love anyone else. The only kind of love I knew was disappearing into my own unfulfilled and exasperating desires, nursing my grievances on my own, suffocated by my needs, my unsettled scores.
What the absence of God revealed in my life were the habits and structures I'd built around him, which would stay where they were once God was removed, like wax melted from the inside of a sculptural mold. I still suffered from all my Christian vices: melancholia, cowardice, zeal for argumentation, a capricious generosity, a habit of hovering just outside of accessibility, paranoia, inflexible conviction, a kink for self-sacrifice, narcissistic self-effacement, corrosive self-doubt, obsequious submission.
The world tells so many rumors about identity to convince us to dispossess it: that we can love only those who share some aspect of our identity, that our identity is visible only under the lights of violence and persecution, or that if we are assigned more than one—Asian and queer—we have to choose which one to emphasize.
Except I didn't really hate myself, I was just tired. Tired of talking to people who had gone through worse (which made me feel like I was overreacting) or to people who did not understand the gravity of what did happen to me (which made me feel like I was overreacting) or to people who suggested I was overreacting.
. . . in trauma all thoughts are ad hoc . . .
There isn't a "point" to this, at least not any more than there is ever a point to life. Your existence justifies itself; you don't need a reason. That's the thing: You never need a reason.
At twenty-five, all I wanted were "new experiences," which can feel like purpose to a twenty-five-year-old.
What the club had for me, a skinny Chinese kid from the suburbs, were rules I still live by. Freedom is in discretion, and discretion is in good taste. You can communicate only with someone who wants to communicate with you. When you see something, don't assume you understand what's going on. Stay loyal to your tribe. Everyone is on their own journey, unless they're in trouble—then you intervene. If you can: Solve every problem yourself before calling for help. These were pragmatic before they were ethical and served as a fairly useful guideline, I would learn, to navigating Berlin at large. Especially the last and most important rule: Know when it's time to leave the party.
When did things go bad? Like all fantasy narratives, there's another story—such as clandestine agents working behind the scenes—on whose effacement the fantasy necessarily depends.
In the kingdom of Instagram, there is no caste: Everything is smushed into content, and everyone gets to decide what they like.
While the optics of Instagram are coded as autofictional, it isn't our generation's hunger for authenticity that fuels the demand for influencers (we know they are a simulation) so much as a collective thirst for the visual representation of leisure at a moment when neoliberal capitalism has made of everyone a total entrepreneur of the self. Today professional influencers are a visualization of the myth that even vacation can be monetized. There is no "free time" outside of capital.
Addicts are people for whom love comes easily. We ooze desire, barely able to conceal our battle against our forbidden drives.
Everyone knows that the key to enjoying life is to be on nodding terms with tedium, but it took me a long time to figure that out. After psychosis and after addiction, I knew that whether I would recover came down to a single test: Could I again find grace in the ordinary? Would I find something in dailiness that was sacred, instead of trying to flee from it with drugs or conspiratorial delusions?
I am someone who might benefit from avoiding extremes, lest I, by rubbing too hard to remove the rust, break the vessel.
. . . my mind's eye had zoomed outward and glimpsed one of the great social truths about status that everyone knows, but needs to witness for themselves to truly understand: that the mighty rise and fall, and vultures will come for the picking. I'm describing a compulsory ritual, whose existence it seems paramount that people in the game not remark upon, by which I mean the game itself, and all the punishing intricacies with which it regulates its elusive but brute decrees of status.
Unlike class and identity—which can be associated with material substance—status, one's social rank, is entirely relational. It can be based on lifestyle, education, social capital, and even sexual capital. Status is extroverted, ephemeral, speculative, gossipy, competitive, mercurial. It is a way to get what we want, and is also what we want. Status can be signaled by a price tag, but isn't fixed to one. Its affinities can appear to be random, but they are fiercely defended once attained. Its totems, always arbitrarily assigned, are subject to change. Status isn't stable, it's always in flux: You're either accruing or depleting; there's no equilibrium. You can have it one day and lose it the next. You can lack the privileges of class or identity but still have status, as I and many people in the art world did.
But the self is a transparent vase; though its edges are hard, you can see through them. It is possible to look beyond one's self into another's, even if it is only a projection. Empathy is both an extension of solipsism and a way out of solipsism. Pain makes this happen.
When I was young, I was convinced I was ugly. Once I outgrew my youth, I discovered I could hide my ugliness by designing my own allure, yet I felt the need to hold on to my adolescent irritants and tics that, in each new relationship, would sting the people I cared most about: a test to see if people, hurt, would still return to me.
August 23, 2024
I was having a good time reading this book until the last essay, in which he pulls the one-two punch of romanticizing the Isla Vista shooter and telling his friend with depression that it’s ok if he kills himself. What the fuck man. The whole time I was sitting there thinking “he would not be writing this if he were a woman and I also guarantee that thought has also never crossed his mind.” There’s also a reliance here on other people’s writing that carefully disguises the fact that in several instances in this book he really doesn’t have anything new to say. Ugh. There’s a few scattered gems here, and he writes very well about faith, identity, and his own experience, but when it comes to cultural criticism he spends so much time trying to synthesize other people’s thoughts that you can’t understand if he’s actually introducing anything original.
May 13, 2024
This is not what I expected. From the inside cover blurb: "You know them when you see them: Mean boys take up space, wielding cruelty to claim their place in the pecking order. some mean boys make art or music or fashion; others make memes. mean boys stomp the runways in Milan and Paris; mean boys marched at Charlottesville. And in the eyes of critic and style expert Geoffrey Mak, mean boys are the emblem of our society; an era ravenous for novelty, always thirsting for the next edgy thing, even at our peril."
The book is well-written, personal, and offers insights to race, sexuality, faith, and identity. This book also lacks a clear purpose. It's a memoir, but also political; it's about Christianity, but also ketamine. Read it for the writing without any expectations.
The book is well-written, personal, and offers insights to race, sexuality, faith, and identity. This book also lacks a clear purpose. It's a memoir, but also political; it's about Christianity, but also ketamine. Read it for the writing without any expectations.
July 27, 2024
More like a 2.5. Imagine this as a CD where the artist has one hit single and it's the first song. But you gotta make an album.
Mak has easy to read influences from the journalistic mode that proves he's done his homework. But he has surprisingly little to say. It's images all the way down.
Mak has easy to read influences from the journalistic mode that proves he's done his homework. But he has surprisingly little to say. It's images all the way down.
Read
July 10, 2024Kind of just fucking unbelievable. I don't have a full review because shortly after, I sent the author 1,000 words on what I thought over email.
Literature!
Literature!
June 27, 2025
A spicy personal memoir that runs the gauntlet of extremes: from childhood bullying to rubbing elbows at prestigious international art exhibitions, from strict religious upbringing to frequenting sex dungeons in Germany, from conspiratorial rabbit holes and mental breakdown to restoring faith in religion, self, and familial bonds, Geoffrey Mak takes a deeply reflective journey to expose his own trauma and triumphs as well as social and political reflections on how negative human behavior reflects back society's overall conditioning and tolerance for misinformation and indifference.
As a queer Chinese American raised by an immigrant family fully indoctrinated into evangelicalism, his unique perspective touches on discrimination within the church and handling his internal desires in spite of the pressures of the faith community in reckoning with homosexuality. His focus takes him away from his home in California to the New York art scene, becoming a writer and art critic which pivots to career aspirations and passions centering around fashion, modern art, and literature that take him to an extended residency in Berlin.
The content takes a roller coaster of turns and swings, often losing me in an array of references and personalities that I am personally unfamiliar with that appear to be "in the know" for elitist or upper crust niche circles. However, as an outsider, I enjoyed the rough tumble of his experiences through the fashion world, hardcore rave-scenes, creative artist and art critic lifestyles, sexual exploits in seedy clubs in both NY and Berlin, and learning about how being well-connected in the right crowds can become a propelling necessity for many learning to make their own way in such exclusive communities. There is also triggering and difficult content including sexual assault, moderately graphic sexual content, suicidal ideation, and his deeply personal experience with a psychotic mental breakdown.
From a social analyst chair, Mak reflects on today's public influencers and how that direction of the market has affected the high-end fashion houses and runways, the negative perceptions and misogyny rampant enough to fuel male emasculation (especially for Asian men), and a hard look at Incel messaging with a take on the root causes of its rise and perceptions as an outcast from mainstream cultures.
Although a bit erratic and dizzying at times, this memoir is a wonderful read for LGBTQAI+ nonfiction literature (especially related to Christianity), art/fashion aficionados, relatable millennial struggles of independence, and finding the ways our own systems, circumstances, and tribes can both fail us and save us through the right channels. I will be interested to see how Mak's career develops from here and where the next winds take them, as well as the positive influence left by sharing such an often troubled but ultimately adaptable story of redemption in a world set up to give preference to the Mean Boys in our lives.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Favorite Quotes:
"If politics is downstream from culture, then here was the culture: narcissistic, cultish, choosing an obsession with petty optics over coherent thinking, and eternally paranoid about minor distinctions up and down the caste system of social status."
"Both as a writer and as a person, I wanted to preserve, in the absolute, the right to change at a moment's whim and not have to notify anyone. Because more than prestige, I wanted freedom, even if it meant incomprehensibility (to others, to myself)."
"Both race and queerness, coagulating with the erotic, can shift, secreting meaning and joy in surplus of the conditions of their own social constructions. Perhaps race or queerness only harden into an identity, "a static category," when presented under the floodlights of the white, patriarchal regime."
"The self can love multitudes because it contains multitudes. Both can be infinite - the number of selves one can love and the number of selves one contains. There exists a tautological harmony between the self and the collective. Neither the individual nor the collective is more complex. The individual is a synecdoche of the collective. They are symmetries of each other.
Both individuals and collectives desire, and they are bound when they can desire together."
"To go insane is to burn up against the edges of one's own mind, where thinking ends and grace begins."
"One can only survive the pull of social tides by guarding and maintaining an inner grace - a swimmer's grace, which is a matter of form and endurance, perfected over a lifetime, because otherwise, if your rhythm slips, or you pause and stop swimming, you'll drown."
As a queer Chinese American raised by an immigrant family fully indoctrinated into evangelicalism, his unique perspective touches on discrimination within the church and handling his internal desires in spite of the pressures of the faith community in reckoning with homosexuality. His focus takes him away from his home in California to the New York art scene, becoming a writer and art critic which pivots to career aspirations and passions centering around fashion, modern art, and literature that take him to an extended residency in Berlin.
The content takes a roller coaster of turns and swings, often losing me in an array of references and personalities that I am personally unfamiliar with that appear to be "in the know" for elitist or upper crust niche circles. However, as an outsider, I enjoyed the rough tumble of his experiences through the fashion world, hardcore rave-scenes, creative artist and art critic lifestyles, sexual exploits in seedy clubs in both NY and Berlin, and learning about how being well-connected in the right crowds can become a propelling necessity for many learning to make their own way in such exclusive communities. There is also triggering and difficult content including sexual assault, moderately graphic sexual content, suicidal ideation, and his deeply personal experience with a psychotic mental breakdown.
From a social analyst chair, Mak reflects on today's public influencers and how that direction of the market has affected the high-end fashion houses and runways, the negative perceptions and misogyny rampant enough to fuel male emasculation (especially for Asian men), and a hard look at Incel messaging with a take on the root causes of its rise and perceptions as an outcast from mainstream cultures.
Although a bit erratic and dizzying at times, this memoir is a wonderful read for LGBTQAI+ nonfiction literature (especially related to Christianity), art/fashion aficionados, relatable millennial struggles of independence, and finding the ways our own systems, circumstances, and tribes can both fail us and save us through the right channels. I will be interested to see how Mak's career develops from here and where the next winds take them, as well as the positive influence left by sharing such an often troubled but ultimately adaptable story of redemption in a world set up to give preference to the Mean Boys in our lives.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Favorite Quotes:
"If politics is downstream from culture, then here was the culture: narcissistic, cultish, choosing an obsession with petty optics over coherent thinking, and eternally paranoid about minor distinctions up and down the caste system of social status."
"Both as a writer and as a person, I wanted to preserve, in the absolute, the right to change at a moment's whim and not have to notify anyone. Because more than prestige, I wanted freedom, even if it meant incomprehensibility (to others, to myself)."
"Both race and queerness, coagulating with the erotic, can shift, secreting meaning and joy in surplus of the conditions of their own social constructions. Perhaps race or queerness only harden into an identity, "a static category," when presented under the floodlights of the white, patriarchal regime."
"The self can love multitudes because it contains multitudes. Both can be infinite - the number of selves one can love and the number of selves one contains. There exists a tautological harmony between the self and the collective. Neither the individual nor the collective is more complex. The individual is a synecdoche of the collective. They are symmetries of each other.
Both individuals and collectives desire, and they are bound when they can desire together."
"To go insane is to burn up against the edges of one's own mind, where thinking ends and grace begins."
"One can only survive the pull of social tides by guarding and maintaining an inner grace - a swimmer's grace, which is a matter of form and endurance, perfected over a lifetime, because otherwise, if your rhythm slips, or you pause and stop swimming, you'll drown."
October 2, 2024
I read this book upon a friend’s recommendation. Knowing that the author is not a white gay man gave me sort of hope that this book would offer life stories and perspectives that are intersectional and layered and that are far from the banality of ever-popping ‘gay’ memoirs. Unfortunately, it was not, and this became clear after reading a few chapters. Yet, I continued to read, hoping that I will read some ‘good’ stuff.
First a few chapters are kinda interesting, touching on various issues, bringing in some intellectual cultural commentary on some social, political issues or issues relating to fashion, trends, consumerism etc. It feels fresh at the beginning but the more you read the more it feels like these are random points and commentaries where the author cites or quotes some philosophers, thinkers etc to support or explain his points. However, those citations or quotes don’t help because ideas remain jumbled together, unexplored and at surface level. Still, this does not stop the author from making overgeneralized claims.
Following chapters delving into his personal life offer the reader neither a race or intersectional analysis although the race, as the author indicates over and over, sits at the heart of his identity problem or not being desired by gays.
As I described the main themes of the book to a friend: I am gay, my father did not like me, and I did cocaine.
Maybe the author is trying to show us that even though he goes to luxurious parties, lives in metropolitan cities like Berlin, and hangs out with well-off people, it is not what it seems. It is lonely.
What is new? —unfortunately nothing!—
It sounds like capitalizing on and selling self-pity while remaining tone deaf rather than blatant. (Pop/main culture is full of this sort of what I call ‘Gwyneth Paltrow” stories.)
And comes the last chapter of the book where the author draws parallels between a murderer and himself for pages. He tries to explore racial dynamics and white supremacy; however, as it happens throughout the book, ideas remain at the surface level, without thorough analysis and deep thinking. He attempts to make a point but fails.
Regarding the edits, chapters and paragraphs are cumbersome, unorganized, lack consistency or a clear point within. Often it feels like they were not read by someone or twice.
First a few chapters are kinda interesting, touching on various issues, bringing in some intellectual cultural commentary on some social, political issues or issues relating to fashion, trends, consumerism etc. It feels fresh at the beginning but the more you read the more it feels like these are random points and commentaries where the author cites or quotes some philosophers, thinkers etc to support or explain his points. However, those citations or quotes don’t help because ideas remain jumbled together, unexplored and at surface level. Still, this does not stop the author from making overgeneralized claims.
Following chapters delving into his personal life offer the reader neither a race or intersectional analysis although the race, as the author indicates over and over, sits at the heart of his identity problem or not being desired by gays.
As I described the main themes of the book to a friend: I am gay, my father did not like me, and I did cocaine.
Maybe the author is trying to show us that even though he goes to luxurious parties, lives in metropolitan cities like Berlin, and hangs out with well-off people, it is not what it seems. It is lonely.
What is new? —unfortunately nothing!—
It sounds like capitalizing on and selling self-pity while remaining tone deaf rather than blatant. (Pop/main culture is full of this sort of what I call ‘Gwyneth Paltrow” stories.)
And comes the last chapter of the book where the author draws parallels between a murderer and himself for pages. He tries to explore racial dynamics and white supremacy; however, as it happens throughout the book, ideas remain at the surface level, without thorough analysis and deep thinking. He attempts to make a point but fails.
Regarding the edits, chapters and paragraphs are cumbersome, unorganized, lack consistency or a clear point within. Often it feels like they were not read by someone or twice.
June 10, 2025
I initially picked up Mean Boys by Geoffrey Mak because I had read Jeremy Atherton Lin's incisive and wonderful Gay Bar - Why We Went Out, and this was recommended by the algorithm. Let’s just say the algorithm can recommend, but I promise you, it hasn’t read what it is recommending. Let me start by saying the title is misleading - only the back third actually discusses "mean boys," and I had anticipated a collection focused solely on these archetypes. That's not what this book delivers.
The incessant name-dropping throughout the book was particularly grating. I found myself lost in a sea of references to people I've never heard of (honestly, 99% of them were complete unknowns to me and I’m proud to say they will probably remain that way). The constant need to establish cultural credentials through association became tedious quickly.
However, credit where it's due: Mak demonstrates remarkable vulnerability in sharing his personal history. Like many gay men, his observations are razor-sharp and witty - it's practically a cultural birthright at this point. His ability to dissect experiences and present them with clarity is commendable.
That said, I take serious issue with the book's treatment of drug use. While I understand it's part of his personal narrative, I cannot condone what sometimes reads like a glorification of excessive drug use. Perhaps I'm being prudish (call me a nun), but I'm uncomfortable with how these experiences are presented, regardless of whether they were lived specifically to become subject matter for the book. The normalization of such behavior sits uneasily with me.
I always think talking about one’s coming out story and familiar struggle deserves recognition. In “My Father, the Minister,” the book's most poignant essay, his father comes for a visit in New York and appears ready to turn away from his homophobic beliefs. This tender essay - although nothing-at-all like my experience - I found deeply moving and personal.
I can’t say I’d recommend this one. While Mak's vulnerability and observational skills shine through, I had so many issues with the book that it is a mixed bag at best.
The incessant name-dropping throughout the book was particularly grating. I found myself lost in a sea of references to people I've never heard of (honestly, 99% of them were complete unknowns to me and I’m proud to say they will probably remain that way). The constant need to establish cultural credentials through association became tedious quickly.
However, credit where it's due: Mak demonstrates remarkable vulnerability in sharing his personal history. Like many gay men, his observations are razor-sharp and witty - it's practically a cultural birthright at this point. His ability to dissect experiences and present them with clarity is commendable.
That said, I take serious issue with the book's treatment of drug use. While I understand it's part of his personal narrative, I cannot condone what sometimes reads like a glorification of excessive drug use. Perhaps I'm being prudish (call me a nun), but I'm uncomfortable with how these experiences are presented, regardless of whether they were lived specifically to become subject matter for the book. The normalization of such behavior sits uneasily with me.
I always think talking about one’s coming out story and familiar struggle deserves recognition. In “My Father, the Minister,” the book's most poignant essay, his father comes for a visit in New York and appears ready to turn away from his homophobic beliefs. This tender essay - although nothing-at-all like my experience - I found deeply moving and personal.
I can’t say I’d recommend this one. While Mak's vulnerability and observational skills shine through, I had so many issues with the book that it is a mixed bag at best.
August 23, 2024
TW: drug use and sexual content.
A dense and wild collection of essays covering incels, the Berlin art scene, religious and sexual trauma, paranoia and psychosis; on top of *every* sexual kink you can think of.
The author excels at description of scenes and experiences , his ability to lead the reader easily from one theme / point to another, without losing focus or flow, visceral and at times uncompromising, With a lot of bravery in how he deals with these topics (the social games of the art scene, writing on asian incels as a gay asian writer, linking incel culture and their sense of isolation to his own search of status and self made aristocracy, connecting sexual and religious trauma, complex homosocial relationships between mentors and mentees, queer men, and other dynamics).
What makes these essays so great is how dense, unflinching and well thought they are. At multiple times I said “wow” at what i was reading.
The references to artists can feel a bit too name-droppy at times.
I appreciate how the writer clearly takes the essay form very seriously.
While the essays themselves have no link to each other nor do they provide problem solving solutions or analyses to questions presented in the essays ; They do share the same conculsion : sometimes grace and empathy is the only action available, and it will be enough. (I wonder if that is the link between them?)
Loved this book. Will re-read the essays as it requires a close reading.
A dense and wild collection of essays covering incels, the Berlin art scene, religious and sexual trauma, paranoia and psychosis; on top of *every* sexual kink you can think of.
The author excels at description of scenes and experiences , his ability to lead the reader easily from one theme / point to another, without losing focus or flow, visceral and at times uncompromising, With a lot of bravery in how he deals with these topics (the social games of the art scene, writing on asian incels as a gay asian writer, linking incel culture and their sense of isolation to his own search of status and self made aristocracy, connecting sexual and religious trauma, complex homosocial relationships between mentors and mentees, queer men, and other dynamics).
What makes these essays so great is how dense, unflinching and well thought they are. At multiple times I said “wow” at what i was reading.
The references to artists can feel a bit too name-droppy at times.
I appreciate how the writer clearly takes the essay form very seriously.
While the essays themselves have no link to each other nor do they provide problem solving solutions or analyses to questions presented in the essays ; They do share the same conculsion : sometimes grace and empathy is the only action available, and it will be enough. (I wonder if that is the link between them?)
Loved this book. Will re-read the essays as it requires a close reading.
November 3, 2025
Can we just let VICE rest in peace? It was an era, it was fun, and nothing has to last forever.
Why report on culture as if it explains politics in a perfect correlation? And when you add fashion, it’s like the styles desk at NYT trying to be relevant to current affairs—cringe and embarrassing. The sections have completely different readership and that’s ok!
Doing coke at Basel and berghain and wherever else is great for a certain lifestyle but let’s not then act like it’s activism. It’s giving twitter and teargas which was pure basura.
This writing can be fun candy but it’s not a main meal. Some like eating candy as an entree; let them. It’s not for everyone else, and we don’t have to bend reality to pretend that it is. It’s ok to just like candy and only ever want to eat candy!
I wish this were more fun without trying to be the Great American Novel (memoir in personal essays or whatever the intro is trying to convey).
In the end, I’m still wondering, why should I care? Which is exactly how I feel seeing white gays do this. Perhaps it’s a double standard bc there’s plenty of cishetwhite trash written. While I wear many similar identities, I still wonder why QTPOC want the same things their white counterparts do. I always saw the beauty of marginalia as choosing for yourself (what if this isn’t what I want? a la devil wears Prada).
Also doomscrolling, even doomscribing is maybe not the right occupation for anyone with a weak constitution
Why report on culture as if it explains politics in a perfect correlation? And when you add fashion, it’s like the styles desk at NYT trying to be relevant to current affairs—cringe and embarrassing. The sections have completely different readership and that’s ok!
Doing coke at Basel and berghain and wherever else is great for a certain lifestyle but let’s not then act like it’s activism. It’s giving twitter and teargas which was pure basura.
This writing can be fun candy but it’s not a main meal. Some like eating candy as an entree; let them. It’s not for everyone else, and we don’t have to bend reality to pretend that it is. It’s ok to just like candy and only ever want to eat candy!
I wish this were more fun without trying to be the Great American Novel (memoir in personal essays or whatever the intro is trying to convey).
In the end, I’m still wondering, why should I care? Which is exactly how I feel seeing white gays do this. Perhaps it’s a double standard bc there’s plenty of cishetwhite trash written. While I wear many similar identities, I still wonder why QTPOC want the same things their white counterparts do. I always saw the beauty of marginalia as choosing for yourself (what if this isn’t what I want? a la devil wears Prada).
Also doomscrolling, even doomscribing is maybe not the right occupation for anyone with a weak constitution
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