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14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Around and round we go, May 28, 2006
This review is from: Hello, I'm Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity (Paperback)
Mr. Niedzviecki begins with an interesting subject: main stream culture has co-opted rebellion. The anecdotes and the witticisms are fine when he tones down on the condescension, but the book suffers from deep flaws.
He leaves terms such as pop culture and rebellion ill-defined. However, I gathered that main stream culture is something that the reader does not be a part of. Once he lays out his argument that the main stream has co-opted rebellion, his arguments loop endlessly between the wish to get away from pop culture and the inability to do anything that does not lead back to being pop culture. Instead of trying to find a third path out of his binary sorting of "pop vs rebel", his definitions broaden until his narrative becomes diffused and nearly directionless at points.
At several points, he touches on historical writing on individuality and masses, but fails to capitalize on these opportunities to deepen his argumnt or break the loop that he has built.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Ah, infotainment..., October 21, 2006
This review is from: Hello, I'm Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity (Paperback)
I love infotainment reads, and this book is a good example of C+ quality in this genre. As I see it, this book sets out to characterize individuality as a value central to modern life, and does a great job of providing the reader of evidence of this again, and again, and again. By the last third of the book, it became a chore to hear the same argument rehashed with little elaboration.
The greatest downside to this book was that Niedzviecki implies throughout that valuing individuality as highly as he believes contemporary culture does is a bad thing, but absolutely fails to convince the reader on this point. Individuals interviewed by the author offer allusions to their "feeling lonely/disconnected/etc.," and this is the sum total of the evidence that the author is willing to supply to prove the negative effects of contemporary trends.
I think that the most effective thing that this book could do to improve itself is bring in empirical evidence and theory from psychology. A great wealth of discussion about the effects of media consumption on behavior, imitation, reward and punishment, etc. exist in psychology, and tying these lines of thought into "Hello, I'm Special" would have made this book better. The book, as it is, is pure journalism pretending to be cultural theory. (Here it is an ideal read if you like to say "hey, I could write this malarkey!" to yourself and close friends).
Up until the last forty or so pages, I was amused and getting a little bored. At about this point in the book, Niedzviecki decides that going without the conveniences of our cushy modern lives and actually "suffering" like real bushmen is the remedy to the problem of modern existence! So, to re-cap the author's argument: exposure to media leads to imitation, therefore we should all feel guilty for having running water. I can only assume that this derailed logic has its roots in the author's personal problems (e.g. I hate my life, therefore I want to hurt myself). Wow, a little juvenile and embarrassing for our cultural theorist, but I kept reainding. Right after giving Niedzviecki the benefit of the doubt big time, he then hits me with a combination condemnation/ laudatory hailing of "protesters" and "activists." I was like what is going on here? This dude failed to fully develop his pretty good initial argument/topic, so then just totally abandons it to discuss some irrelevant personal fascination of some other topic. The book, as compelling and fun to read as it was for the first 100 pages, became unreadable and I put it down with about 20 pages left to go.
Verdict: stoner rant.
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38 of 49 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Don't buy it unless you like being condescended to, April 24, 2006
This review is from: Hello, I'm Special: How Individuality Became the New Conformity (Paperback)
Hal Niedzviecki is the guy who bums a ride with you and then criticizes the way you drive, tells you when to turn, and tells you where to park. He is the guy who walks into your kitchen and asks to be shown what you are cooking, and then makes unhelpful suggestions as to how to improve your recipe. He's the guy who crashes your party and makes snide comments about your taste in music, and how he was into it 'before they went all mainstream'. In short, he is a know-it-all ironic hipster killjoy.
The thesis of "Hello, I'm Special" isn't entirely clear: there is a vague sense of Niedzviecki complaining about the ubiquity of pop culture and how 'just being yourself' has been commercially appropriated, propped up sloppily by largely irrelevant quotations from academic figures like Foucault. Basically, anybody who tries to do anything 'different' is snidely and rather pettily criticized and scrutinized, from progessive Catholics, to Found Magazine founder Davy Rothbart, and the very people who trustingly gave Niedzviecki feedback. In fact, I am on his list of bumbling bourgeois wannabes simply by virtue of writing a review on Amazon (and no, this is not my attempt at earning 'glory' or 'fame'. I simply don't want anyone else to endure this book.).
Despite protestations in the introduction (following a lengthy retelling of his disaffected wealthy suburban youth, druggie days, various print accomplishments, and so on) that the book is not about him, the book is steeped in the context of Hal Niedzviecki: *I* received an email from so-and-so; participants in an alternative publishing event that *I* coordinated said; *my* friend did this; *I* think; *I* believe, etc. Niedzviecki constantly puts down and criticizes people and movements from the outside, without attempting to become involved or develop a personal understanding, and reserving none of this scathing judgement for himself (because publishing an interview with a male stripper who sodomizes himself with a cooked chicken is waaay more revolutionary than protesting the WTO).
As a result, the whole book smacks of sour grapes. Niedzviecki comes across as a disillusioned person who is overcome with jealousy that he is not the sole person in the universe capable of attempting nonconformity. Rather than criticize or act against the institutions and systems which appropriate nonconformity and create a homogenized world, he instead directs scorn towards people, mostly teens and young adults, who are simply rebelling in the only way they know how.
The one thing I learned from this book is how to assert yourself as a true individual: publish a book mercilessly slamming anyone and everything that has ever tried to do anything different, while constantly inserting yourself and your ego in the center of the action.
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