Customer Reviews

Suck: Worst-Case Scenarios in Media, Culture, Advertising, and the Internet (Hardwired)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

An extremely funny book, that demands a level of media-cultural-computer sophistication most do not posess. 'Spy' Magazine died (the old 'Spy, when it was funny) and came back to life as this. Buy ! Buy! Buy! (Not actually three individual copies, but, well, you get the idea.)

Since the Sucksters took their eternal summer vacation in June 2001 and the Web site at last fulfilled the e-zine's running joke by changing ownership to an adult-entertainment portal in December 2005, this is all that's left of the smartest, shrewdest and funniest site to emerge amidst the hot air of the Dot-Com Rise and Fall of the 1990s.

Where else can you find an acerbic, pseudonymmed writer dismiss The Fugees as "reconstituted adult rock masquerading as hip-hop"? Or the pinpoint assertion that if you drop your kid off at any mall, "he'll quickly learn that community and commodity are not easily discernible from each other"? Or: "The only thing that kept Burning Man out of Business Week was that no one would admit to making -- or seeking -- a profit"? And really, you can find as good or better a bon mot on any of the pages of this book.

Even from the mid-1990s, this book is a breath a fresh air from today's world of multimedia mergers, where reporters chase each others' tales in conflating and inflating pre-conceived notions and prepackaged soundbytes. Who today proclaims as forcefully -- or anywhere near as literately -- that the emperor has no clothes even as the mainstream media sources compete for more vivid adjectives to describe the non-existent garments?

While the book has its faults and there were certainly better essays than some of the selections, it more than holds its own with any contemporary commentary. A full decade before VH1 announced its sure-to-be-craptacular series "Web Junk 20" as the latest lowest-common-denomination demon spawn of TV and Internet, Suck explained why attempts at merging the two media only seem to cull the worst of each and draw into sharp detail the differences -- not the similarities -- between technology's long-lost kin. With today's breathless tech reporters and hypesters trying to convince you that watching a movie on an iPod is somehow as good as enjoying it in widescreen, and a supplicant media (owned by those releasing those movies) coo their approval, the absence of sarcastic outsider wisdom by the likes of Suck is more missed than ever.

While this book will not cure what ails society, consider it a drinking binge from the fountain of knowledge that won't leave you with a hangover in a stranger's apartment. If the drink is bittersweet given Suck's fate, at least it proves satisfying.

The [...] folks had an aesthetic, a world-view, and a slacker mission to uplift the web surfers of the day. Then they were gone, the only remains were little bits of [...] and some cartoon rabbits. Oh yeah, and this book. It's a (scathing) view of the days when the web was first in the crosshairs of the advertisers, the spammers, the marketers, and all of those other sleazy folks who were looking to take away our great online thing.

These guys would like to consider themselves the heirs of the old SPY magazine: close, but no cigar. These essays work better on your computer, with links to the targets of their satire intact. This book is worth reading, but SUCK loses some of its impact on the printed page.

I guess I just don't get it. I've owned this book for years and can't bring myself to finish it. I've visited the site a few times, and the writings are good. The material seems to lose its impact in printed form, however.

while they do make a good read once a day, once in the paper medium, it loses some of its immediacy, but its critique of the american-canadian cross border bacon warfare is something to behold. if one was to say utilize their opinion of *3D House Of Beef* to its logical conclusion, then you would still will yourself, and your spouse, to come out of the trailer, shut off the battery powered television screaming springer re-runs, and come out to the cookout of the spirit. while they dont believe in metal, idiot savant, and the relevance of stream of conciousness, their eau-de-moilette is genuinely appreciated by that shrinking demographic: the hunted, slighted, pseudo-intellectual. i'm still sore at the books portrayal of 3D HOUSE OF BEEF.

The Suck book changed my life! I was skeptical at first, but the Suck method is the most effective self-improvement system out there. Bar none! I no longer feel less than fresh when I wake up in the morning, I've lost 50 pounds, and I've just bought my third house, using the technologies Anuff and Co. offer in these pages. Although you'll have to "sponsor" ten other readers to buy the book, and it'll be 2-5 years before you really start making profits, once you're in the network, the Suck system really pays off!

Though I tend to shy away from "books", I had a burning desire to own this one. So being the impulsive youth, I am, I hit the order button. Do I regret it? No! I laughed my arse off. I guess now, I'll put it on a shelf and read it when bored, or sick or something. Yep.

thought this might be an interesting book on the rise and fall of a pop-culture ezine, but I couldn't get past page 15. Save you money for n-sync's next record...

I haven't even read this book and I'm not going to bother. I'm just here to re-iterate their point that anonymity is the best policy. thank you.