Voice in the Wilderness: On Douglas Copeland | Hacker News Reader

Voice in the Wilderness: On Douglas Copeland

slate.com

24 pointslermontov11 comments

" Not surprisingly, everything in Bit Rot has the half-baked texture of a Facebook post (“I sometimes wonder what selfies would look like in North Korea”), because nearly everything that Coupland has ever written settles at about that level. Fortunately for him, Thought Catalog wasn’t around to compete with him in 1991."

OUCH! I have to admit I LOVED Generation X when it came out. I just recently read it again for the first time since the 90s and I must admit, it has not aged well for me.

I reread Microserfs too, and that wasn't so bad. Seems like a great read for the HN crowd.

"shampoo planet" these days and he foresaw it. Amazing author. BTW he has a very inspiring column at FT

https://www.ft.com/stream/authorsId/Q0ItMjI1YTIzZQ==-QXV0aG9...

I read Generation X when it came out, and certainly enjoyed it. As a couple more years went past, it's age-based politics began to wear thin.

There were people my own age whom I disagreed with, politically and culturally. And there were boomers whose accomplishments and risk-taking I had to admire, even though culturally we came from different places.

Ultimately, that was the lesson I took away: that age-based cultural/political affinity is really quite empty. A dead end and a distraction.

Well there is some truth in that generations face different common challenges (different wars, levels of tech, economies, etc), and examining how a given "culture" reacts as a whole to these changes is potentially useful.

The issue is when people focus on one specific, relatively visible response and extrapolate it to the entire culture. I know boomers who are cartoonishly entitled and millennials who work 60 hour weeks without complaint.

That said there are some consistent general trends. Computer use drops drastically in the older demographics, for example.

I loved DC in "Gen X" and "Microserfs", and I have been purchasing his books then on, but they have been going downhill. "Girlfriend in a Coma" was pretty good. "JPod" and "Gum Thief" were from unremarkable to pretty bad, and "Generation A" the first one I abandoned. So I'm not buying any more.

The Guardian ran an entertaining no-holds-barred review of his book "Worst. Person. Ever." when it came out 4 years ago: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/25/worst-person-e...

Haven't read anything else by him, but JPod wasn't bad. It wasn't great but it was at least pretty funny and not that political. Maybe stay away from Gen X and give JPod a try.

microserfs was amazing. It's a slice of time. Worth reading for a perspective.

Microserfs was basically the "Silicon Valley" of its day. I haven't read it since it came out, I wonder if it holds up.

Mods: headline has the author's name misspelled. It's "Coupland".

copeland??

Not to be confused with Stuart Coupland (drummer for the Puh-leeeze)

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