rekt
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3.6 • 9 Ratings
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
A disturbing examination of toxic masculinity and the darkest pits of the Internet, about a young man’s algorithmic descent into depravity in a future that’s nearly here.
“A visionary book that is at once pensive, rollicking, and truly, bone-deep unsettling. Alex Gonzalez's rekt is an absolute stunner.” —Paul Tremblay, New York Times bestselling author of Horror Movie and A Head Full of Ghosts
> be me, 26
> about to end it all
> feels good, man
Once, Sammy Dominguez thought he knew how the world worked. The ugly things in his head—his uncle’s pathetic death, his parents’ mistrust, the twisted horrors he writes for the Internet—didn’t matter, because he and his girl, Ellery, were on track for the good life in this messed-up world.
Then a car accident changed everything.
Spiraling with grief and guilt, Sammy scrambles for distraction. He finds it in shock-value videos of gore and violence that terrified him as a child. When someone messages him a dark web link to footage of Ellery dying, he watches—first the car crash that killed her, then hundreds of other deaths, even for people still alive. Accidents. Diseases. Suicides. Murders.
The host site, chinsky, is sadistic, vicious, impossible. It even seems to read his mind, manipulate his searches. But is chinsky even real? And who is Haruspx, the web handle who led him into this virtual nightmare? As Sammy watches compulsively, the darkness in his mind blooms, driving him down a twisted path to find the roots of chinsky, even if he must become a nightmare himself…
Customer Reviews
Men will do anything but go to therapy
This is a very heavy novel. It calls out how toxic masculinity plays a huge factor in how men deal with grief and heavy emotions in general in an unhealthy way, and how easily this leads to addiction, depression, and taking out your problems on others, hence continuing the vicious cycle of toxic masculinity. Although in an extreme way, that I hope doesn’t become reality, this book also highlights a lot of growing concerns with technology, AI, and how far people will go to create “winning” content. I typically don’t like when news reports, emails, forum posts, etc are used for exposition, but I thought they were utilized well here.