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3.49 AVERAGE
3.49 AVERAGE
Not sure it added a whole lot that was new to the debate. I think Douglas Murray wrote a much better book.
challenging
funny
hopeful
informative
lighthearted
fast-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
challenging
funny
informative
reflective
tense
medium-paced
2.5...ish stars?
Ahh... this is a tough one. I don't particularly feel like transforming my thoughts into a coherent piece of writing, so I'll try to make it short.
The Good
I agree wholeheartedly with many of the points brought forward by Saad in this book.
If individuals cannot openly express their political beliefs, conduct scientific studies, criticize ideologies or do a variety of other things that should be possible in a free society, we've got a problem at hand. In many ways, we have reached a point where you can either agree with The One Truth™, or fear persecution in one way or another. "Live and let live" has turned into "you are only allowed to say things I personally agree with, or else I will make sure you'll lose your job, your friends, your social standing and will forever be ostracized for thinking the wrong things".
Also, and I cannot stress this enough, engaging with ideas and viewpoints you disagree with is vital for your personal development! That's got to be the most important point he makes in this book, and this is a hill I'm willing to die on as well. Confining yourself to an echo chamber where everyone holds the exact same views as you is not the way to go. At all.
There are a variety of other examples from the book I agree with, but I said I was gonna keep it short...
The Bad
- Saad doesn't understand what radical feminism is but fear not, he still manages to mention it every other page.
- What's it with middle aged men and their bad takes on memes?
- I know that he's constantly reminding us of his being a Lebanese Jew and war refugee in the same way proponents of identity politics do to make a point, but that really does not help.
- "I called this guy on Twitter a degenerate and retard and he blocked me haha what a pussy, it was totally just friendly banter. Anyway, where was I? Ahh yes, so these people on Twitter were mean to me so I had to block them because I'm getting attacked all the time :("
The Ugly
Saad comes off as a raging narcissist throughout most of the book. He constantly quotes himself to show you how epically he owns the LiBtArDs, how witty his tweets are, how he criticized X before everyone else did, how r/iamverysmart he is etc. and it's so utterly grating. I expected this book to be something else entirely. Why should the reader care about how Saad tweeted Charlize Theron about her transgender child and never received an answer? Why would Saad expect an answer in the first place? Why include this tweet as a supposed "gotcha!" when... well, nothing happened? What's the point?
We get it man, you think you're the world's best satirist. Congrats.
Ahh... this is a tough one. I don't particularly feel like transforming my thoughts into a coherent piece of writing, so I'll try to make it short.
The Good
I agree wholeheartedly with many of the points brought forward by Saad in this book.
If individuals cannot openly express their political beliefs, conduct scientific studies, criticize ideologies or do a variety of other things that should be possible in a free society, we've got a problem at hand. In many ways, we have reached a point where you can either agree with The One Truth™, or fear persecution in one way or another. "Live and let live" has turned into "you are only allowed to say things I personally agree with, or else I will make sure you'll lose your job, your friends, your social standing and will forever be ostracized for thinking the wrong things".
Also, and I cannot stress this enough, engaging with ideas and viewpoints you disagree with is vital for your personal development! That's got to be the most important point he makes in this book, and this is a hill I'm willing to die on as well. Confining yourself to an echo chamber where everyone holds the exact same views as you is not the way to go. At all.
There are a variety of other examples from the book I agree with, but I said I was gonna keep it short...
The Bad
- Saad doesn't understand what radical feminism is but fear not, he still manages to mention it every other page.
- What's it with middle aged men and their bad takes on memes?
- I know that he's constantly reminding us of his being a Lebanese Jew and war refugee in the same way proponents of identity politics do to make a point, but that really does not help.
- "I called this guy on Twitter a degenerate and retard and he blocked me haha what a pussy, it was totally just friendly banter. Anyway, where was I? Ahh yes, so these people on Twitter were mean to me so I had to block them because I'm getting attacked all the time :("
The Ugly
Saad comes off as a raging narcissist throughout most of the book. He constantly quotes himself to show you how epically he owns the LiBtArDs, how witty his tweets are, how he criticized X before everyone else did, how r/iamverysmart he is etc. and it's so utterly grating. I expected this book to be something else entirely. Why should the reader care about how Saad tweeted Charlize Theron about her transgender child and never received an answer? Why would Saad expect an answer in the first place? Why include this tweet as a supposed "gotcha!" when... well, nothing happened? What's the point?
We get it man, you think you're the world's best satirist. Congrats.
Now there are good books on the cristicism of modern movements such as social justice, radical feminism, equality of outcome. This is not one of them.
The author intends to use reason, logic and evidence to prove his points, and proceeds to form arguments based in biased views, uninformed, one sided opinions and story-time evidence.
One more book for the fans of Ben Shapiro, or for those who feel oppressed by (insert oppression of choice here), and misunderstood by their kids and Facebook strangers. Nothing of academic or educated interest, two pages of interesting conclusions are not worth 300 pages of refined biased rants.
The author intends to use reason, logic and evidence to prove his points, and proceeds to form arguments based in biased views, uninformed, one sided opinions and story-time evidence.
One more book for the fans of Ben Shapiro, or for those who feel oppressed by (insert oppression of choice here), and misunderstood by their kids and Facebook strangers. Nothing of academic or educated interest, two pages of interesting conclusions are not worth 300 pages of refined biased rants.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Hate crime, Misogyny, Transphobia
While I agree with the author on most of his points, I didn't find this book very interesting or enlightening. There wasn't much I hadn't heard before. The framing of these ideas as parasitic memes wasn't helpful. The book was occasionally entertaining, but I was also put off by the author's endless quoting of himself and others on Twitter. I give it 4 stars because I think it could be a very interesting and enlightening book for young adults who are just beginning to struggle with the unreason they are seeing all around them. But if you already know the landscape, don't bother. Better to just go straight to Twitter or YouTube and catch him there. (I have not done so, so ttfwiw.)
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I agree with basically everything Saad writes in this book, but it's the way he writes it that didn't appeal to me. I can't put my finger on what exactly I disliked - it's a mix of the writing style, the endless quoting of Tweets and the general tone of the book I guess. Him calling SJWs the 'naturally lobotomized' had me chuckling though.
The premise of this book is using science and logic to combat some of what Gad Saad calls extreme views held by progressives in the US. I am admittedly not the target audience for this book, but I picked it up to get a different perspective. One of the problems with this book is that Gad doesn’t use science or logic to prove his points. The book feels more like a rant and he uses his own personal experiences as evidence to refute some progressive views. His references are largely his own YouTube channel or podcast episode appearances. Any social/political issue, regardless of whether it’s a far right or far left viewpoint is multi faceted and Gad, when he does provide some reasonable scientific reference, over simplifies the issues as it fits his narrative. While I do agree that extreme viewpoints need to be analyzed critically, this book didn’t provide the scientific and logic driven analysis that I was expecting. It was also very one sided - a more convincing book would have included far right “mind parasites” as well.