Haterz
by James Goss
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Pub Date 24 Feb 2015 | Archive Date 19 Feb 2015
Rebellion | Solaris
Description
Is there someone online who really grates on you? That friend who’s always bragging about their awesome life and endlessly sharing tired memes, and who just doesn’t get jokes? Look at your Twitter feed: don’t you get cross at the endless rage, the thoughtless bigotry and the pleading for celebrity retweets? Meet Dave, a street fundraiser and fan of cat pictures. He’s decided that unfollowing just isn’t enough. He’s determined to make the internet a nicer place, whatever it takes.
When he killed his best friend’s girlfriend, he wasn’t planning on changing the world. She was just really annoying on Facebook. But someone saw, and made him an offer. Someone who knows what he’s capable of, and wants to use him to take control of the darkness at the heart of the internet. And now the bodies – the comment trolls, the sexual predators, the obnoxious pop stars – are starting to mount up...
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781781083017 |
| PRICE | CA$9.99 (CAD) |
Average rating from 16 members
Featured Reviews
Ed F, Media/Journalist
BOOK REVIEW: HATERZ / AUTHOR: JAMES GOSS / PUBLISHER: SOLARIS / RELEASE DATE: FEBRUARY 24TH
James Goss is better known for his work on various Doctor Who-related novels and audios, and technological thriller Haterz is his first crime novel, and a very impressive one at that.
The plot of Haterz is quite clever. Dave, our protagonist, is a social media junkie who also happens to have rather good acting and technical skills. Driven to the edge of reason by a friend’s incessant hectoring via social media, he commits homicide. Thus begins the live of Dave the Serial Killer, a person who actually goes out and kills all those awful people who wind you up when you browse the web.
Goss writes with a razor sharp wit and uses it to cut Internet culture to the bone. The central character is brilliantly thought-out; utterly loathsome in many regards, and yet at the same time we’re constantly cheering him on as he hunts down and destroys the monsters of the modern age. Each chapter focuses on a specific Internet phenomena; trolls on Twitter, con-artists on Facebook, agit-prop columnists on news websites, and so on. Each element is treated with an equal amount of venom and humour.
Of particular interest to book lovers are the scenes that involve a Twitter storm. If the tale of one minor personality using Twitter to attack the host of a popular genre convention sounds familiar, you will find yourself laughing very hard at the Haterz version of events. Goss carefully blends a wide variety of online phenomena and nothing is held sacred. This is extremely refreshing satire, told in a bold and clever way.
If you’ve ever written anything unwise on the Internet or felt that social media is just too dominant in our lives, this will appeal to you. Partially an angry polemic against the way technology has shaped our worldview, but mostly a very clever social satire, Haterz is a technological thriller that actually understands how the World Wide Web has changed people. Funny, clever and shocking, this book, somewhat ironically, deserves to go viral.
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