maggie6832 's review for:

I'm Starting to Worry About This Black Box of Doom by Jason Pargin

4.0

adventurous dark funny fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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The author has a very distinctive writing style, which I enjoyed! Sharp, witty, and funny. The humor and general tone were a little darker than I generally enjoy, but I thought this was an excellently written book and commentary on social media, negative news bias, and Gen Z and below generations. The “black box of doom” in the title actually being the echo chambers that we get caught in online, the way we say and repeat escalating series of awful and provocative things with no real thought of the consequences, and the way these serve to isolate us and make us focus on the most negative aspects of our world instead of all the positives was great. I did feel called out multiple times and thought the author did a good job of showing all of the characters and their backgrounds with empathy and as full, three dimensional people. 

I loved the twist that the box a) never contained radioactive material, it was just a band sticker, b) was just transporting vintage porn, as had previously been thrown out there was a mocking idea, and c) just the fact that we get to see how quickly the whole thing spirals online. Also, Abbott being an incel and Ether a former makeup influencer, but then them being able to work together and have all these conversations in the real world!