The Internet is a Playground

I first learned of David Thorne and the blog 27b/6 because of an email exchange he posted on the internet between himself and his electricity provider, wherein he attempts to question a seemingly exorbitant bill he received.

It was hilarious.

Now I find out that Thorne has collected a good deal of the material from 27b/6 (yes, even the aforementioned post) into the book The Internet is a Playground: Irreverent Correspondences of an Evil Online Genius.

First impressions? It's occasionally mean. A tad obnoxious. Sometimes inappropriate. Rather off-kilter. But yes, often just as hilarious.

For anyone who hasn't spent some time browsing through 27b/6, this is all you really need to know: it's like fringe social commentary, wrapped in satire, by a seemingly angry author with a somewhat twisted sense of humor, intent on annoying people -- and that's paying it a complement. See, what Thorne is good at is making a point, often in the most convoluted, biting and nearly-offensive way possible. He responds to hate mail from readers by engaging them in the most ridiculous email banter imaginable. He deliberately annoys his co-workers with correspondence filled with all manner of non sequiturs (sometimes with a "By the power of Grayskull" thrown in for good measure). He writes back to people of authority with any number of humiliating and obtuse references just to get his way. And all of it is posted on his blog, with the best (worst?) of it collected in The Internet is a Playground.

Yes: it is much rather like that train wreck about to happen that you just can't help but watch. But it is a train wreck that will amuse you, amaze you, and maybe even offend you a little. But that's okay. Sure, sometimes the writing can be a bit much -- it is idiosyncratic, often nonsensical, and mostly glib -- but it is, in its own way, quite riveting. In this sense, the title is quite appropriate: The Internet is a Playground is all about what happens when one puts the Internet in the hands of otherwise smart, talented and slightly unhinged people with perhaps too much time on their hands -- and even then, the joke may really be on all of us.

[The Penguin edition of The Internet is a Playground: Irreverent Correspondences with an Evil Online Genius will be published on 28 April 2011. A review copy was obtained from NetGalley.]