I was really glad I was listening to this with earbuds because this book is not for point society.
I love mocking people so I was here for that. This is all about mocking jerks on the internet.
It was squicky. I gagged a few times.
I said "wtf?" Outloud in the Mormon thriftstore. It was an experience.
I would not want my grandma to listen to this, or my kids.
This is for certain people. People who want to make fun of jerks on the internet.

OK, this book definitely isn't going to be for everyone, but I thought it was wonderfully hilarious. Don't read it if you can't handle satire as it's one of the most satire-y satire books I've ever read. In the beginning I actually had the thought, "wait, is this actually NOT satire and some kind of crazy far-right ranter who somehow got a book deal??"

The book is a collection of stories rather than a novel, but they are all told in such a way that makes everything feel very cohesive and not like a typical book of short stories. Each "chapter" is told by a different white American voice, including well-intentioned liberals, newly "woke” CEOs, Covid deniers, QAnon members, and more. It even starts off with an Elon Musk narrator stepping on a human body immediately following a catastrophic rocket launch. The audiobook is fun because some of the crazy ranting really comes through... Along with the terrible coughing of Covid! My husband walked in the room when I was listening at one point and thought I was off my rocker listening to Covid deniers hack their lungs out and rant about the government.

I will say that the book has lots of graphic sex scenes that seem to pop up out of nowhere. I'm not *totally* sure of their purpose, but think they have something to do with the author wanting to make us explore power dynamics and how sex and desire can get tangled with entitlement, racism, and status. I think it also has something to do with wanting to shock us just a little bit more. This would certainly be an interesting discussion for a book club.

Whites is likely to make you very uncomfortable, to rile you up a little, and maybe even to force a look in the mirror you’ve been avoiding." But it's also very likely to make you laugh out loud and give you a whole lot to think about.

I could NOT get into this one at all, eek... I was eager for some excoriation, as promised, and looking forward to dark satire - instead I found a lot of raging unlikeability that never felt funny or satirical, just angry and repetitive and aggravating. This one was not for me...

Well, it was truly “excoriating,” as the blurb claims, but I was hoping it would have been excoriating in a funny way 🥲. It reminded me of Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection, in that it features caricatures of brain-rotted internet radicals, although Whites comes off more hateful, bleak, and disturbing than Tulathimutte’s OTT satire. I imagine it will also appeal to fans of Ari Aster’s Eddington, as it also concerns 2020s era politicization, but it didn’t land with me.

The characters are irredeemably evil losers—a rambling Elon Musk walking on a woman he refers to as “human meat” and fretting over the optics of her being a Black woman; a QAnon mother who murders her drag queen son; etc etc it’s dark bro—and I think the point is to feel some catharsis at laughing at how awful and stupid they are (?). I wish there had been anything besides pure vitriol, like empathy so that maybe I could think critically instead of easily distancing myself from these monsters, or at least more humor, as in absurdity á la South Park or cleverness á la Whit Stillman (?). Without some other nuance to the satire it just becomes idk writing villains or diatribe. I thought I would laugh through this but I ended up feeling sad and gross the whole time which may have been the point...