Diary of an Oxygen Thief

Came into this one with the mindset of like, “oh this book got super popular and people are hating on it because it's offensive, it must be doing some cool modern transgressive shit that people don't understand”. I was hoping I'd like it and be one of the cool kids in my pretentious ‘you guys just don't understand art' club.

Nope.

It's not really that offensive and mostly just kinda reads like incel fanfiction. There's nothing transgressive about being a successful toxic white guy who treats women bad and is secretly kinda sad and lonely. Tucker Max ran this well dry like 15 years ago.

Guy mostly just has a bad personality and thinks he's cooler than he is. It's got big unreliable narrator vibes but not in the fun way where it makes you question the deeper elements at play, but in an annoying eye-roll way that makes you wanna pat the guy on the shoulder and say “ok champ, good luck with that”. It feels like you're being lied to by some sad incel dipshit who thinks he's some Machiavellian mastermind.

Got a bit better near the end where it seemed like he was actually being the tiniest bit vulnerable, but by then I was completely checked out.