It depends what the intent is. If the point is to comment on what leads us to the apocalypse, then sure, backstories help. If the point is to exaggerate contemporary culture and dissect its foibles, backstories aren't important.

Dude, it's all about Girl, Interrupted Jolie

Ask Jeeves became Ask.com, and it was more of a millennium thing

Orbital just released a new album, and it's fuckin sweet.

Jolie is a babe in this movie.

Lillard was in SLC Punk, after all.

Last summer I stood behind a dude in line at Subway who was wearing both rollerblades and a backwards baseball cap. He's a legend in my book.

Funny story: a little while ago I procured a gen-you-wine Beavis & Butt-head comic book from the mid-1990s, and the inside of the back cover is taken up by a full-page ad for Hackers. "HACK OFF!" it says. Okay maybe that wasn't funny, but the comic book fucking rules.

Could have devoted more than a few scattered sentences to the persistent hacker culture, no? Especially considering it's in the title of the article.

Holy crap dude, go watch Stalker. It's a philosophical tome, but it's also a really neat science fiction film and can be appreciated on said level even if it's a bit too dense otherwise (as with Solaris).

@TashaRobinson:disqus It seems more to me like the cover was designed with two things in mind: A) the "fact"-based "narrative" of the book (the cover is, after all, composed simply of utterly unarguable statements and nothing else), and B) the blankly matter-of-fact exchanges between the two men.

I agree with @wvandenberg12:disqus here; I tore through this book in three days. In a lot of ways the content of the book itself presents a cogent argument in favor of the way Marcus writes: deconstructing language, reconstituting it into something new (out of necessity) so we can constantly rediscover the context for…

"Nothing happens in the novel" are the words of a man who stopped reading halfway through and decided to write a review anyway. Plenty of shit happens in this book. I'd like to hear this guy's thoughts on Ulysses.

Every other performer makes a joke about how they appreciate Pabst.

We really did fill up the aisles at the Pabst. Security did not like this.

I think it might be the influx of new writers. For the longest time, it was O'Neal, Hyden, Koski, Murray, Ryan, Zulkey, Modell, Handlen, and a few others basically doing everything. Now with all the new people it's turning into its own version of Pitchfork.

It's an accurate representation of their live show, which is fucking terrible.

I gotta say, the AV Club is really retreating into that stupid Stuck-Up White People hole that it's always done its best to avoid. The jock-hating in this article is so, so stupid and irrelevant.

What about the bitch who got shot?
Fuck her!
You think I give a damn about a bitch?
I ain't a sucka

[generic AV Club comment about how Odd Future makes my monocle fall clean away]