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/lit/ - Literature

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5184643 No.5184643 [Reply] [Original]

Serious question, is Tao Lin a robot?

>> No.5184825
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5184825

You already know this answer Tao. Go the fuck to bed.

>> No.5184996

Tao Lin is a fucking genius.

>> No.5185003

Tao Lin will be our representative when the machines rise. We will send him to negotiate the terms for transporting the collective human spirit across the universe to its new home.

>> No.5185021

Tao Lin es un pelotudo.

>> No.5185025

>>5185003
And he'll come back with two bottles of ambien and a dead roach. He'll tell us that he asked the machines if they wanted to smoke with them and they made machine noises and he didn't know what that meant so he asked for money and they took some of his blood.

Then he'll appologize and leave the room, then come back inside to say he forgot his phone, then appologize again before leaving.

>> No.5185031

>>5185021
What a charming epithet. Makes me want to read more Borges.

>> No.5185049
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5185049

>>5185025

>> No.5185053

I've never heard of this guy outside of /lit/. It seems like everyone hates him, but I've never paid much attention to threads about him.

Anyone willing to describe his style or compare him to other writers? You keep talking about him so I'm curious.

>> No.5185067
File: 2 KB, 184x101, tao.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
5185067

>>5185053
Tao Lin is you and all your friends.

>> No.5185071

>>5185053
He's the king of Alt Lit.

He's pretty much the most notable writer of the Millienal generation.


BEE said he's the greatest of this this generation.

>> No.5185075

>>5185053
http://www.kcrw.com/news-culture/shows/bookworm/tao-lin-shoplifting-from-american-apparel/excerpt-from-shoplifting-from-american-apparel

>> No.5185096

>>5185071
Weird that BEE doesn't like DFW but likes Tao, since both of them are talentless hacks.

>> No.5185118

>>5185075
Eh, he's no Oscar Wilde, that's for sure. His style is crude and elementary.

Nevertheless, I sense a certain purpose to his efforts, and this is important.

>> No.5185132

>>5185118
>His style is crude and elementary.

He has been described as an "autistic typewriter." You don't get this from just an excerpt, but after a hundred pages of deadpan his books become the most hilarious thing you've ever read, like a Seinfeld episode.

>> No.5185143

>>5185071
bee said he's the greatest prose stylist not the greatest and he also is a hack so who the fuck cares

>> No.5185147

In bed at 4PM
I held my pillow
and thought “oh well”
in regards to my entire life.

- Tao Lin

>> No.5185148

>>5185075
>He looked at things and sometimes touched things.

I don't know why but this cracked me up so hard, just a few sentences in.

>> No.5185149

>>5185143
This, BEE isn't a good judge of literary quality.

>> No.5185153

>>5185075
I would rather read those excerpts /lit/ like to post from self-published works. He might be the voice for over-socialized hipsters, but that shit smells horrible from where I am standing.

>> No.5185159

>>5185075
>"I spend my money on even better places," said Sam. "Organic vegan restaurants."
I brékkekkékkek'd.

>> No.5185163

>>5185159
yeah that was good

>> No.5185168

>>5185153
This is a common complaint I've heard about Tao Lin, but personally I never feel like he thinks himself superior or elitist or hipster or whatever when reading his self-insert works.

>> No.5185191

>>5185168
>I never feel like he thinks himself superior or elitist or hipster or whatever when reading his self-insert works.

I don't think he thinks himself anything. That's the problem. Is it unique and different? Yes, sort of. It reads like a long green text story really. Is that a good thing? N, but Fuck. Maybe I should profit off his wake and write something real Tao Lin-ish about shitposting on /lit/. Seems like an easy write.

>> No.5185198

>>5185147
I just looked that up because I couldn't remember it. What the hell man.

>> No.5185240
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5185240

In early June, after four more parties, two at which he similarly slept on sofas after walking mutely through rooms without looking at anyone, Paul began attending fewer social gatherings and ingesting more drugs, mostly with Daniel and Fran, or only Daniel, or sometimes alone, which seemed classically “not a good sign,” he sometimes thought, initially with mild amusement, then as a neutral observation, finally as a meaningless placeholder. Due to his staggered benzodiazepine usage and lack of obligations or long-term projects and that he sometimes ingested Seroquel and slept twelve to sixteen hours (always waking, it seemed, at night, uncomfortable and disoriented and unsure what to do, usually returning to sleep) he had gradually become unaware of day-to-day or week-to-week changes in his life—and, when he thought of himself in terms of months and years, he still viewed himself as in an “interim period,” which by definition, he felt, would end when his book tour began—so he viewed the trend, of fewer people and more drugs, as he might view a new waiter at Taco Chulo: “there, at some point,” separate from him, not of his concern, beyond his ability or desire to track or control.

When he wanted to know what happened two days ago, or five hours ago, especially chronologically, he would sense an impasse, in the form of a toll, which hadn’t been there before, payable by an amount of effort (not unlike that required in problem solving or essay writing) he increasingly felt unmotivated to exert. There were times when his memory, like an external hard drive that had been taken from him and hidden inside an unwieldy series of cardboard boxes, or placed at the end of a long and dark and messy corridor, required much more effort than he felt motivated to exert simply to locate, after which, he knew, more effort would be required to gain access. After two to five hours with no memory, some days, he would begin to view concrete reality as his memory—a place to explore idly, without concern, but somewhat pointlessly, aware that his actual existence was elsewhere, that he was, in a way, hiding here, away from where things actually happened, then were stored here, in his memory.

>> No.5185274

>>5185240
Now this isn't bad.

>> No.5185284

I believe he's a mentat. We created his race once we destroyed the first intelligent machine. Although creating a race sounds a bit dramatic, it's mostly just a matter of knowing how to switch on and off the right genes.

>> No.5185291

>>5185284
Duncan pls go.

>> No.5185300

>>5185291
No, youdaho!

>> No.5185309

>>5185300
Careful, I'll beat the shit out of you again if I catch you acting homophobic.

>> No.5185316

>>5185309
No, no, you misunderstand. I'm merely homophonic.

>> No.5185318

>>5185309
Why was Moneo such a fag?

>> No.5185320

>>5185318
Cause he wasn't Stero.

>> No.5185517

Knut Hamsun

>> No.5185544
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5185544

daily reminder that towel inn is genuinely an assburger. the funny part is his internet defense force implies he does this shit on purpose to be post-modern. toplel

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2BJSV8Q1Yw

>> No.5185576

>>5185544
Any community that gets its laughs by pretending to be idiots will eventually be flooded by actual idiots who mistakenly believe that they’re in good company.

>> No.5185590

>>5185576
Regarding 4chan, this shit is sort of true but it seems most of the people who post this quote are newer people that want everybody to think their newfaggy ways are the norm on the board

>> No.5185612

>>5185544
This is why we don't abuse opiates, children.

>> No.5185797

Www.taolin.info

>> No.5185950

>>5185240
this is very good, is this tao?

>> No.5185958

>>5185950
Yes that's Tai Pei

>> No.5185970

>>5185958
well it looks like i will end up reading one of this dudes books after all.

hope that its somewhat that good all the way through

>> No.5186002
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5186002

>>5185970

>> No.5187225

>>5185544
He's so moe

>> No.5188720 [DELETED] 

>>5186002
>Shit, is this what EVERYONE sees when they look at my books sober?

>> No.5188735

>>5185950
You would honestly go through a whole book like that? I could see him being effective in vignettes, but reading prose like that for a lot of pages is going to be a real bore.

>> No.5188743

idk but he's cute

>> No.5188744

>>5188735
Most serious work isn't read straight through. You read it in pieces. Like the I-Ching.

>> No.5188746

>>5185970

It's pretty short and never really feels like a chore to read. It gets a lot of hate here but no one ever explains what makes it bad. I thought it was a pretty good portrait of people who fill their time with drugs because they're bored with life.

>> No.5188826
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5188826

>>5188746
According to Tao it's because he won't stop asking us for drugs

>He walked to a cafe near Type Books and asked on one of the two threads on 4chan about him that, for some reason, had appeared the last two days--and, with two to four hundred posts each, 90 to 95 percent derogatory, were the two longest threads on him that he'd ever seen--if anyone in Toronto could sell him MDMA or mushrooms within two hours.

>> No.5188895

>>5188826
>there's an image of me and my dad with text on it, saying something stereotypical of the asian dad being disappointed in his son
>I like that one

Ok, I went from hating Tao to liking him in one thread. Fuck, time to order Shoplifting.

>> No.5188928

Tao Lin's genius won't be understood for quite some time. He is the pinnacle of obvious disobviousness in the sense that his genius is transparent while not entirely false. His intelligence lies in the dichotomy between his multi-cranial use of the mindset paradigm present in most of the modern world. In that way, he is surpassing all other writers by his honest examination of what is dishonest living.

>> No.5189169

>>5185071
>the most notable writer of the Millienal generation.

This is true. It is also not a good thing.
He perfectly embodies a stillborn generation that has wrapped themselves up completely in the comfy feels of awkwardness and boredom. Despite never having done anything with his life, and never being likely to do anything with his life, he still imagines he has something to say and thinks he should be the center of the Universe. The floor is dirty. You lay on the floor.. Tao Lin lays on the floor with you. You stare at the ceiling with Tao Lin. The phone rings. Tao Lin does not move. No one answers the phone. Tao Lin feels sad.

>> No.5189909

>>5189169
>thinks he should be the center of the Universe

Tao doesn't seem to have a very big ego.

>> No.5190022

>>5189169
man that passage was good

>> No.5190066

>>5189169
Though millennials are still young, most of them are not even 30. Usually writers mture later.

>> No.5190380

>tfw no qt3.14 gf to get addicted to prescription drugs with

What is doing Xanax even like?

>> No.5190389

>>5190380
Relaxing.

>> No.5190435

Annoying faggot.

>> No.5190455

>>5184643
No, just a shitty writer.

>> No.5190721

>>5190435
>>5190455
Sorry.

>> No.5190851

serious question: is having to resort to viral marketing on 4chan the sign of a shitty writer?

>> No.5190890

>>5190851
A sign, maybe. Not 'the' sign though.
Writing shittily is the ultimate sign of being a shitty writer.
Has this ever happened? Viral marketing for a writer I mean.

>> No.5192455

>tfw just finished Taipei and now I want to kill myself

>> No.5192627

>>5190389
personally it stresses me out to lose control like that

>> No.5192632

>>5190890
viral marketing is a mark of the incoming viral age. it only makes sense to use viral genome splicing to counteract the damage done by large-scale industrialism.

>> No.5192686

>>5185025
kek

>> No.5192700

>>5189169
This is why he's great and why this generation is great. After a century of frantic modern activity we're on that Schopenhauer shit.

>> No.5192712

>>5192700
I kno. I kant freeleave dat eerywun reeds Peewee Herman Hessia liek he's hawt shite when Schoppy rote the Buddhist bible in Germany years earlier.

>> No.5192733

>>5192712
You're breaking some global rules there, friend. Just a fair warning.

>> No.5192747

>>5192733
Sorry, I haven't read the global rules since I signed up for the site years ago. I probably need to re-check them now that everything's changed so much.

>> No.5193140

The problem Tao faces now is how to write the next novel without relying on the same autibiograpical formula.

If he writes a similar book again (for the fourth in a row) he'd have to mention Taipei and the publicit he got etc, and he can't go back to "I went to sleep. I mastubrated. I looked at gmail chat" because it's already been done.

My money is on him pulling a Yates and writing from a female persepective or some shit

>> No.5193160

Serious question, how did Tao Lin get published?

I'm not a great writer, but I'm at least as competent as Tao Lin. And I can't even get a literary journal or agent to so much as give me the time of day.

What did he do? Whose dick did he suck? How the fuck is Tao Lin making money off the shit he writes?

>> No.5193166

>>5193160
It's actually his autistic female fans who do all the dick sucking for him (and he's still a virgin >_>)

>> No.5193170

>>5193160
Indie publishing and social media presence most likely. Isn't he a part of some "art collective" too?

>> No.5193178

>>5193170
it's an animal collective, HBD types are attempting to herd all the autists into a private penal colony for them to work as slaves where they will be fed drugs and pleasured through gloryholes to increase creative output

>> No.5193187

>>5193160
1. He won a writing competition in college
2. He had a blog for years where he reiewed books and interviewed obscure authors
3. He posted his fiction on said blog
4. He published some poems on an obscure website: http://www.bearparade.com/thisemotionwasalittlee-book/
5. He published more poems and won an award
6. His short stories were being published in various places both in college and after graduating
7. The founders of Brooklyn-based Melville Books, small at the time, found his writing and published a collecion of his short stories along with a novella
8. Tao's "online presence": spamming buzzfeed, posting stickers all over the door of cracked.com, etc made it easy to sell his stuff
9. He wrote an article and expanded it on request to form "Shoplifting from American Apparel"
10. He made his girlfriend write a diary of their time dating and turned it into a book (Richard Yates)
11. He realized the "deadpan minimalism" was making people perceived him as a gimmicky nuisance and decided to write something better
12. He read Almost Transparent Blue and Leaving Atocha Station and decided to take the self-awareness-as-a-cause-of-detachment thing to its extreme
13. He published Taipei
14.???

>> No.5193208

>>5193187
He also cooked the books, which is still one of the most hilarious things I've seen on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2BJSV8Q1Yw

>> No.5193212

>>5193208
Trying is hard: the video

>> No.5193217

>>5193208
He was so autistic he learned how to program a virus that would make other people more like him. Is that what you guys call viral marketing / self-promotion?

>> No.5193226

>>5193212
Some kids grow horns from trying too hard.

>> No.5194406

>>5185096
dyou now any like articles or stuff where bret details his opinion of david, ive always wanted to get it clear

>> No.5195764

Help me get into Tao Lin.
Taipei is often called his best work, should I read something else of his first then?

What is the best 'introduction' to Tao Lin?

>> No.5196005

>>5195764
Read all of his tweets chronologically. They are his best works.
Yes, I'm serious.

>> No.5196027

>>5193187
Between 10 and 13 is an editor at Vintage.

>> No.5196798
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5196798

> there are actually here plebs thinking this gook is good

>>5185240
nice le feel man meme you fucking faggot, typical tao lin fan

>> No.5197525

>>5193208
This isn't serious, is it? Does this guy have actual autism?

>> No.5197550

>>5185240
That's some good shit.

>> No.5197698

>>5197525
You tell me mate

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNzpyoHsMms

>> No.5198023

>>5185970
if you liked that little bit that was posted you'll love the whole book. it's fascinating to read; you'll sense yourself thinking "exactly, yes" so much throughout

>>5188735
have you read it? it's simply not boring. i don't understand how a reader could get tired of reading acute insights into how humans think or do things. those little illuminating moments are why people read. is this not an interestingly pointed and accurate thing you've experienced:
>When he wanted to know what happened two days ago, or five hours ago, especially chronologically, he would sense an impasse, in the form of a toll, which hadn’t been there before, payable by an amount of effort (not unlike that required in problem solving or essay writing) he increasingly felt unmotivated to exert.

that is something that i feel like i fundamentally understand, articulated in a neat way that i had not yet thought of. why would it be boring to read things like that?

>> No.5199502

>>5196005
Yeah his Twitter account is pretty cool. One of the better ones on the site

>> No.5199598

>>5196005
His mandalas are also cool:

http://www.taolin.info/mandalas/

>> No.5199658

>>5185240
>vapid, navel-gazing young people from rich families romanticizing their drug use and party habits as something deep and worth writing about

no thanks

>> No.5199803

>>5199658
how is that romanticized? what sounds romantic about not really being able to think fluidly about the recent past?

>> No.5199920

R MUTT 2017

>> No.5199943

>>5199502

Get out, Tao.