AMYGDALATROPOLIS by B.R. Yeager | Book Review 

Thank you! It definitely gets into the gritty of the internet experience in a way that some other books have tried (and failed) to do. Completely agree regarding anonymity, though at the same time, this book also shows how non-anonymity can be used as a weapon against people as these trolls find it so easy to dig up material on people via their social media and send hate raids their way.

Haha - I'm glad I'm not the only one who worries about their bookshelves collapsing. I simply ran out of room a long time ago and can't be bothered to buy a new bookshelf (primarily because I need not one new bookshelf, but two at least...) Funny that this one keeps coming up on your amazon algorithm! It's definitely worth reading, but do brace yourself. It's one of those things that once you see it, you can't really "unsee" it.

🫡 I'm happy to dive into these depraved depths and to report my findings! I don't blame anyone for not wanting to read it. I totally get it. Thanks for watching, Echo!

Thank you! I hope you like it if you decide to pick it up!

Thank you, Abhilash!

Thank you! I'm eager to read more by Yeager - I've already purchased his Negative Space and I hope to get to it soon. This kind of book seems particularly relevant to discuss here on booktube and on other virtual bookish spaces.

Thank you! I'd love to hear your thoughts on it if you ever decided to make a new video - there's so much packed into this small novel and I feel like I barely scratched the surface here. And fair point! I definitely meant to put the phrase "normal internet" in scare quotes as I completely agree with you. As you know, there's a thread throughout the book where the /1404ers/ use the phrase "normal" and "normie" as derogatory terms for people who are unfamiliar with the "dark web," and so I was kind of using their terminology, but I absolutely agree that this kind of stuff isn't reserved to the "dark web," which makes this novel all the more horrifying in my opinion.

Haha! I hope you find the book as worthwhile as I did. I'm interested to hear your thoughts once you finish.

Good points! I agree that this *can't* be more disturbing than a book about genocide, etc., but I suppose what I found so disturbing about it is that it's so present and it's happening all around us right now. And it's almost certainly only going to get worse. This isn't to say that genocide isn't happening all around us, of course, but there's something so familiar to the world of Aymgdalatroplis that I can see a potential reality in which people I know could fall into it. /1404er/ is like a new-age Maximilien Aue, in a way.

@@travelthroughstories "A new age Maximillien Aue".....What an horrific thought 🙂. Nicely put though.

Thank you! Yeah, it's the first "internet novel" that I've read that really captures the way the internet works and the way it affects our perceptions of reality. Agreed re: the cover -- it's disgusting, but entirely indicative of what you'll find inside its pages! I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on it if you get to it!

Haha, exactly! While I would like to think that the internet is less of a "wild west" than it was and that these parts of the internet are more difficult to just stumble upon, I don't think that's the case. Crazy place, this internet.

@@travelthroughstories I was a 4chan user back in my teens, and my mates and I would just tinyURL links back and fore. It literally became a ‘shock jock’ game of who could stumble across the wildest stuff. The accessibility of it is super easy. I would say the hardest part is doing the “I am not a robot” verification when posting. But you could avid watch 4chan for ages. If you want a really weird 4chan lore story, look for the Philmarillion. Yes, a Silmarillion for a user called Phil. Made by someone he never met. It’s CHAOS.

@@KDbooks Yeah, that game of trying to be the most outrageous and most shocking sounds quite familiar... The Philmarillion sounds pretty wild, haha. I'll look into it!

Thanks for watching! I hope you "enjoy" it!

@@travelthroughstories I imagine that the main character of the book would listen to that Slayer song. I think the character would enjoy those disgusting lyrics. Check out the below passage from Sharon Kaye. You might find it helpful. “Thought experiment: the Ring of Gyges: You are on vacation on a remote Caribbean island enjoying a hike through the jungle by yourself. Exploring off the trail, you come to a small cave. On its floor lies a very old-looking golden ring in which is set a dark stone. Pleased with your discovery, you slip it on, planning to bring it home as a souvenir of your trip. As you continue your hike, however, you absent-mindedly spin the stone around your finger and an extraordinary thing happens: you become invisible! Panicking for a moment, you spin the stone of the ring in the other direction and you magically reappear, unharmed. You test the ring a few times and try walking while invisible. Your footsteps appear in the mud, apparently by themselves. You pick up a stick and it fades out of sight; you put it down and it reappears. Amazed with your discovery, your first thought is to run to the nearest town and show someone. As you enter the next clearing, however, you see an exquisite palace by the seashore. Expensive cars are pulling up, out of which spill men in tuxedos and women in evening gowns. The surrounding gardens are crawling with security guards. Though instinct tells you to turn back quickly, you are very hot, tired and hungry. So you make yourself invisible and slip into the party. After helping yourself to food from a sumptuous banquet table, you go upstairs to lie down for a while. Sitting on the bed of the first room you enter is a metal suitcase full of countless packets of $100 bills! The thought occurs to you: you could open an account at one of the notoriously discreet banks on the island and return home, set for life. You start dreaming of all the things the ring could enable you to acquire. You could buy tickets to great concerts… scratch that - you could sit on stage with the performers! You could visit the homes of your favorite television heart-throbs - see what their lives are like, perhaps accompany them into the shower… You could punish your boss and your former lover in all kinds of interesting ways… You could get away with murder… You could do so many things. But what should you do? What will you do? Do the right thing: The great ancient Greek philosopher Plato (c.428/427-c.348/347 BC) first presented a version of the Ring of Gyges thought experiment in his masterpiece, The Republic, which is today considered one of the greatest books of all time. It was the inspiration for J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic novel Lord of the Rings as well as for many other great works of literature. Like all of Plato’s works, The Republic is a dialogue between characters who represent differing points of view. One of the characters in The Republic is Thrasymachus, who thinks it obvious that you should take the money and do all the things you’ve dreamed of. He goes so far as to insist that the thought experiment proves that the only reason people don’t seize their own advantage in every situation is because they’re afraid of getting caught. With the Ring of Gyges, you would never be caught, and so you would be a fool not to do exactly as you pleased. The hero of The Republic, however, is Socrates (c.469-399 BC), who takes Thrasymachus to task, arguing that our hesitation about using the ring comes not only from our cowardice but also from our sense of justice. Stealing, cheating and murdering are wrong because they damage the community and they damage our own souls. The wise man seeks to be just in all his dealings even when he doesn’t have to be. Perhaps few would go along with Thrasymachus in rejecting justice altogether. But the Ring of Gyges raises the further question of what constitutes justice. When you thought about whether or not you would take the money, you probably considered the fact that it was most likely stolen or acquired illegally. You may have reasoned that this would make it fair game to steal. Likewise, maybe it would be OK to spy on a celebrity as long as they never knew about it. And it may actually be good to punish or even kill someone who really deserves it. If you assembled a room full of people to discuss these questions, you would find a wide range of disagreement. One person might insist that the right thing would be to go to the police with the entire matter. Someone else might just as easily counter that neither the police nor any government can be trusted to do the right thing. After listening to all sides of the debate you’re likely to conclude that there is no perfect solution, and you may be tempted to follow Thrasymachus, after all. Plato (through his mouthpiece Socrates), however, finds a way to rescue justice. Impressed with the precision of mathematics, he asks us to consider the following analogy. Look all over the entire world and you will never find a perfect triangle. It is impossible enough to find a truly straight line, much less three that join at angles to make a plane figure. Yet everyone can picture a perfect triangle in their mind’s eye. In fact, we use that image to judge the imperfectly triangular objects around us. Some are better instances than others. Though none are perfect, we can clearly identify which ones come closer to the ideal. Plato argues that justice is similar - as are beauty, goodness and truth itself. We see only rough approximations around us. But we wouldn’t be able to judge these approximations at all if there were no ultimate ideal with which to compare them. The job of the philosopher is to study and promote the ideal.” Sean, when I access the World Wide Web, I am wearing a metaphorical “golden ring in which is set a dark stone” and the golden ring has made me invisible. Of course, I have an IP address, and I can be located, but to a certain degree, I really am invisible (or you might say “anonymous”). Before I continue, Sean, let me first tell you a bit about myself. I am a very, very old man, and I am the legal guardian of my young grand-daughter. Unfortunately, I have no other family members; I am all my grand-daughter has. Sean, I am suffering from a fatal disease, and the medicine I require is very expensive. I have borrowed all the money I can, but I am still $100 short. Sean, could you find it in your heart to send me $100? Think of it as a priceless Christmas gift. After I recover, I promise to repay the money. Please, Sean, it would mean so much to me and my young grand-daughter. With my golden ring, I can attempt to steal money, and I can even invisibly watch someone take a shower. Amazingly, I can actually invisibly watch people have sex. Incidentally, you think my name is Michael Rhodes. Is it? Since my first name is Michael, you think I am a male. Am I? Since I am able to write fluently in English, you might think English is my primary language. Is it? Based on your accent, Sean, I think you live in the United States. Do I? You mentioned the topic of Free Will, and I think you know that Free Will is a topic that falls into the category of First Philosophy (some people call it Metaphysics, but Metaphysics is a terrible description; First Philosophy is much more accurate). You might know that First Philosophy includes Ontology, which is the study of what exists. If we assume that human beings actually do have Free Will, that Free Will exists (the probability of that assumption being true is less than 100%), then I think the discussion about the golden ring, invisibility, the modern-day World Wide Web, all the filth caught in the Web, and Amygdala-however-the-hell-you-pronounce-the-title is pushed from First Philosophy “downstream” to Ethics (which is the study of “Good & Bad” and “Right & Wrong”). At this point, Sharon Kaye’s passage can be of some help. Like Sharon said, when you reach this point, you will find a wide range of disagreement, and you are likely to conclude that there is no perfect solution. In my humble opinion, when you think about all the filth in this world, and how we should approach this problem, the first consideration should be a person’s age. People range from young grand-daughters to very, very old men suffering from fatal diseases. The age of a person’s physical body has a correlation to the person’s mental maturity. A person’s mental maturity has a correlation to the person’s ability to handle different types of filth on this planet. Keep up the good work, Sean. I’m going to go listen to that Slayer song. P.S. Jeffrey Dahmer’s genetic makeup was 99.9% identical to yours.

Good point - framing this kind of trolling as a kind of psychological warfare is a good way to think about it and not really hyperbole at all. The extent to which some of characters go to enact "revenge," whether out of malice or simply boredom, is insanely disturbing. I also used to think that it was a largely innocuous past-time of bored loner-types, but it really should be taken seriously.

It's a brutal book to read (especially in public, which I really don't recommend doing...), but it really understands the way the internet has affected human psychology in a way that few books actually do.

Will do! I actually immediately ordered a copy of it upon finishing this one because I've heard so many great things about it, but I haven't actually read it yet. Have you read it or were you looking to buddy-read?

@@travelthroughstories keep me in the loop and we can figure it out! I hear it’s “better” which intrigues me. Have read…3 books from Schizm and does not disappoint in the…different department.

To help ease your mind, the current state of research suggests that no part of the internet makes you a troll. Rather, there are real life assholes who are often mean, and such people behave online in certain ways. One of those ways is that they congregate in certain corners of the internet where they can indulge in their impulse to be mean more freely. It is hard for most people to accept that some people are just nasty, so they try to explain the nastiness they see online by saying the internet somehow makes them that way. Rather, online spaces simply impose a lower cost on nasty behaviour (through anonymity and lack of punishment) and make it more visible. This is all to say, don't worry about the internet somehow turning you into a monster, it won't. In my own experience, I can say I spent many hours watching alt-right videos that were either racist or racist-adjacent. I can safely say I am no more racist than before. It's not that alt-right videos make you racist, it's that racists watch those videos to find validation and a sense of community.

That's a totally fair perspective -- I've spoken with a few different people who claimed that reading this one put them in a pretty severe reading/mood slump for a week or two. I'm not sure if this book should be taught (I at least would be very wary of teaching it), but I definitely get your point. I wouldn't be against young people reading it of course, but I'm just sure how well it would work in a classroom setting as it would be difficult to get over the shocking parts. This kind of internet literacy needs to be taken seriously though so people, especially young people, can take care of themselves. Thanks for your thoughtful comment!

This is interesting and I'm not overly familiar with the latest research, though I doubt that there's *no* causative relationship between the way the internet functions and this type of behavior. Things like anonymity and the lack of direct repercussions for one's actions have been linked to the idea of the disinhibition effect. Sure, the internet won't turn a completely rational and level-headed actor into a monster as you say, but I think it can help bring out the worst in people. I certainly wouldn't disagree with you that many people are assholes offline just as they are online, however. I'm definitely interested in reading more on this though, so thank you for your comment!

Lucky you! Hah. It's worth picking up if you're interested in the internet, but do make sure you brace yourself...

@@travelthroughstories sure...😁😃😅 I like this type of books... Surely check out in future...👍🏾📚✌🏾📚

🤣 I'll be following in your footsteps soon enough! There's actually like a 35 page introduction to Amygdalatroplis which is highly academic. It connects this book to like the medieval bishop Bonaventure and also to various essays by Bataille. I wasn't completely sold on their thesis, but I loved the mixing of smut and sort of high academia!

@Travel Through Stories you should read Death and Sensuality by Bastille. It ties every together really well. I do need to read Yeager

How is it smut?