This article is based on this Dutch article of Martijn Benders
Watching the video of Mark Leidner
The idea that you could insult someone by sending them a friend request—perhaps even (how many books did I write again? Around twenty)—twenty times, and that by the 19th time, they start noticing the curious coincidence between your request and the launch of yet another book. In short, the friend request is, by itself, only *marginally suitable* as a marketing tool. It works, but only until the recipient starts picking up on its connection to book sales.
Had I already mentioned Mark Leidner? A brilliant poet.
The notion that brilliant poets are as plentiful as teachers would have us believe—I take it with a grain of salt. If you listen to those pedagogues in their conical hats, the great poet is a commodity, and it’s the sharp peaks of educational methodology that are the true rarity in this world.
It all revolves around the *authority of proper conduct.*
I didn’t handle the friend request in the *proper way*, misusing it as a vehicle to hock books.
The writer only seemed to find the reader interesting when there were books to sell. A form of exploitation, if you were to ask the reader. The writer had no genuine, sincere interest in the reader.
And so, book prices soar, and writers increasingly serve authoritarianism.
A feedback loop of epic proportions.
A conceptual pastiche on ‘Squander Your Youth’ by the band Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft. A bewildered art enthusiast asked on Facebook, “What does this even mean? Why should I squander my youth?”—you might hear that as the message lurking silently within.
*The answer is that youth must be squandered, for that is its sole purpose.*
And this older art enthusiast must squander his youth because it was never the paradisical era that his parasitic memory made it out to be.
*Thanks to that systemic implant, he believes he has already truly lived.*
The message from The Stoss is: unleash the boar. Squander your youth.
In Chinese astrology, the Boar is the oldest and wisest sign.
