In 1882 Friedrich Nietzsche declared “God is dead” and then in 1945 Jean-Paul Sartre posited, “existence precedes essence”. But nearly 50 years later Lloyd Cole sang, “you might call it ultraviolet radiation / it’s only sunlight”.

Many of you have probably not read the book Feed by Matthew Tobin Anderson. It's okay; it's not the best. I mean, it's fine, but like, do you really NEED to read it? "No," is the answer.

Anyway, the book is about a future where people basically have the internet installed in their brains and mainly centers around a small group of teenagers living in this world. It has various comments on economic class, societies obsession with social media, and of course, since it was written in 2002, there's a whole "young adult" love subplot.
 
But the most interest concept presented in the book, and the part that still sticks with me is the following:

I think we're going to start this review with me talking about my favourite vodka. I think it will be clear as to why as we go on, but just bear with me for a moment.

At this point in history, I'm mainly a rum drinker, but when I first started drinking, my liquor of choice was vodka. I tried a lot of different brands and types of vodka. Pro tip: vanilla vodka and Pepsi or Coke makes a pretty delicious combo for when you want to add a sweet flavour to your drinking.

Boy, the new Zeal & Ardor album is good.

Oh, that's probably bad. I shouldn't start out with the direct opinion, right? It defeats the purpose of you reading the rest of the article. But, then again, I can't be accused of burying the lead. Maybe what I should do is act like I didn't start with any of this. I could edit it out I guess, but... no, that seems like work.