Harassment Architecture

by Mike Ma

“At a glance, Mike comes off like a 1980s teen movie bully on downers.” - Playboy Magazine“…Mike Ma bragged about crashing a White House press conference.” - The Huffington Post. Now, you can read his long-awaited first book. Harassment Architecture has been described as an almost plotless and violent march against what the author calls the "lowerworld". It's the story of a man, sick on his surrounds, bound by them, but still seeking the way out.

Genres: Fiction, Philosophy, Politics, Novels, Literature, 21st Century, Comedy

146 pages, Paperback

First published April 27, 2019

Reviews

[Callaghan S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Chaotic 21st century pastiche of Hemingway, Kierkegaard, Kaczynski, and the guy in your econ class who wears combat boots and carries a gallon of water all day. As much anti-literature as it is anti-world. I completely disavow this novel.

[Trinity · Rating 5 out of 5]

“We can have Rome again, if we smash enough BMW windows”

[Ryan · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mike Ma is the exact image of what a spoiled, rotten spawn of the Joker and Patrick Bateman with literary pretentions would look like. Now imagine that that same creature popped so many 'red pills' that he then vomited this book, which seems intended to function as a dilapidated shrine for his shoddy, trite brand of nihilism and boring hatred towards humanity.

Granted, having had 0% knowledge of the author beforehand, the work was funny for a page or two, as it looked as though he was trying a self-aware, self-deprecating zoomer version of American Psycho. But that was before I realized this work is much less of a 'dark comedy’ than he lets on. Oh, and it was also before he started spewing his ever-accumulating pile of repugnant, noxious slush that is his prose-style. His deeply odious background also did not help with this.

So seeing that he's expelled a flippant treatise—apparently dedicated to his underdeveloped and vague war against everything—it naturally includes toxic-levels of sincere, unadulterated hatred against, but not at all limited to:

-The homeless
-women, more women, and women hair stylists
-New York City residents (he calls its populace 'rodents’),
-homosexuals
-Jewish people (he is shamelessly anti-Semitic)
-multiculturalism (in any degree)
-‘the minorities’
-‘civil discussion’

To cut this as short as possible, this rancid work is worthy of contempt, and is easily the vilest thing I'll read all year. I'd definitely recommend steering clear of this small sludge heap of a book.

[Ciro · Rating 5 out of 5]

He’s not saying to burn down society. He’s not saying to create chaos. He’s not saying to foment panic and fear. He’s not saying to go on a 3 day sleep deprived rambling tirade though the city.

[John Hanna · Rating 5 out of 5]

Imagine Catcher in the Rye, but not complete dogshit.

[Nick Black · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reminds me of myself at 16 years old. So angry! So bitter! So eager to lash out at our oppressors, which seemed at that time to be the whole world (though I disliked other white men just as strongly as Ma holds them up as idols). I probably wouldn't have read this had I known what it was: Mike Ma was a Breitbart guy, a big friend of Milo Yiannopoulos (a gay little imp I've always found rather amusing and cute, hardly the threat to democracy people made him out to be), and while I'm a right-leaning Libertarian, I think the whole alt-right scene to be a dull and dreary one, full of sexually frustrated, kinda lame, and ultimately proto-totalitarian guys (though never as truly totalitarian nor fascistic as the archliberals). This rather nasty little tome won't be changing my opinion of the alt-right, though it did have some wonderfully outstanding lines among the bric-a-brac. Lots of errors, though--could Ma not find an editor who was willing to look past the "toxicity"? Overall, I can't recommend this novella, but I do wish I'd have written down the page or so of material worth keeping close to the heart. Ma's an amusing and interesting guy, and not unintelligent, but it's hard to see that through the misogyny and racism and blatant overuse of the word "faggot", clearly done for shock value.

Anyway, whoever recommended this to me (I honestly can't remember) as "the first book [you] read through the evening, unable to put down" -- ya got me, har de har har.

(Any caterwauling in the comments of a boring and boilerplate nature, especially any tired trashtalk about "nazis" etc., will be deleted. I'm an antistatist and anarchist, and the far-left is no better than the alt-right in my mind--probably worse, as it has a clearer path to power--and certainly less likely to move me to an odd bit of laughter.)

[Albert · Rating 5 out of 5]

The most accurate portrayal of 21st century life I’ve yet seen.

[Shortsman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book released in 2019, get it before Amazon bans it!

[John Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quirky read which struck a number of chords with me, despite all the macho posturing and attention grabbing shock tactics. It’s another ‘Revolt Against the Modern World’, with all its post industrial revolution developments, which take man further away from nature, at the expense of his/her well-being. By setting his writings within an unconvincing fictional mould he is able - just about - to get away with some of his more outrageous outbursts.

The planet is poisoned and populated by ugliness of body and mind. That has to change. The ‘system(s)’ programme us, soft bellied mortals that we are, to accept second best, aided by chemical intake – drugs, alcohol, processed food etc etc etc…
“I suppose we all deserve to have some place in nature. A place where the trees are packed so tightly that it rains twice. Once from the sky, once from the leaves and branches. It smells a certain way too. Maybe if we all lived in places like that, things would be better. Maybe not. Most people don’t even deserve a life like this.”

“The solution is always found in nature. Whether you decide to dissipate into it or take it on occasion, like medicine, that’s your choice.

Nature always wins. It has never lost, and I pray it never will.”

Far from being a dry read, it is very funny in parts. It's also the sort of book you read under your blanket, like your very first porn mag, lest your disapproving mum catches you!

[Tristan · Rating 1 out of 5]

An insufferably pretentious alt-right wankfest that is buried quite deep up its own ass. Written by an avowed bigot who wants to return to the forest and die of dysentery rather than contend with the horror of a multicultural society. Attempts to be a Hunter Thompson style gonzo ideological piece, but executed poorly and coming from a toxic ideology that Hunter wouldn't advocate in a million years. Seeks to shock the reader with misanthropy that is not as radical as the author would have you believe- but is rather the tired worldview of a regressive reactionary huffing his own vacuous fumes. Hateful trash. Very high on its own farts. Bukowski for groypers, minus any of the talent.

[Grips · Rating 4 out of 5]

The rankest sewer would be a breath of fresh air beside the cursed landscape of our cities today. Not enough nooks anymore for all the dregs to scurry at dawn’s beckon. Brazen, hungry, they teem the streets in broad daylight. The Wall Street cannibals, the infectious sodomites, the satanist elites, the infanticidal death cult of feminism, the sjw harpies blistering with insanity, hounding, frothing, scowling, their dead soulless eyes.
Dopers, politicians, preachers, whores, hippies, liars, pushers, poets and thieves, impudent animals the lot of them.
Dark clouds of hate and pollution loom over the concrete jungle. Stagnant, motionless, they make shade for beasts to lurk at ease. Swamped in a pestilent fog of fraud, selfishness and greed the great vermin meat grinder churns away, untiring. Savage scum fuck and die over themselves. The bodies pile faster than they're cleaned. Their filthy grime spills over from a fetid compost heap of festering disease. The streets are sewers; and Death works overtime.
Truly the degeneracy of our times has stirred the seething fires of hell to boil us from beneath while the shining wrath of God scorches from above. There will be no flood this time, but a great cleansing fire; rampant raging flames will engulf the earth to purge the world of sinners and their wicked ways.
I, a non believer, bow down in repentance to Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior and devote my arms to Him.
Deus Vult, Amen.

[Steven · Rating 5 out of 5]

A misanthropic book in the same vein as Palahniuk, Ellis, Celine, and Sartre. It’s obviously a more modern approach to these authors and less story driven than Ellis or Palahniuk. What I really mean by comparing him to these authors is that it’s in the same manner and sub genre of transgressive writing. Definitely worth reading if any of those authors are your cup of tea.

[Malum · Rating 4 out of 5]

If Tyler Durden, Patrick Bateman, and 4chan all got together to write a book, this is exactly what it would be.

If you are easily offended, this book will disgust you and you will hate it. If you don't take it too seriously and you have a dark sense of humor, you will probably find this book really funny.

[Seraphim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Disregard gluten, open carry an RPG.

Three feet on the gas pedal, never stop accelerating.

[Ben Arzate · Rating 2 out of 5]

I thought about giving this a full review, but by the end I really stopped giving a shit about Ma's dipshit rants about how alcohol is bad and fast food makes you gay.

This gets compared to American Psycho a lot. It's basically the opposite of that book, though. American Psycho is a satire about how yuppie culture is so awful it allows a sociopath like Patrick Bateman to operate with impunity. This is a book by an asshole angry that he doesn't live in a culture as hateful and cruel as he is, and he doesn't get to beat women for annoying him or kill minorities for existing.

Two stars because there actually are some really funny moments. Ultimately though, the only reason to read this is to see exactly how hollow and shallow the philosophy of people like Mike Ma really is.

Also, even though Mike Ma is supposed to be a professional designer, the typesetting is really sloppy and the edition I read is like the third one.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic and disturbing, maybe it's just disturbing because I can relate with the protagonist. I honestly don't know how I feel about it but I'm okay with that. So many books are put in neat little boxes, adorned with nice little ribbons. This isn't that, this book challenges you. It points out how disgusting this world has become in many ways, maybe Evola was right, maybe we're living in the Kali Yuga. Anyways, this book is well worth the read.

[A · Rating 5 out of 5]

I shall describe this book as follows: the no holds barred, rebel-reactionary look on the modern world expressed without reserve via the medium of fiction. If you share a disgust with the modern world, then it is likely that some passages in here will resonate with you. The people who are really alienated in the modern world are those that just want things to be as they always have been, which they most likely will return to after the big collapse. The natural order of everything, from what we throw down our gullets, to our connection to nature, to the ability to experience the divine and beauty, to even being able to say the truth are very hard if not impossible to obtain today. Everything becomes an overthought, self-referential mess where delusion runs wild and countering the delusion means that you are locked up in jail.

It's not just impossible to say the truth in public, but nigh everything around us — the writing, the art, the architecture, the talk, the habits, the mannerisms, the aspirations — are disgusting and degrading, especially to those who aspire higher. You can only escape this mess if you come across a bastion of divine, unified beauty through a gathering of like minded people praising God. And yet even the supposed institutions doing this suck up the culture and values around them like a person who swallows needles. Refuges are hard to find, and their supreme value is unnoticed by the diseased souls all around us. Yet, even then, the rest of one's week is spent surrounded by a nauseating culture that is so sick that it revels in its own bile. If sin has always been with Man, then today sin has become most moderns' God. Today is a singularity, not going upwards, but going in the direction of Hell.

I listened to the audiobook in one go because the Audible narrator did a masterful job, especially in the strongly rhetorical parts of the book (see here: https://www.bitchute.com/video/lMkk3z...).

[Dagaz Mont Verde · Rating 5 out of 5]

Harassment Architecture is a look towards all the vice that consumes modern man, and a great conversation starter. Don't worry, it's a dark comedy.

"I'm not a scumbag, I checked if there was any significant damage to his car beforehand - there was, that's why I left."

[Vladivostok · Rating 4 out of 5]

Burn it down so that we may return to an older, purer world where the ancient wisdom of our elders is respected and we are once again filled with spiritual wonderment by the mysteries of our universe.

[nero · Rating 3 out of 5]

I think that giving this book any sort of real rating would be disingenuous - but if I had to, it'd be both 1 and 5 stars at the same time, so... I'll settle for 3.

I disavow the hatred, bigotry and violence expressed in the book, but there were many passages and even whole chapters I quite liked, and at its core this book is a critique of our current state of society - and the state of mankind - that I largely agree with and I am sure his opinions resonate with many others. Also, admittedly, I find his writing style to be refreshing and the stark contrast between sentences often had me laughing.

Do I think this is all just "dark humor" and he's "making fun of himself"? No and yes, to a certain degree. I believe that Mike genuinely does harbor hatred towards the groups of people mentioned in the book, just maybe not to the same extent. Do I find it acceptable? No. But he's as free as the rest of us to speak his mind, and in my honest opinion, it's always better for these things to be out in the open rather than fester and stew somewhere in the dark.

All that aside - Mike's music is pretty good.

[/Fitbrah/ · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great book bogged down by the author's lack of experience. It does have some great raw and passionate moments and works well as a gym read.

[Peter · Rating 1 out of 5]

It had been a while since I had a look at any far-right literary productions, so I downloaded this self-published novel (of sorts) that’s been making the rounds. I can’t really say it’s the “hot new thing” among the nazi set, however, for a few reasons. The first is out of the author’s or anyone’s control- the unmerciful pace of events. Back in 2019 or maybe late 2018 when Ma first opened Word Trump-fatigue was cool with younger extremely online reactionaries, “traditionalist” nihilism was in- accelerationism, abandonment of society and efforts to “red pill” others, blah blah. But in 2020 Trump is the door through which reactionaries can walk into their violence fantasies, as embodied in the person of Kyle Rittenhouse, a chubby-cheeked little Trump partisan and cop-lover who probably thinks Julius Evola is a brand of olive oil. He’s done a lot more than the Boogaloo Boys, the right-wing nihilists of the type to maybe read Mike Ma, who must feel a certain impotence and shame that this little dork gets all the acclaim while they stand around in their Hawaiian shirts, scared to do anything.

In a more direct and culpable sense we can’t really call “Harassment Architecture” new or interesting because it reads like nothing so much as certain portions of the edgy internet circa 2002. The racism is less coy here than it usually was back then, and some of the references are different, but otherwise, it’s all the same shit. The philosophical maunderings of a callow young man, characterized in this instance by cheap paradoxes. He’s insincere, but aware of his own insincerity and that abates things somehow. He knows he’s been sheltered, but rages against the conformity and security of mainstream society. There’s a lot of flights of violent fantasy- probably more here as a percentage of the text than was usual back in the old days, but it’s still the same shit. These, along with delighting in bigotry and slurs, are meant to show you that the man narrating is above your liberal pieties, a real badass, though even at this late date Ma indulges in the early oughts edgelord’s game of “do I reallllly mean it or am I just edgy??” They can never commit, even to their own inability to commit. At the core, you see the same dumb paradox born of insecurity: the world is shit, and I’m going to endlessly bitch and moan about it, but I’m still the big winner in all of the conventional senses- Ma goes out of his way to remind you of how much money he has, how many women want him, how much he can lift (pictures of the author show a rather pencil-necked little dipshit, but whatever).

All of which is to say, Ma and the online boys I knew in my long ago youth are/were ripping off the same people- chiefly Bret Easton Ellis and Chuck Palahniuk. Two gay men, for whatever that’s worth. I always preferred Palahniuk out of the two — at least he came up with some entertaining high concept book ideas, more than can be said for Ellis — but with both of them you get the same tired Gen-X wrangle with irony and sincerity. I haven’t kept close track of where Palahniuk has gone with it, but can’t help but notice Ellis has basically gone the way of many edgelords of his generation- finger-wagging the younger generations about safe spaces and trigger warnings, blah blah. In any event, it’s a thin, dry vein for my entire life’s worth of supposedly innovative literary writers to have worked, and no amount of violent posturing from Mike Ma makes him any different from the stupid boys who were doing the same thing he was doing twenty years ago.

At bottom, all of these right-wing edgelords — Ellis, Ma, the ones I knew in the oughts — are prissy little bitches, too, for all their machismo and violence fantasizing. They all want a manager to complain to. Patrick Bateman wants his comped bellinis sent back and/or a God to take away his (completely contrived) pain, Ma whines about how New York smells and how he doesn’t get to live amongst “marble columns” and “great warriors.” I remember a boy who lived to make Jew jokes and show off early-oughts shock sites who was genuinely scandalized by public breast-feeding. They are not getting the consumer experience they were promised from life and raising hell on the yelp reviews. In this, only their self-consciousness separates them from the gormless suburban Kyles and Karens that make up the mainstream right, and mostly just serves to make them less sufferable.

Ma likes to fantasize about the 1990s as the last good time. Nothing really original there, either, the edgelords I knew twenty years ago idolized the eighties and seventies and sometimes even the early nineties too. Moreover, fascists always pine for a time that didn’t exist, and in typical navel-gazing, zero commitment style, Ma admits that his ideal nineties didn’t either, even as he insists people need to die because he didn’t get to experience it. His “traditionalism” is a matter of pining for some mix of the nineties and the ersatz classicism of boys raised with “Assassin’s Creed” and other video game versions of the distant past. I bring it up, out of all the unoriginal elements in this book, because I think it illustrates part of the reason we don’t get good reactionary literary writers anymore. There used to be a lot of them, but it seems the last one, Naipaul, died without an inheritor.

Ma’s pining for the nineties, and his “traditionalism” and that of his peers more generally, are the tell. The entire right, no matter how “intellectual” or “edgy,” certainly in America and possibly world-wide, has been sucked into the cheap nostalgic sentimentality that the likes of Reagan learned to weaponize for electoral purposes. You need some distance from what’s sold to the rubes to do literature, and no matter how hard they struggle to be different, the contemporary far right can no more pull it off than the most abject red state Fox News casualty. “Harassment Architecture” is supposed to be the ne plus ultra of contemporary far-right nihilism and this little shit is getting all weepy and nostalgic for nineties bike rides (never mind the nineties were an era of “stranger danger,” getting things right isn’t his strong suit). Nope, the right and toxic nostalgic sentimentality are stuck together, and good reactionary literature is just one of the many casualties of their union. ‘

[Iain · Rating 5 out of 5]

Modernity is miasmatic and illogical, we all glean it's insidious nature in flashes. This book is like dunking your head into a trough of understanding and a composed fury at this spiritual hole into which our species has been dug. Who dug the hole? If that's not obvious you're a fucking idiot but this book will make you less of one, you idiot. Bless you Mike, you exude the only energy that could possibly make such a morally bankrupt age bareable. In conclusion purchase your weight in artillery and [REDACTED].

Reread on 3/6/20
He was so right. It's only become more correct as time goes on. Gay Cops On Fire.

[Michael · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave up after about 40 pages. Way too much hate, some deserved but most of it just boils down to senseless racism and misogyny that goes undeserved.
In the end it is just some edgy scribbling by the some young, uneducated shitposter who had rejected the world thanks to some halfbaked theories while trying to imitate some Kaczynski sort of mindset that, due to intellectual shortcomings and pure laziness of thinking, are never achieved in even the slightest way.
Instead of buying this book one could just save the money and head off to one of the many anonymous imageboards. Same content for less.

[Lemma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I disavow.

[Fox · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm glad I pirated this.

"It's both good and original, but the good parts aren't original and the original parts aren't good."

[Hayden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Accelerationism in practice. Highly entertaining and thought provoking. Was better than expected from a meme book like this.

[René · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely do love this book, one of my all time favourites.

[Hux · Rating 2 out of 5]

I can't remember where I first heard about this book but I had a feeling it would be some kind of modernist manifesto decrying the progressive decay of western civilisation (which it was). As such, I thought it might appeal to me. Sadly, after some initially enjoyable pages (nearly halfway), it really began to get on my nerves. The problem is format, it's essentially a book where a misanthropic man sporadically gives his opinions on the state of the world. Fun to begin with, full of cynicism and volatile hatred for the banal niceties of the modern world, full of entertaining transgressive thought that would be deemed (by the very dull) as outrageous or shocking content. This is essentially a polemic by a man whose distaste for the blandness of an ever left-leaning civilisation vomits onto the page.

Like I said, I was enjoying it for a while. But then it just gets very repetitive and self-indulgent. The male equivalent of Agua Viva by Lispector but more... chronically online. Everything about this book screams... here is my internet assembled philosophy. It's like reading someone's edgy blog about Ted Kacynski. He hates hipsters who go to thrift stores to buy books but then five pages later starts telling you about the books he bought from a thrift store (because his hipster tastes are more valid). It would be tempting to say this is deliberate but I don't think so. Because later, after lamenting the mediocrity of a western existence permeated with ennui and routine, he will whine about some band that he loves (Homeshake -- they're not that good). Or he'll criticise political correctness and the late stage capitalist nightmare of soulless human interactions. Or he'll fantasise about and celebrate mass killings. Then moan about women and blacks. But fundamentally, he will fixate on the lack of beauty in the world, this especially demonstrated by brutalist architecture which (more by design than accident he implies) is purposely meant to crush and defeat us, turn us into self-hating automatons. I don't disagree with a lot of his opining (especially regarding architecture) but it's all presented in a very dull and obvious way. There's no plot or characters to hang any of it on, just relentless teenage angst and whining. To be fair, he does include a warning at the beginning: 

If you came here expecting coherent plot or structure, you bought or stole the wrong book.

Fair enough. But none of this changes the fact that the book drones on. If you're into this kind of incel rebellion, or a book that posits that the left have ruined civilisation (and I am), or you like misanthropic characters of the American Psycho variety, who crave saying the N-word, and find the trappings of modernity to be repugnant, this might have something for you. But I doubt it. The book just doesn't have enough meat on its bones.

Occasionally, it can be fun to read, even offer up some intriguing truths about modern life. That we secretly like it when there's a mass shooting or terrorist attack, for example, because we're so bored of our tedious routines, of MacDonald's and Netflix, of Steve from accounts who just had a baby and won't shut up about it, that we crave a disturbance, a crash, a reminder that life can be more than this, more visceral and authentic, more immediate, more akin to the word ALIVE! All true, and yes, sometimes you will stand on a train station and think: "what if I pushed that woman onto the tracks. What would that feel like?" But these little moments are all lost in a rather dense format that, after a while, begs to be more coherent or just significantly more entertaining. You just feel like you need a break, some dialogue, a plot point, an event, anything -- but it's just one blog post after another.

Honestly, you'd be better off reading Catcher in the Rye. At least that book has some heart. Alternatively, you might try Houellebecq. Because it felt to me like this guy was just... tying too hard. 

[Z Ross · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hemingway in a skull mask, this book captures the unease and desire for chaos in our times. Pulls of comedic radicalization and takes the people that are killing our world by the horns. Very stream of consciousness style writing, somewhat surreal.