Bit Rot Quotes

“Collecting and hoarding seem to be about the loss of others, while philanthropy and de-accessioning are more about the impending loss of self. (Whoever dies with the most toys actually loses.)”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot

“Worrying about money is one of the worst worries. It’s like having locked-in syndrome, except you’re still moving around and doing things. Your head burns. If other people are not having money problems, it pisses you off because it reminds you that you’re limited in the ways you can express your agency in the world, and they aren’t. Worrying about money is anger-inducing because it makes you think about time: how many dollars per hour, how much salary per year, how many years until retirement. Worrying about money forces you to do endless math in your head, and most people didn’t like math in high school and they don’t like it now.”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot

“[…] if sophistication is the ability to put a smile on one's existential desperation, then the fear of a glossy sheen is actually the fear that surface equals depth.

***

[…] we wake up, we do something—anything—we go to sleep, and we repeat it about 22,000 more times, and then we die.

***

Part of our new boredom is that our brain doesn't have any downtime. Even the smallest amount of time not being engaged creates a spooky sensatino that maybe you're on the wrong track. Reboot your computer and sit there waiting for it to do its thing, and within seventeen seconds you experience a small existential implosion when you remember that fifteen years ago life was nothing but this kind of moment. Gosh, mabe I'll read a book. Or go for a walk.

Sorry.

Probably not going to happen. Hey, is that the new trailer for Ex Machina?

***

In the 1990s there was that expression, "Get a life!" You used to say it to people who were overly fixating on some sort of minutia or detail or thought thread, and by saying, "Get a life," you were trying to snap them out of their obsession and get them to join the rest of us who are still out in the world, taking walks and contemplating trees and birds. The expression made sense at the time, but it's been years since I've heard anyone use it anywhere. What did it mean then, "getting a life"? Did we all get one? Or maybe we've all not got lives anymore, and calling attention to one person without a life would put the spotlight on all of humanity and our now full-time pursuit of minutia, details and tangential idea threads.

***

I don't buy lottery tickets because they spook me. If you buy a one-in-fifty-million chance to win a cash jackpoint, you're simultaneously tempting fate and adding all sorts of other bonus probabilities to your plance of existence: car crashes, random shootings, being struck by a meteorite. Why open a door that didn't need opening?

***

I read something last week and it made sense to me: people want other people to do well in life but not too well. I've never won a raffle or prize or lottery draw, and I can't help but wonder how it must feel. One moment you're just plain old you, and then whaam, you're a winner and now everyone hates you and wants your money. It must be bittersweet. You hear all those stories about how big lottery winners' lives are ruined by winning, but that's not an urban legend. It's pretty much the norm. Be careful what you wish for and, while you're doing so, be sure to use the numbers between thirty-two and forty-nine.”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot

“I've always been interested in the unintended side effects of technology. For instance, when the car was invented, who would have thought dogs would like sticking their heads out the window to enjoy the scentscape generated by speed and wind?”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot

“Are you a minimalist? Do you take pride in a reductive life? Minimalists are actually extreme hoarders: they hoard space, and they’re just as odd as those people with seven rooms filled with newspapers, dead cats and margarine tubs”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot

“The art world is largely mistrustful of shiny things and, on some level, even fearful of them. But if sophistication is the ability to put a smile on one’s existential desperation, then the fear of a glossy sheen is actually the fear that the surface is the content. Fear of sheen is the fear that surface equals depth, that banality equals beauty, that shiny objects are merely transient concretizations of the image economy, and proof that Warhol was correct—a fact that still seems to enrage a surprising number of theoreticians”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot

“So I got to thinking that perhaps that’s what money is: a crystallization—or, rather, a homogenization—of time and free will into those things we call dollars and pounds and yen and euros. Money multiplies your time. It also expands your agency and broadens the number of things you can do accordingly. Big-time lottery winners haven’t won ten million dollars—they’ve won ten thousand person-years of time to do pretty much anything they want anywhere on Earth. Windfalls are like the crystal meth version of time and free will.”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot

“Steven Spielberg once said, which is that people will sit through twenty minutes of anything.”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot

“This document was created in Microsoft Word, which in the year 2014 is pathetic.”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot: stories + essays

“Humanity actually seems to be split down the middle on the definition of luxury: those who want gilded leopard-shaped teapots and those who want to live in the white box their iPhone came in.”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot: stories + essays

“We lost handwriting and got Comic Sans in return. That’s a very bad deal.”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot: stories + essays

“Federal and provincial politicians were about as functional and helpful as Peter, Chris, Stewie and Brian Griffin drinking ipecac together on Family Guy.”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot: stories + essays

“His lack of story seemed to be of the which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg variety. For example, he thought that if he learned how to hang-glide, then maybe his life’s story could begin there—an adventure! Perhaps there would be a mystical moment up in the sky! But wait—in order to have such adventures, Craig would have to be into hang-gliding to begin with. If he rushed out and chose an activity at random, would he now have a meaningful experience? As Craig wasn’t actually into anything, he was trapped in the chicken-egg loop. Where to start? And how? He felt that his attempts to generate a life story were futile.”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot

“I cautiously parked in front of the craft store, went inside and found the glue gun, which, back home, would cost $12.99. There in Arizona it was $1.29, which is to say, it was basically free, and at that price they should have just gone out to the freeway and hurled glue guns at passing cars.”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot

“The show’s host assumed I was going to be an ironic slacker wise-ass and said, “I guess you must think this whole mall is kind of hokey and trashy,” and I said,

“No such thing.”

He was surprised. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that I feel like I’m in another era that we thought had vanished, but it really hasn’t, not yet. I think we might one day look back on photos of today and think to ourselves, ‘You know, those people were living in golden times and they didn’t even know it. Communism was dead, the economy was good and the future, with all of its accompanying technologies, hadn’t crushed society’s mojo like a bug.’ ”

Silence.

It’s true: Technology hadn’t yet hollowed out the middle class and turned us into laptop click junkies, and there were no new bogeymen hiding in the closet. We may well look back at the 1990s as the last good decade”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot

“Do you think that being quick to judge, and being quick to pre-emptively please your internal 400-level professor, means you ignore or dismiss things that might actually be interesting? Is it better to be safe than wrong? Do you sometimes see people talking and you can tell it’s not even them doing the talking—they’re merely channelling their internal professor? Does this activate your own internal professor? Do you call them on it? No, you don’t. Nobody ever does. It’s why things largely don’t change. It’s really boring to listen to two people channelling their internal professors. Inside their heads they’re getting an A+ on a nonexistent essay. It’s beyond predictable”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot

“One form of public speaking not usually recognized as such is teaching. I’ve had a few experiences in educational situations and they’ve been worse than flies crawling over my face. I don’t know if it’s me or what, but having to speak to college students is like having to address a crowd of work-shirking entitlement robots whose only passion, aside from making excuses as to why they didn’t do their assignments, is lying in wait, ready to pounce upon the tiniest of PC infractions. You can’t pay teachers enough to do what they do. Having been in their shoes, even briefly, has converted me into an education advocate. Double all teaching salaries now”
― Douglas Coupland, Bit Rot