“He’s old enough to know that relationships don’t guarantee happiness, that the source of his pain is a patriarchal fantasy, agonizingly elaborated over decades, about love and sex as the basis of fulfillment. But he still feels he cannot be happy until this pain stops, and it will not stop until he has an experience of love that will at last disillusion him.”

The Feminist reaches the wisdom that liberates him from the imperative of seeking relationships. Ideally, this insight should stop The Feminist from seeing love and sex as a reward he is entitled to receive. Instead, Tulathimutte gives this insight an ironic outcome: The Feminist reasons that he should have an experience of love first to prove his insight true.

“I would have died for them if they’d asked, I would have thrown my bleeding body on the barricades of the patriarchy, and they would have let me do it, indifferently accepting my death as their due, with not a punctum of guilt as they go off to bed and wed my murderers. That is the long con, their big lie. By now my bachelorhood, and yours, cannot be ascribed to circumstance or bad luck, only injustice. We must reject it.”

The Feminist uses militaristic terms to underscore his argument that he has been unjustly oppressed by women, comparing himself to a partisan dying “on the barricades.” This marks the height of his distorted thinking as The Feminist co-opts the tenets of feminism to antagonize women. He turns feminism into an oxymoronic value system, representing the opposite of what it originally stood for. The choice of metaphor also foreshadows The Feminist’s eventual descent into violence.

“She used to believe the reason she was so prone to this kind of bad attention was because she herself was somehow innately ‘bad’; later she realized that not only was it the men who were bad, but that the crux of their badness was their ability to convince her she was bad. Though that doesn’t mean she isn’t bad, she sometimes thinks.”

This passage underscores the character trait that hinders Alison. Alison’s low self-esteem creates a vicious cycle in her dating life. Because her dates tend to be bad, Alison convinces herself that it is because she only attracts bad men. This affects the way she perceives the “good” Neil and why she so desperately clings to the possibility of romance between them.

“I do not think it is unfair to say you have a habit of passively consenting to miserable situations, or even baiting them out of people, so you can later weaponize your sadness […] I’ve seen it, the obvious glee you take in talking about how awful men have been to you, and now it looks like you’ve decided to make me one of them. I guess you believe that’s what makes you sympathetic, or you need it to lend gravitas to otherwise ordinary dissatisfaction. You want to drag people down into the mud with you. And when it backfires, because why would it not backfire, you fall back to your bunker of victimhood.”

Much like the QPOC friend in “The Feminist,” Neil calls Alison out for her reckless behavior, criticizing her for weaponizing her sadness against him. The similarity creates a parallel between The Feminist and Alison: Both fall back on pity as a consolation for their failures, which cements pity’s status as one of the book’s prominent symbols.

“In fact, reviewing her list, the problem is not only that much of the list applies equally to her, but also that none of it is that bad, so it functions as an index of his forgivable humanity, reminding her that it might’ve worked out, if she were a better person. What hurts the most is knowing that his rejection of her was fair.”

The irony of Alison’s contempt for Neil is that she is also too sympathetic to him to ever truly detach herself. By humanizing Neil, Alison turns her contempt inward, refusing to apply the same lens of humanism to herself. She views his rejection as fair, but doesn’t advocate for herself in spite of his rejection.

“She moves to delete the photo before remembering it is still the only tangible proof that it happened at all, so instead she makes an album called loser, uncommitted as to whether she means him or herself, and puts the photo there, revisiting it regularly. Every time she looks at it, she wants to delete it, but she can’t surrender the only thing that makes her feel anything close to love.”

The photo Neil takes of Alison grows into a powerful symbol of her romantic fantasy about him. When Alison first looks at the photo, she registers it as a grotesque reminder of their sexual encounter. When she looks at it later, however, she looks past its grotesqueness, projecting her idealization of Neil onto the image. The photo becomes evidence that it is possible for them to be together, even if it repulses her to look at it.

“Beyond the inertia and under-confidence, the deeper problem, and the main reason Kant took so long to come out, is that he is also a sadist […] It all points to a desire to rehouse his own abjection in other men; render them pathetic and ridiculous so he can feel powerful and attractive by comparison; make them suffer the punishments that he, deep in the crawl spaces of his mind, fears he deserves.”

Kant’s characterization as “a sadist” is foreshadowing. For Kant to find sexual gratification, he must inflict pain on his partner; in this dynamic, Kant believes he will find validation of his past suffering. The introduction of this sexual preference signals that in the story, Kant will either satisfy his desire or he’ll realize that he can never be satisfied, furthering his repression.

“If Kant dares to ask for what he wants—if it is even possible to articulate, rather than experience as a nightmarish mural of angry mental events—he knows Julian will leave him; or worse, he’ll try it once, realize what kind of horrible degenerate he’s dating, then leave.”

This passage inversely correlates Kant’s libido and his relationship with Julian, escalating the story’s conflict. Kant believes that being open about his desires puts his relationship at stake, so he must choose to either satisfy his libido or stay with Julian.

“Here finally Kant perceives the true rift between them: Julian doesn’t know the difference between embarrassment and shame […] Embarrassment is an event, shame a condition, one that Julian has somehow either mastered or never experienced, which explains why he’s so easygoing, and why, to him, the world is so tractable, why all seems fixable with talk. What’s inside Julian is smooth and fragrant, his desires desirable, and so his words are gift wrap, sometimes sloppy but always appreciated. Whereas if Kant ever relaxes his vigilance, allows his own sick and malign requirements to escape through the candor of voice or touch, they could never be recontained.”

This passage marks the moment that Kant detaches himself from Julian. The two men’s different experiences of shame make Julian incapable of fulfilling Kant’s fantasies. Kant is alienated by Julian’s carefree approach to humiliation—which Julian correctly interprets as performative, as befits a healthy BDSM dynamic rather than an exploitative one.

“Proceeding this way life will not be ideal, but probably sustainable, and it’s not like there’s an alternative. He only needs to make it through one life. No one’s ever proved that desires are better off fulfilled. No one literally needs love; you don’t die without it. And a substitute isn’t nothing.”

“Ahegao” ends with Kant choosing to satisfy his fantasies instead of continuing a relationship with Julian. Kant takes his resolution to a radical extreme, deciding to fall back on porn instead of engaging with anyone ever again. Though he asserts his satisfaction with his choice, framing his isolation from other men as positive illustrates The Loneliness of the Internet Age.

“I (37M) am a serial entrepreneur, inventor, and futurist who’s been his own boss since age 18. I am homeschooled, self-made, visited 29 countries and counting, never touch alcohol but a big caffeine junkie, believer in a Stoic outlook to life, dreams big, never wastes time, always has his mind on the next move, and totes family-oriented.”

This passage establishes the parameters of the story in two important ways. First, it characterizes Max as a “futurist entrepreneur,” allowing the reader to see him as a satire of real-life entrepreneurs who have become well-known. Second, its diction is very specific, evoking the register of Internet-based forums like Reddit with the use of personal identifiers such as “(37M),” in-group referents like the philosophy of stoicism, faux-casual contractions like “totes,” and cliches like “dream big” and “own boss.” The brevity of Max’s introduction is also meant to give readers a curated snapshot into his character, much like a bio on social media platforms.

“The thing that really bugged me, after all the work and temporal capital I invested into the relationship, beyond just the lack of ROI, was realizing that some people can’t be helped, even actively refuse help, and if you try to save them, they’ll yeet you down with them, so all you can do is let them learn from their own mistakes.”

Max’s central character flaw is his conviction that every social system should fit the paradigm of a business organization. This passage demonstrates this flaw as he reveals that the generosity he showed Alison was merely an investment for which he expected a return. He frames the end of the relationship as Alison’s character failing, all the while ignoring his own inability to understand her frustrations with him.

“The distance from home softened me a bit toward my mother; now that I was in a house where I was casually written off, I could see that however she went about it, she did care, and the idea had always been to make me easier to love.”

As a child, Bee turns to their social life to escape their mother’s attempts to make them present as a gender they don’t identify with. However, in adulthood, when Bee grows frustrated with their attempts to make friends, they find solace in the care their mother extends to them, which leads to them strengthening their relationship.

“For all people claim to hate being stereotyped, they love doing it to themselves, even better when someone they admire does it to them, they’re dying to be issued their personhood so they can pursue it without hesitation, hence astrology and personality quizzes.”

The tension Bee feels around the idea of identity also represents their skepticism with language. This passage finds Bee calling out the hypocrisy of identity politics, a system that Bee sees as encouraging people to reduce themselves to stereotypes. These stereotypes are packaged in fun discursive models, like “personality quizzes,” making them appealing even as they rob one of their personhood.

“Suppose it’s true: this idea that your identity imbues you with membership, a kind of inborn sorority with inherited values and traits. Sounds nice. You’re less alone. You get a shorthand for your oppression that in certain quarters commands deference. It goes some way toward feeling less crazy to understand why it’s not your fault you’re treated like dogshit. But I hate having my life judged as the output of generic forces, that however I understand or react to them is secondary to the fact that I share them with others. Identity is diet history, single-serving sociology; at its worst, a patriotism of trauma, or a prosthesis of personality.”

This passage represents the clearest distillation of Bee’s philosophy—The Struggle to Reject Imposed Identity. Bee’s considers identity an inherently reductive construct, robbing people of the agency they have to define themselves. Instead of doing the work to understand their own personhood, people accept whatever qualities an identity label bestows upon them.

“But discourse is loneliness disguised as war. What people there really want is to be perceived on their own terms, which is so, so funny. Because if the grand promise of the internet was to be whoever you want, in reality it will make of you whatever it wants, and beneath every mask is another mask mistaken for a face.”

Bee’s affinity for the Internet stems from their recognition that other people use it to ends that are ultimately futile. Bee asserts that people mistakenly use the Internet to define themselves, only to be drowned out by the noise of millions of others who are there to do the same thing, underscoring The Loneliness of the Internet Age.

“The real-life person [Tony Tulathimutte], should he exist, has also never been conclusively proven to be the sole operator of @tonytula or author of his published works, and it cannot be ruled out that The Post, @MadonnaHaraway, @tonytula, TT, and all associated Botgate characters are the creation of a yet-to-be-revealed ‘Author X.’”

Tulathimutte escalates the metafictional aspects of “Main Character” by inserting himself into the narrative. Adding to the layered metanarrative, the characters in the story conclude that Tulathimutte may not exist, blurring the line between reality and fiction to play with the reader’s sense of reality.

“[M]y own view is that this was never the intention; that Bee tried not to reach a networked mass, but ‘millions of solitudes.’ I believe this is why they created so many variations, so that nobody would consume it in the same way. If discourse is loneliness, as they wrote, then they have made this loneliness bespoke: each is for you and nobody else.”

MH-Sleuth comments that Bee helped them to overcome their loneliness by writing The Post and passing it off as a real document. This renders The Post’s veracity moot—what is important is its ability to affect the Botkin community. This commentary extends more broadly to the power of literature to affect people and make them feel less alone.

“It’s always catch-as-catch-can, but you may catch their fancy, or imagination, even their eye, if they catch you in the right light. They may even be a catch. But there is always a catch.”

The abstract “Sixteen Metaphors” often employs ambiguity in developing its second-person protagonist. In this passage, Tulathimutte plays with different meanings of the verb “catch,” which heightens the role that luck plays in a couple hitting it off. The last use of “catch” can be read several ways. Either some aspect of your character ends every relationship you get into, or you always find something wrong with the people you date.

“Etymologies, fallen meanings borne across time, are throwbacks too. Mixed metaphors fail to bear their meanings across. So they are metaphors for rejection. If you catch my meaning.”

Tulathimutte compares rejection to the mixed metaphor, suggesting that both are forms of failure. A listener cannot accept the meaning of a mixed metaphor because it appears in a form that contradicts expectations of imagery. Similarly, in interpersonal rejection, one individual rejects another because they do not meet social or personal expectations.

“We are not saying that is what the book ‘really means.’ Nor do we claim a monopoly on interpretation. It would be wrong to suggest we know anything about what you really intend. We’re only saying that it could be read this way, and if you want to avoid this kind of reading, you could straighten it out yourself by being more intentionally transparent with your intentions.”

The publisher preempts Tulathimutte’s possible response to criticism by distancing themselves from an exhaustive interpretation of the latter’s work. This undermines the rejection because the publisher is doing the same thing they will later accuse Tulathimutte of doing: trying to render themselves impervious to criticism by calling out their own faults first.

“Given the subject matter, we’d think you might be keen to the futility of writing an unrejectable book; you cannot curb a reader’s reading, nor steer their goodwill, no matter how clean your intentions or nude your soul. To attempt it is to abandon the possibility of an authentic connection with the reader, one in which you put yourself on their level (though, we suppose, at least this way you get to do the rejecting).”

The publisher stresses The Benefits of Rejection by identifying it as a prerequisite to human connection. They argue that by making his book impervious to rejection, Tulathimutte is putting himself on a different level than the reader, one where he protected from their criticisms. This, the publisher implies, is antithetical to the purpose of literature.

“It hurts to be read. When people don’t like it, that’s terrible and nothing can be done. And even when they do, they usually do so for the wrong reasons, project what isn’t there, draw the wrong conclusions, form the wrong idea about why it was written, which is just as disheartening and alienating as any rejection.”

The publisher points out that all interpersonal engagement carries inherent risks. This applies to all of the characters who find ways to avoid getting hurt by rejection and suffer all the more for it (for example, Kant refuses to open up to Julian about his fantasies and thus ends the relationship).