Copyright © 2018 by Wil C. Fry.
Some rights reserved.
Author: Luvvie Ajayi (a.k.a. “Awesomely Luvvie”)
Year: 2016
Genre: Pop Culture, Relationships, Opinion
Publisher: Holt Paperbacks
ISBN 9781627796064 (trade paperback)
Author’s website
Author’s Wikipedia page
Summary
Nigerian-born, Chicago-reared Luvvie Ajayi — known to the internet as “Awesomely Luvvie” — turned blogging popularity into real cash with this New York Times bestseller, helped along by glowing reviews in The Huffington Post (here), The New York Times (here), The Root (here), and others. I ended up trying to read it upon my wife’s recommendation, not being familiar with the author.
Ajayi says this book is meant to be “a playbook, a guide to help people get a bit of common sense and some behavior as they navigate today’s hyper-obsessions with pop culture, social-media sharing, and outright navel gazing” (Introduction, pg. 2).
“If Oprah and Deepak came up today, in a world where more people die in botched selfie attempts than in shark attacks, this might be the book they’d recommend.”Right there, I knew we might have a problem. Deepak Chopra believes you can live forever if you have the right “state of mind” and claims he cures cancer with “quantum healing”; I would never read a book he recommends. And in every day and age, almost every other cause of death has been more lethal than death by shark. There simply have never been very many people who die in shark attacks (source) and I’m regularly surprised that people don’t know this.— Introduction, pg. 2
But I decided to forge ahead. I agree with Ajayi, in principle, that many people today seem to have skipped the class where they learn how to behave in civilized society.
What I Liked Least About It
Before finishing the introduction, my brain grew itchy from the repeated uses of pop slang like “side-eye” and “shade”. If you know me very well, you know I’ve never been a big fan of whatever hip patois the kids are dishing out — even when I was a youngster. I don’t have a particular complaint about young people slang; I simply have never gotten as excited about it as other people do. And Luvvie is really excited about it. She even has footnotes throughout the book to explain how excited she is about it. (Seriously.) Like using “damb” instead of “damn” — the footnote explains that she chose the former “because it’s more fun... Get used to this.”
Once past the short (and somewhat compelling) introduction, the very first judgment Ajayi provides in the very first chapter is the “annoying and assholish” behavior of standing up from your airline seat “like ten minutes” prior to deplaning. Try as I might, I could think of nothing “annoying or assholish” about that behavior. As an infrequent flyer, partly due to my dislike of being folded into small spaces, when I do fly, I take the first legal opportunity to stand because my legs, buttocks, and back all need to straighten out for a minute — as soon as possible. I’ve always assumed that’s why other people stood up then too. In fact, I have found myself judging those who remain seated until it’s time to get off, because everyone else has to wait around while those slowpokes gather up their scattered belongings, unload the overhead bin, scoop purses out from under the seat, etc. — couldn’t you have done that while we were all standing? Instead of typing into your laptop about how we’re annoying assholes?
Don’t get distracted here. That last paragraph isn’t about airplanes and whether you should sit or stand after the plane gets to the gate. It’s about not jumping the gun on judgment of others. Luvvie did jump the gun, and didn’t stop to think why we lanky older folks want to unfold ourselves from the seat. And I jumped the gun too, by not thinking about why that nice-looking Nigerian-American lady in first class didn’t get up. Maybe we all should slow down on the judgment a bit if this is what we’re doing with it.
Before turning the page, she throws in a really tired cliche:
“There are two types of people in this world: people who can be on time and Nigerians.”She followed with the just-as-tired joke that “I am pretty sure I’ll be late to my own funeral” (I don’t know who said this first, but it’s been an old joke for a long time). Don’t misunderstand; I’m not saying an author can’t throw in an overused joke once in a while. But I expect it to be acknowledged that it’s a tired cliche, not spouted out excitedly like you just thought of it. Then she went on for multiple pages, explaining how this tardiness works — as if we’ve never heard this joke before. When I lived in Oklahoma, it was called “Indian Time” (referring to Native Americans rather than people from India). In Arkansas, many black people I knew used “CP Time” to explain their own lateness. In south Texas, I heard the phrase “Mexican Time”. I’m pretty sure every locale has some form of person-of-color oriented phrase to describe people who are frequently late. So I’m curious as to what kind of reader would laugh along at these multiple pages of clichéd explanation.— pg. 7
The next complaint/judgment was about “dinner scrooges” — another tired cliche that every third comedian in the history of the world has droned on about: “the person who eats a lot and wants to split the bill equally.” This also took up a couple of pages. When we got to the part where each diner’s share was $65, I developed insomnia. If you’re voluntarily eating at restaurants where your share could possibly be $65, you do not get to complain about your share being $65. Good lord. I’ve only ever paid that much once — and the amount was for two people.
Through all of this there were repeated instances of “side-eye”, “whatever”, and yes, even “YOLO” (though I’m certain she used that last one ironically).
Chapter two is about the various kinds of friends that aren’t really good friends. This was stupendously profound and original. I’m kidding though. It was entirely mundane and — again — a cliche. “The friend who only calls when they need something.” Ha. Ha. Never heard that one before.
What I Liked Most About It
She uses the Oxford comma, which is a rare treasure these days. Thank you for that.
Conclusion
I should have stopped reading when I saw that chapter three’s title inclued the word “Baehood”, but I kept going, trying not to be a judgmental ass. All the way to the middle of chapter four. Which talked a lot about “anal bleach”. Then I quit.
This book sold many copies, and Ms. Ajayi’s website gets a lot of hits, so I think it’s safe to assume there IS an audience for this book. It seems evident there are plenty of people who have never heard the late-to-my-own-funeral trope and just as many people who find humor in characterizing people of color as always running late. I am convinced there exist among us many people who want authors to use “side-eye”, “bae”, and “shade” more frequently. I am not one of those people, so I did not enjoy this book — I couldn’t even finish it, though I did read dozens of pages beyond the glaring warning signs.
To be fair: In MOST instances, the behavior at which Ajayi “throws shade” is understandably in need of calling-out. We’ve all had that friend (“Tina” in the book) who dates a degenerate loser and wished we could knock some sense into them. We’ve all come across a bunch of these situations and wished more people had more common sense or common courtesy. So I’m not disagreeing with the message here. Just the delivery.
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