Rich Kids of Instagram: A Novel - Maya Sloan.epub

Rich Kids of Instagram, the novel based on the popular Tumblr of the same name, isn’t a good book. It’s filled with horrible, vapid characters that make the characters on Gossip Girl seem like scholars, who have names like Desdemona Goldberg, along with a butler named Balthazar, and people who still say things like, “What the fuck do I know about Brooklyn? I don’t do Brooklyn.” It contains lines like, “Here I was in a fully loaded penthouse with no parental guidance and plenty of sexual frustration. I could have been the poster child for needy rich-girl slut who confuses fucking with affection. I was a masturbation fantasy and somehow my boyfriend had not noticed.” It’s tough to take any of this seriously, and even harder to believe people so terrible could exist (even though we know they actually do), but the thing about Rich Kids of Instagram is that it’s so insanely bad, it’s actually really enjoyable.

I know what you’re thinking: “Here’s the part where he brings up Sontag’s ‘Notes on Camp’ or references a John Waters film, or where he says something like, ‘You’re concentrating too hard on the writing; there’s a lot of truth, a lot of deeper meaning about society and humanity beneath the surface.'” But no: Rich Kids of Instagram is terrible. It is, in fact, garbage — it’s a garbage book, and I sorta love that. It’s a dumbed-down (if you can imagine this) Less Than Zero with a sort of Great Gatsby wealth obsession and an elusive billionaire who throws a party.