# “Don’t Make Me Think”

<blockquote>He knows🤯➡️ the mirror🪞 was a tiger🐯, and he can feel it stalking him now, crouching in the tall grasses⬆️🎋 of the mind🧠👻.</blockquote>

<blockquote>This page is slowing down Firefox.
To speed up your browser, stop this page.</blockquote>


## Contents


## Review

["Don't Make Me Think"](https://web.archive.org/web/20210730121632/https://zerohplovecraft.wordpress.com/2021/07/07/dont-make-me-think/) by Zero H.
P. Lovecraft is better than _God-Shaped Hole_ ([my review](/god-shaped-hole))—if you can ignore the emoji. This is a big "if". Every few words of the story, a group of emoji (two on average) illustrates the meaning of the word it follows. Some are pretty clever visual puns, like "🧠👻" for "mind", but most aren't. Every word that has an emoji sequence associated with it seems to always have the same sequence. It looks like the emoji were added with "replace all" after the story was written. There is a thematic justification for it, but, *no*. If at some point the emoji break the pattern and start whispering secret messages, I removed them too soon to find out. (Update: I have found no secret messages by skimming the emoji through the text.)

If you follow my example (below), you will be able to read a Chinese-themed story of a boy growing up with Neuralink who finds freedom and masculinity in the criminal underworld.
But what is freedom?  There are Borges references and an excellent Lovecraft pun. The plot borrows heavily from Borges's _gaucho_ story ["The Dead Man"](!W "The Dead Man (short story)"). Zero H. P. Lovecraft's usual themes make an appearance: the digital world intruding on the real, seduction, addiction, infection, cults, information filtering, neurochemistry metaphors, mirrors, markets, and eating bugs. While, as usual, the work makes plain the author's politics and scorn for the world it depicts (one of the fake citations is "The Conservative Case for State-Enforced Homosexuality"), it does not turn into a pamphlet the way _God-Shaped Hole_ did. The third-person present-tense narration works surprisingly well once you read it in emoji-free [diminished reality](http://cyborganthropology.com/Diminished_Reality). The structure of the story fittingly reflects the main character's reality breaks. Once again, the story feels too long, but not to the same extent as _God-Shaped Hole_. In the end, this is the author's strongest work since "The Gig Economy". The concepts of digital nootropics and the Uber Micro security system, which I don't want to spoil by explaining, stood out to me.


## Overcoming authorial intent {#emoji}

Wait until the page loads fully and the WordPress script replaces emoji with images (if it does this in your browser).
Open the developer tools and paste the following in the console:

```JavaScript
Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('p img.emoji')).forEach(x => x.remove());
Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('h5, p')).forEach(x => x.innerText = x.innerText.replace(/\p{Emoji}/gu, ''));
```

This will remove the emoji from everything but the chapter titles and a few lists.


## Real citations {#citations}

- "Thunberg, 1896, _Förnimmelserne vid till samma ställe lokaliserad, samtidigt pägäende köld-och värmeretning_"
- ["Bressloff, Paul C.; Cowan, Jack D.; Golubitsky, Martin; Thomas, Peter J.; Weiner, Matthew C., March 2002. _What Geometric📐🔁 Visual👁⬇️🔁 Hallucinations🤩🎆 Tell📖🎙➡️ Us About the Visual👁⬇️🔁 Cortex🧠_"](https://www.math.utah.edu/~bresslof/publications/01-3.pdf)
- ["Maddux, Desmond, 2000, _Addiction🎲🌀 or dependence?_"](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10885040/)
- ["Mickey et al, 2007, _Hypocrite That You Are_"](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/will-you-fight-or-will-you-perish-like-a-dog)
- ["Dean, J, Liu, T, Huff, S, et al., 2019, _Biosynthesis and extracellular concentrations of N,N-dimethyltryptamine in Mammalian Brain_"](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-45812-w)
- [“Griffin, Hurwitz, Davis, Johnson, Jesse, 2019, _Survey of subjective🧠🧠 “God✝️ encounter experiences”: Comparisons among naturally🌲🌱 occurring experiences and those occasioned by the classic psychedelics🎆🧠 psilocybin🎆🍄, LSD🎆🧪, ayahuasca👽👨‍🚀🌿, or DMT👽👨‍🚀🧪_”](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6478303/)
- ["Davis, A. K., Clifton, J. M., Weaver, E. G., Hurwitz, E. S., Johnson, M. W., & Griffiths, R. R., 2020, _Survey of entity👽 encounter experiences occasioned by inhaled N,N-dimethyltryptamine: Phenomenology, interpretation, and enduring effects_"](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0269881120916143)
- ["Marko Rodriguez (2006, _A Methodology for Studying🙇‍♂️🏫🔁 Various Interpretations of the N,N-dimethyltryptamine-Induced🏁⛲️➡️ Alternate Reality_)"](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/241155049_A_Methodology_for_Studying_Various_Interpretations_of_the_NN-dimethyltryptamine-Induced_Alternate_Reality)

## Page metadata

URL: <https://dbohdan.com/0hpl-dont-make-me-think.md>

Published 2021-07-31, updated 2024-12-23.

Tags:

- fiction
- notes
- review
- speculative fiction

Index: [Notes and reviews](/notes).