Your Next-Door Neighbor Is A D

by Zack Parsons

Book Overview

Based on popular articles from the hit website www.somethingawful.com - ranked 44th most popular blog in the world - Zack Parsons presents an irreverent travelogue of the subcultures and twisted... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806527595
• ISBN13: 9780806527598
• Release Date: August 2009
• Publisher: Citadel Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 8.9"

Customer Reviews

New Wave Gonzo

Even on the wings of "My Tank is Fight!", "Your Next Door Neighbor is a Dragon" comes as a surprise. Being a long time reader of Mr. Parson's articles online, I expected a satirical, yet frank and honest, look at internet subcultures. Which it is, of course. What I didn't expected was that the book was, in fact, a piece of Gonzo Journalism in the vein of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas". And it succeeds spectacularly in this regard. Parsons blends fact and fiction in such a way that everything in the book seems true, even the most insane and egregious imaginings that appear in it. No doubt this stems from the subject. Like Hunter S. Thompson's work, the subject of "Dragon" is already steeped in madness, yet it's real madness. It's easy to imagine men and women dressed in animal costumes and under the idea that they are inhabited by the spirits of dragons and elves fitting right in with Thompson's fever dream Vegas. All of this is linked together by an underlying narrative that strikes true, even if there's no way to tell where reality and fiction meet. Especially given the subject matter, Parson's approach is even more unexpected. His writing humanizes (most of) his interviewees, yet never once forgets the fact that they are bouys in a sea of insanity and depravity, the best example being the chapter on Voraphilia. But it's not so heavy handed as to relent to pathos. The combination of Parson's frank but light-hearted tone, off-kilter associates and the increasingly insane scenarios in which he finds himself kept me in stitches from the first paragraph all the way to the end of what is possibly the longest acknowledgment section ever published. It's honestly one of the funniest books I've ever read, made more so by the fact that every bit of it is true, even the lies. Especially the lies.

Order this funny book about the internet from the internet RIGHT NOW!

This hilarious book about internet subcultures will have you rolling on the floor laughing as it pokes fun at the seedy underbelly of the internet that you only assume isn't lurking right next door to you in the real world. If you happen to be an internet weirdo, simply skip over whatever chapter is poking fun at you directly, and enjoy the laughs to be had at the expense of those OTHER weirdos! Zack Parsons does an excellent job of exploiting your sick sense of humor for the purpose of squeezing every last giggle out of your poorly toned belly. Buy this book so you can laugh a lot, because you need the exercise. Come on, it's cheaper than a Wii Fit!

You won't regret buying and reading this book. Read it so you'll know what everyone else is talking

I was immediately engrossed in this book and wished I could have read it forever. Seriously, if I could read four new chapters every night that would make me happy. The subject might get old, but the author's writing style is very entertaining. It felt like I was actually living the story as opposed to reading a book. I laughed at some parts so much that I had to go back and read them again and again because they were so funny. I totally recommend this book. I would buy everyone a copy if I could afford it. Zack Parsons is my new favorite author.

A wild guide to the world of web weirdos

Sure, you can laugh, cry, or do whatever you else you do in reaction to the Internet's weirdness behind the safety and comfort of your monitor, that might be enough for you. Evidently it was not enough for our (mostly fearless) guide, Zack Parsons, who takes the reader on a whirlwind tour around the united states, tracking down and interviewing the people behind some of the most strange, grotesque, and horrifying content on the entire web. If you've ever wanted to get to the bottom of the global Aspartame conspiracy, or get up close and personal with an author of erotic fan-fiction, than this book, my friend, is for you!

A Funny, Interesting Depiction of Internet Subcultures

Zack Parsons, longtime writer for humor website Something Awful and author of My Tank is Fight, casts his second book, Your Next-Door Neighbor is a Dragon, as a travelogue/novel mash-up - or, perhaps more accurately, a self-insertion travelogue fanfic - that explores some of the most popular subcultures developing on the Internet. Rather than study the subcultures in their online iterations, Mr. Parsons travels through several states to interview the people behind the furry avatars. Mr. Parsons's Something Awful articles range from the utterly bizarre to the understated and wry. Perhaps his funniest work lands somewhere in the middle; for example, his caricature of Levi Johnston, the father of former Gov. Sarah Palin's grandchild, constructs the teenage father's online persona as a hilariously half-informed, yet sympathetic, rambunctious redneck. Your Next-Door Neighbor is a Dragon tends toward the subdued, which, despite its odd episodes, allows the narrative a sense of truth. A grotesque prologue depicts a distracted Zack sustaining an intense injury to his hand while discussing the genesis of his book with his publisher; this injury, and his medical treatment, straddles the line between the improbable and the normal. Mr. Parsons maintains this level of uncertainty over the veracity of the narrative throughout much of the book, which highlights the discussion of bizarre Internet subcultures at the expense of really funny commentary. That said, this fictionalized, undocumented, and often incredible book offers some worthwhile insight into the nature of Internet subcultures, including furries, voraphiliacs, otherkin, fanfiction writers, Ron Paulites, self-diagnosed Aspberger's sufferers, and a cult compound. Your Next-Door Neighbor is a Dragon expounds on one major, overarching theme considered by Plato in his "Allegory of the Cave," in the poetry of the Romantics, and in the Postmodernists' texts: that reality, that a person's conception of the world and how it functions, is constructed by an individual based on the stimuli available. Your Next-Door Neighbor is a Dragon offers one postmodern caveat to this theme, which seems to refer directly to the motto of Something Awful: the Internet really does make you stupid. The prisoners shackled in Plato's cave and the Romantic poets wandering about the woods and enjoying nature could not comprehend the Internet's hypertextual sensory overload. This concept is best represented in the first chapter's discussion of an "Internet scholar's" experiment, which saw Zack locked in a chamber and bombarded his senses, eventually influencing his mental reactions to stimuli; and, each of Zack's acquaintances suffers from a distorted sense of reality, an arrested development, and a nearly unshakable sense of righteousness. For example, when Zack confronts the incongruity between Janus's religion and somewhat grotesque sexual stories, Janus responds with the incredulous rage of someone who recognizes