Acknowledgments

THERE ARE A FEW THINGS included in this book that I did not write myself: the parts of the FAQ on death come from actual Facebook copy; the Achievable Threats of Violence slides are pulled from internal Facebook policies, leaked and published in a report by The Guardian; the Craigslist casual encounters are real posts—the first three I found (so shout-out to the guys with the fetish for Asian women), and the blacklist comes from a freely available text file put together by a Christian group, so thanks to them for summoning all the racial slurs they could think of.

I am so grateful to the three editors on this book—Chris Jackson, Victory Matsui, and Emi Ikkanda—for all their smart and careful work, and thanks to the team at One World. Without them, this would be a bunch of weird ideas in a Google Doc. Now it’s a bunch of weird ideas in a book.

Thanks to Vivian Lee and Morgan Parker, who read the first semblance of this novel before it was anything. I’m also grateful to Chloé Cooper Jones and Brendan Klinkenberg for early reads. And special thanks to Soleil Ho for the Japanese at the end of the book. (Only I would entrust this responsibility to a Viet.)

I wouldn’t be anywhere without my family—Mom, Dad, Jon, Pilar, and Olivia. Big thanks to my colleagues past and present at GQ and The Verge. Also, shout-out to all my strange, intimate friends in Dark Social.

And to Naomi, who makes everything feel possible.