askchapo

It's an interesting to read to help understand how the worst people you know think the world works.

yeah in the year 2000 a proto alt right high school friend recommended it to me

his dad owned a bunch of surf bars in san diego and he had a deformed penis that gave him a lot of masculine insecurity

great book

how to be a sociopath and reduce every social dynamic and interaction into its bare essence, which only serves to further your personal aspirations.

Like, as another user said, it's an interesting read if you want to get insight into how too many fucking deranged people think and maybe use it for tactical defense in the hellscape that is the workplace but I quit after a few chapters because I I'm trying to remove myself from whatever fucking world these type of people exist in.

This book is just about ruthlessly manipulating those around you for personal gain. It’s a deeply toxic message and outlook lacking in any form of empathy, just disgusting stuff

Yeah. I read it junior year in college. I was in my peak young man hustle-grind mindset. I was lifting weights, reading 50 laws of power, and other dudebro stuff. I would say from my very limited understanding of Marx is that there is a lot of stuff in the book about understanding material and immaterial power dynamics/relationships and leveraging them for personal gain. Or to give you the mindset to see others doing the same thing

I kind of want to read it so I can better understand normies.

I read it when I was a depressed ball of repression and anxiety in my early 20s, and in retrospect I'm half convinced that the book was an elaborate shitpost to get the sort of person who wants to read a book on manipulating people to instead read a bunch of old arabic parables and ultimately get indirectly called a dumbass in the final chapter for thinking they could learn how to manipulate people and wield power from a book, which also praises Mao and the CPC's strategic ability during the revolution.

Recommended to me by a libertarian when I was a Bernie Bro lib. Read it and remember kinda liking it at the time.

Libs of all stripes will universally love this book. Only ones who don't hate it because they're addicted to moral grandstanding. But really, it's trash that libs love because it confirms all their clichés. This is something a lib will read then feel scholarly putting everything Putin or Xi does in these terms while smugly libsplaining to other libs about "how authoritarians think"

Maybe a handful of worthwhile thoughts in the whole thing, but most of it is drivel or immediately obvious observations.

If you understand dialectical materialism and base/superstructure, there's little for you to learn, but if you don't, this is a book that will reinforce idealist brainworms with bits of historical anecdotes to provide an air of pseudo-intellectualism.

High fructose corn syrup of idealism posing as an unhealthy, lib-safe materialism substitute.

Best analogies I can draw are:

• The Art of War, repackaged in an even lib friendlier form.
• "Rules for Rulers" video by CGPGrey, but in book form.

Lovers of poorly-drawn alternate history or stick figure YouTube videos justifying western imperialism would enjoy this. Has no real use for Marxists unless you have no interpersonal skills.

If you're that interested, read the bulleted list of rules.