Custom Reality and You

Peter Coffin presents their ideas on how neo-liberalism and capitalism has brought us to where we are now in 2018.Peter has a lot of very interesting and thought provoking ideas about how individualism has resulted in us forming self-validating groups which they call "validation gangs". These "validation gangs" are created from groups of various people who agree on something and become a collective due to that need to feel right and therefore having power due to how we have been socialized to view being wrong or flawed as inherent weakness rather than a consequence of being human. They go on to say how the current ruling class in neo-liberal capitalism has used this as a way to cultivate people's identities around products and what appears to be the option of choice. This has resulted in us losing any sense of a collective reality to agree upon basic facts while also being a powerful form of social control all in the name of increasing profit and power to enable them to hoard wealth.Peter's ideas here are great. I enjoyed the read and it certainly seems very applicable to our current society especially in the United States. It also has helped to flesh out my own thoughts and also think of ways of speaking with friends and family about these topics. The book could certainly have been edited better as there are a few typos and times where a sentence or joke feels it could have been cut out which I could see making this book closer to 3 maybe 2 stars for some especially if you do not like Peter's humor. I look forward to seeing more work by Peter especially if they get the resources to do some real hardcore digging and research into their theories.

This book was truly eye-opening for me. Coffin effectively applies a Post-modern framework to examine how our current economy and society is structured. By doing so he illuminates how neo-liberalism is enabling the freedom of capital to commodify every aspect of our lives by cultivating our individual identities to be dependent on consumption. He eventually takes this further by making a moral argument against the system that enables this dehumanization of us all. The most important takeaways I had from this book are that things don't have to be as bad as they are, and that this perpetual exploitation is in no way a guaranteed fact of human existence. There are a few editing errors but nothing significant enough to warrant less than 5 stars, in my opinion.

Very eye opening and informative book. Even if one disagrees with the authors views it's hard to disagree with their assessment of society and how individuals come to form their perception of reality. While many books attempt to explain the phenomenon of our 'post-truth' era, few actually examine the systems that made this phenomenon possible.The book is very accessible, no complex political jargon or economic theories, and written in plain English. A few jokes help to break up the serious tone. Does a good job establishing an overarching framework and putting names to forces we feel the presence of but do not entirely understand.A critique would be the book sometimes feels more 'stream-of-conscious'y in some sections but this helps with the casual tone of the book. Overall a very interesting read and would recommend to everyone.

The good:I found the book to be an enlightening and inspiring overview of the reality that we are all faced with today and will be faced with for the forseeable future. I appreciated that Peter also directs readers to the works from which he derived his ideas. He leans particularly heavily on Marx's 'Capital' and Guy Debord's 'The Spectacle', but even if you are inclined to read those, I think it's worth reading this one first as a light overview that puts the ideas in a contemporary context.The bad:My copy of the book was filled with typos. Additionally, I don't really enjoy Peter's humor and would've appreciated having the core ideas without the fluff, but maybe in some cases it helps the ideas to reach people that would not want to read a dry philosophy/political economy book.

peter coffin has really interesting ideas. ive read the spectacle as well, and this is an excellent modern take on many of those concepts with peters own interesting insights

A great first publication and synthesis of Peter Coffin's ideas, this book is a conversational exploration of capitalism's ability to influence our perception of the world.

The book elucidated many excellent points that I have found missing in leftist dialogue for quite some time. If you're unfamiliar with Peter Coffin's work, you should check out his channel on YouTube for a primer!

Buy this book, read it, tell your friends.

If you've ever found yourself wondering why politics is so divisive or why the other side in a debate can't see reason then hopefully you'll find this book interesting. It examines the way that people interact with information in a purportedly meritocratic society and asks whether that interaction is healthy. Peter Coffin has recognised that a pressure to appear smart or well informed in fact creates incentive to act in the opposite way. Rather than risk our comfort by seeking new information we are tempted to seek validation —creating our own Custom Reality— and there will always be a market incentive to provide us with that comforting validation. These are conditions which are very difficult to overcome but this book makes a good start at addressing some of the major problems facing "reality" in the era of social media.

I think this book was amazing for how it opened my eyes to some of the ways "reality" for the individual is curated through a multitude of variables: our own biases, marketing, the economic system etc. However, i felt the book's conclusions sourced from alot of the concerts pretty weak, and sort of paints our world in a far more bleak and overly apocalyptic light than it actually is. Take into account that unless you feel the same anger about the current economic landscape as the author, you're most likely not going to agree with everything he says

Picked up this book after watching Peter's YouTube series and thought it was very good, would definitely recommend to anyone

Excellent read thoroughly enjoyed. Interesting perspectives on postmodernist topics in the social media age

Excellent book. Equal parts insightful and terrifying, wittily expressed and very readable.