Review of Rich Larson, “Fifteen Minutes Hate”, Apex Magazine 108 (2018): Read Online. Reviewed by Joanna Z. Weston.
It’s a common set-up: somebody wakes up with the mother of all hangovers and no memory of the previous night, and tries to piece together what happened. “Fifteen Minutes Hate” gives us a vicious social media twist on that premise.
Our protagonist wakes up to find that she has been Blacklisted. Whatever she’s done has been broadcast to the world on some sort of social media feed and reality TV show. On top of that, it seems the the reality TV outlet has access to every message she’s sent, and every video that’s shown her face. The world is dissecting every instance of cruelty or selfishness in her life, a social media pile-on for the ages. The host of Blacklist is walking towards her house, on camera, taking bets on whether she’ll run or not. Her friends and family are texting to ask how she could do such a thing. Strangers are hoping someone will cut her hands off. And until the second to last paragraph, she (and by extension, we the readers) have no idea what she’s done.
The clips that people are dissecting and commenting on online – the events from her past, not the big thing she’s trying to remember – are the kinds of everyday cruelties and follies we all engage in. A video of her failing to help someone after they fell. A message to a friend in which she calls a hated professor by a cruel nickname. A video of a sex act that she regrets. These are normal things, ordinary indiscretions, now being used as evidence of her lack of humanity in light of the act that got her on the Blacklist.
My one complaint about this story is that I found the use of the second person point of view distracted me from the story, and I didn’t think it added anything. I suspect it was intended to promote empathy, helping us put ourselves into the main character’s situation, but the writing was strong enough to do that on its own. Still, this is an engaging, interesting read.
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