Quotessence
Home / Books / Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

Book by Chuck Klosterman · 33 quotes · People, World, Thinking

Filter quotes by topic

AllPeopleWorldThinkingWantWayAssumingBelieveCowardlyKindKnowsAbsolutesAnswersArgumentArrogantBlameCausesCountryFallFeelsGames

Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto Quotes

“The mass media causes sexual misdirection: It prompts us to need something deeper than what we want. This is why Woody Allen has made nebbish guys cool; he makes people assume there is something profound about having a relationship based on witty conversation and intellectual discourse. There isn't. It's just another gimmick, and it's no different than wanting to be with someone because they're thin or rich or the former lead singer of Whiskeytown.”

PeopleWantNeedsMadeDifferentGuyCausesRichMediaConversationMassIntellectualAssumingProfoundWittyDeeperSingersFormerDiscoursePromptsWoodyMass MediaGimmicksMisdirection
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Create image

“There are two ways to look at life. The first view is that nothing stays the same and that nothing is inherently connected, and that the only driving force in anyone's life is entropy. The second is that everything pretty much stays the same (more or less) and that everything is completely connected, even if we don't realize it.”

IfsWayFirstsLooksTwoLife IsForceRealizingViewsConnectedDrivingTwo WaysEntropyDriving Force
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Create image

“Every one of Joel's important songs--including the happy ones--are ultimately about loneliness. And it's not 'clever lonely' (like Morrissey) or 'interesting lonely' (like Radiohead); it's 'lonely lonely,' like the way it feels when you're being hugged by someone and it somehow makes you sadder.”

WayFeelsImportantSongInterestingLonelinessLonelyIncludingCleverRadiohead
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Create image

“But whenever I meet dynamic, nonretarded Americans, I notice that they all seem to share a single unifying characteristic: the inability to experience the kind of mind-blowing, transcendent romantic relationship they perceive to be a normal part of living. And someone needs to take the fall for this. So instead of blaming no one for this (which is kind of cowardly) or blaming everyone (which is kind of meaningless), I'm going to blame John Cusack.”

NeedsMindKindSeemsFallRelationshipShareNormalBlamePerceiveCharacteristicsMeaninglessInabilityCowardlyTranscendentMind BlowingUnifyingRomantic Relationship
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Create image

“Pundits are always blaming TV for making people stupid, movies for desensitizing the world to violence, and rock music for making kids take drugs and kill themselves. These things should be the least of our worries. The main problem with mass media is that it makes it impossible to fall in love with any acumen of normalcy. There is no 'normal,' because everybody is being twisted by the same sources simultaneously.”

PeopleWorldShouldProblemKidsFallWorryViolenceImpossibleRocksMediaStupidTvsSourceDrugNormalMassBlameFalling In LoveTwistedRock MusicMass MediaNormalcyPunditsAcumenStupid Movie
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Create image

“A homeless man once told me that dancing to rap music is the cultural equivalent of masturbating, and I'd sort of fell the same way about playing John Madden Football immediately after filing my income tax: It's fun, but - somehow - vaguely pathetic.”

MenWayFunFootballTaxesMusic IsDancingRapIncomeHomelessPatheticIncome TaxRap MusicFilingMadden
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Create image

“Coldplay songs deliver an amorphous, irrefutable interpretation of how being in love is supposed to feel, and people find themselves wanting that feeling for real. They want men to adore them like Lloyd Dobler would, and they want women to think like Aimee Mann, and they expect all their arguments to sound like Sam Malone and Diane Chambers. They think everything will work out perfectly in the end (just like it did for Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones and Nick Hornby's Rob Fleming), and they don't stop believing because Journey's Steve Perry insists we should never do that.”

PeopleThinkingMenWantFeelsShouldBelieveRealEndsFeelingsSongSoundLove IsJourneyArgumentWork OutInterpretationAdoreChamberBeing In LoveHelenBridget JonesDon't Stop BelievingEverything Will Work Out
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Create image

“It appears that countless women born between the years of 1965 and 1978 are in love with John Cusack. I cannot fathom how he isn't the number-one box office star in America, because every straight girl I know would see her soul to share a milkshake with that motherfucker.”

KnowsYearsSoulAmericaGirlStarsBornNumbersShareOfficeBoxesFathomBox OfficeMilkshakes
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Create image

“Americans have become conditioned to believe the world is a gray place without absolutes; this is because we’re simultaneously cowardly and arrogant. We don’t know the answers, so we assume they must not exist. But they do exist. They are unclear and/or unfathomable, but they’re out there. And—perhaps surprisingly—the only way to find those answers is to study NBA playoff games that happened twenty years ago. For all practical purposes, the voice of Brent Musburger was the pen of Ayn Rand.”

KnowsWorldWayYearsBelievePurposeGamesVoiceAnswersStudyHappenedYears AgoAbsolutesTwentiesAssumingPracticalsPensNbaGrayArrogantCowardlyPlayoffsUnfathomableUnclearPlayoff Games
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Create image

“Contrary to what you may have heard from Henry Rollins or/and Ian MacKaye and/or anyone else who joined a band after working in an ice cream shop, you can't really learn much about a person based on what kind of music they happen to like. As a personality test, it doesn't work even half the time. However, there is at least one thing you can learn: The most wretched people in the word are those who tell you they like every kind of music 'except country.' People who say that are boorish and pretentious at the same time.”

PeopleKindMayPersonsCountryHappensHalfOne ThingHeardPersonalityBandTestsContraryIceShopsCreamIce CreamWretchedPretentious
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Create image

“Everyone knows that the Internet is changing our lives, mostly because someone in the media has uttered that exact phrase every single day since 1993. However, it certainly appears that the main thing the Internet has accomplished is the normalization of amateur pornography. There is no justification for the amount of naked people on the World Wide Web, many of whom are clearly (clearly!) doing so for non-monetary reasons. Where were these people fifteen years ago? Were there really millions of women in 1986 turning to their husbands and saying, 'You know, I would love to have total strangers masturbate to images of me deep-throating a titanium dildo, but there's simply no medium for that kind of entertainment. I guess we'll just have to sit here and watch Falcon Crest again.”

HumorSexWomenTechnologyInternetPorn
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Create image

“Though I obviously have no proof of this, the one aspect of life that seems clear to me is that good people do whatever they believe is the right thing to do. Being virtuous is hard, not easy. The idea of doing good things simply because you're good seems like a zero-sum game; I'm not even sure those actions would still qualify as 'good,' since they'd merely be a function of normal behavior. Regardless of what kind of god you believe in--a loving god, a vengeful god, a capricious god, a snooty beret-wearing French god, or whatever--one has to assume that you can't be penalized for doing the things you believe to be truly righteous and just. Certainly, this creates some pretty glaring problems: Hitler may have thought he was serving God. Stalin may have thought he was serving God (or something vaguely similar). I'm certain Osama bin Laden was positive he was serving God. It's not hard to fathom that all of those maniacs were certain that what they were doing was right. Meanwhile, I constantly do things that I know are wrong; they're not on the same scale as incinerating Jews or blowing up skyscrapers, but my motivations might be worse. I have looked directly into the eyes of a woman I loved and told her lies for no reason, except that those lies would allow me to continue having sex with another woman I cared about less. This act did not kill 20 million Russian peasants, but it might be more 'diabolical' in a literal sense. If I died and found out I was going to hell and Stalin was in heaven, I would note the irony, but I couldn't complain. I don't make the fucking rules.”

GodHellGoodVirtues
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Create image

“Mass media has convinced us to think that silence is only supposed to happen as a manifestation of supreme actualization, where both parties are so at peace with their emotional connection that it cannot be expressed through the rudimentary tools of the lexicon; otherwise, silence is proof that the magic is gone and the relationship is over (hence the phrase “We just don’t talk anymore”).”

Silence
Book:Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Create image