Interesting, I liked the story but got the opposite impression you did. At first the humor was amusing but I felt like the relentless, extremely heavy sarcasm dripping off every sentence quickly turned it into a slog and even started to make me wonder which parts were genuine vs. joking. Not great.

I had a feeling it might be a very off putting style for some people.

However, for me, I found it absolutely hilarious and very intelligent despite being obviously extremely... I'm not sure the right description. Young? Modern internet colloquial? Either way, it worked for me.

I agree... when you listen to a great comedian, it's not 1 joke/sentence. This article was too much. I still read it all since the overall topic was entertaining but the attempt at humour was overkill.

Have you actually listen to nowadays comedians ? It _is_ one joke/sentence nowadays (at least in my country).

More exactly, they separate each sentence. Each has a tiny bit of funny in it (in the words, in the way they say it, because they stay in character, whatever) and they let audience lol. Rinse and repeat.

Look I just googled "up and coming standupers" and picked the first video (new laptop, not connected to Gaccount) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6uW1odtjPc

Check the 36 first seconds.

Humour changed without you (us) realizing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

For me it was funny at first, then it was too much, but then it became funny again, like a joke repeated enough times.

It seemed like a lot of words to say "His reservation code is visible on his ticket and I typed that into the website and saw the data they sent me". I do like how you got to see all the false starts though, which is more realistic than just knowing what to do immediately(ie trying to scan the barcode and then finding the data just printed in ascii)

This was really a delight to read. I wonder if the author was raised on 2600. Fantastic stuff.

Also visited his page. Does not disappoint: https://mango.pdf.zone/

I was pretty sure after a few paragraphs he was getting his style inspiration from Douglas Adams, but when I got to his line saying “this is widely regarded as a bad move” I became certain.

It is an excellent stylistic choice for documenting interactions with commonwealth bureaucracy, of course.

Something Adams incorporated a lot into his stories:

"But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?" "Yes," said Arthur, "yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'."

I did chuckle out loud when I read "For security reasons, we try to change our Prime Minister every six months".

Ah, he was the guy who wrote the facebook sleep time stalker script! It hits the same style of prose very closely.

Figured the least I could do after reading the article was crack the puzzle, and felt good that I did since I usually fail at these kinds of things.

Oh, that was indeed fun.

"Uhh... how many layers deep is this going to g-- oh, ok. Nice :D"

Hard mode is an absolute delight

Since we're sharing views on the writing style - I found it off-putting enough that I had to quit halfway through.

It's very tiresome to read, with _way_ too many digressions and jokes.

Yeah, same. "Ok, this paragraph is nonsense, skip it.. so is this one... and this one... why am I still reading this?"

I liked the humor in this piece a lot, I would not have read it until the end if it wasn't for the funny bits

Yes. I want to subscribe to his newsletter for sure.