Turkish-American author Jarett Kobek’s fiercely funny I Hate the Internet is an insightful ram raid on capitalism run rampant. Tackling the sexist and racist violence propagated online, it burns with the dystopian rage of Kurt Vonnegut.

The book opens with a trigger warning that includes the awful stench of men, faddish popular culture and anarchism with a weakness for democracy.

Labelling the internet as a wonderful invention “used to remind other people that they were awful pieces of s**t,” on computers and smartphones “built by slaves in China,” I Hate the Internet takes aim at the banal evil of Google, Twitter, YouTube and Facebook.

My friendships are enriching Mark Zuckerberg.

It’s perverse, then, that having demolished the book, my first reaction was to recommend it on social media, with the caveat that Kobek would probably disapprove.

Speaking on the phone from Los Angeles, having been “gentrified out of San Francisco,” two years ago, Kobek, who spent some time working for the internet-related industries he loathes, is magnanimous.

“[S]ocial media can work in support of a project, but it seems to only work if other people are doing it,” he says.

“If it were me sharing the book on Twitter with my every banal observation, I think it would probably have really hurt it.

“As with the entire world, it’s trapped in this paradox where your networks of information are inherently kind of vile, but people still need to share information.”

I Hate the Internet’s protagonist Adeline is the 40-something artist of a mildly successful comic book who falls foul of the great wall of internet hate.

While Adeline is giving a guest lecture, a uni student uploads a video of her taking a swipe at the likes of Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, who advised tech women to “lean in” in the face of poisonous masculinity.

Diss Beyonce and suffer the consequences. Photo: Getty

Listing Adeline’s mistakes as, “(1) She was a woman in a culture that hated women. (2) She’d become kind of famous. (3) She’d expressed unpopular opinions,” the book notes the REAL reason she’s excoriated is because she also criticised Beyoncé and Rihanna.

“A wide range of humanity believed that Beyoncé and Rihanna were inspirations rather than vultures. Adeline had spit on their gods.”

Originally self-published, Kobek believes most publishers large and small were embarrassed by the prospect of the book.

“In retrospect, I don’t know that there’s a particularly strong tradition in the US of having a book that’s obviously presenting relatively high-level ideas contained within a melange of d*** jokes.”

The Serpent’s Tail edition published in Australia comes complete with hilarious redactions mandated by onerous libel laws, but Kobek prefers it to the American release.

The latter was published in February before Donald Trump became the Republican party’s nominee and, ultimately, America’s president-elect, imbuing I Hate the Internet with a certain prophetic doom.

“All that has happened in the US is the natural consequence of about 40 years of really bad economic policy combined with the internet,” Kobek says.

“It’s no surprise that Trump’s chief adviser is this guy from Breitbart. These are the clever people now. They really understand how to use the internet.”

He’s not won over by the fake news narrative.

“I’m so far left that all news seems fake to me. You can see the New York Times hand-wringing about fake news in the same publication that spent two months leading up to Trump’s election publishing 15 articles every day about how he couldn’t possibly win.”

Kobek does have a dormant Twitter account and says he maintains Facebook because European authors he keeps in touch with seem incapable of using email.

“Yeah, so my friendships are enriching Mark Zuckerberg.”