Caroline Choi

I know it sounds silly but I’ve always considered Antarctica as the pinnacle of bravery – you have to commit to a week-long cruise, fight seasickness, endure the freezing temperatures, get along with old people… and for what? To say that you went?

Humanity always pulls this kind of “we go to space because we can” b.s. Did y’all not watch 

? I hope I never meet someone who’s climbed Mount Everest because I just know they’ll be insufferable. Like I bet they’ll find a way to reference Mount Everest with everything: “Oh, you went to Canada this summer? Oh, well, 

 beats the peak of Mount Everest. You should make it out there sometime. You can totally use my tent-share at base camp. Oh, that’s a cool North Face puffer. Kind of reminds me of this jacket I have from a guy on my expedition who ended up getting buried in an avalanche. It’s not stealing if he’s already dead!”

And yet, there is part of me that wants it. Wants it 

bad. A part of me wants to see the hunks of ice and run my fingers through a penguin’s fur, and go on guided tours with scientists. A part of me wants to take a boat ride and then steal a snowmobile and stow away on a passing steamer and then make it to the top secret international base camp, but, wait, isn’t this the plot of 

Fuck! This makes me think I’m easily impressionable. When I was a kid, I’d watch movies and add on new personalities like beads on a string. 

 made me want to be a Russian mobster with a crippling poker addiction. So I’m definitely easily impressionable and probably wouldn’t even have this strange urge to go to Antarctica if it weren’t introduced to me by a Hollywood nepo baby (Maria Semple).

There’s another thing, actually. I’m incredibly obsessive. I don’t even think it’s an ADHD thing. I just dislike having unfinished business. I dislike unfinished business so much that if I have ten tabs open on my laptop, at the end of my day, I sit down and comb through each and every one before I let myself sleep. Yeah. That’s right. I John Wick my Google Chrome experience.

The truth is, I think that my obsession with things comes from a deep-rooted fear of being bad at them. I can’t stand the idea of being mediocre at something. Yes, I’ve gone to therapy. Yes, I’ve done the DBT workbooks and the little coloring sheets… Your therapist didn’t give those to you? You didn’t get little coloring sheets with Dora on them? That’s so weird. I’ll forward them to you.

Anyway, I know what you’re thinking. How can you be bad at going to Antarctica? It’s a vacation! But that’s where you’re wrong. Because there are many ways you can be bad at going on vacation. You can get food poisoning, be scammed, or choose the hotel room next to the elevator.

So many things can and will go wrong. Things always do. You know how many people die on Everest every year? I don’t ask that because I want to be insensitive. I just mean it seems crazy that we ignore statistics and science to go do stupid things. Actually, I guess it’s not that crazy given our public education system. I bet the most people who die on Everest are Americans. You can connect the dots there.

I heard once about this phenomenon where Chinese tourists who travel to Paris vomit because Paris is nothing like what they built up in their heads. It’s called Paris Syndrome. I guess what I’m really afraid of is that I’ll get to Antarctica, skip out onto the ice, then slip on a banana peel, break my hip, cry, piss my pants, and maybe the air will actually smell awful because penguins fart. That’s the root of the fear. What if there’s such a thing as Antarctica Syndrome and no one talks about it because everyone who goes to Antarctica tends to be super old and they’re not going to live that much longer anyway, so why does it matter that it was disappointing?

Because what happens after you conquer your fears? Is there anything after? Or do you just become Buddha and then reincarnate? I don’t know. I don’t particularly want to be a Buddha. I’d rather die and become worm food and be done with it all.

But it does make me wonder. Maybe there’s a reason that people keep going to Antarctica and Paris. Maybe there’s a reason people have kids and eat spicy ants and watch horror movies. Maybe there’s a reason people climb Mount Everest. Maybe if everything will Murphy’s Law, then it’s actually quite straightforward – the only thing that makes sense is to go to Antarctica and take some anti-nausea pills with you. You get up on your feet, throw away the banana peel, change your pants and breathe because if you don’t breathe you’ll die. You’re not Buddha. You’re human.

Notes

Antarctica Syndrome

Note: All events described in this manifesto are either very true or very made-up. There are two doors and two brothers. Also two butterflies and a golden key. Choose wisely.

It is against my religion to accept any software updates from Apple. If I were my mother, writing, on my behalf, a note excusing me from updating my Mac software, I would write: “Dear Mr. Cook, please excuse Caroline from upgrading from macOS Big Sur to macOS Monterey because it would infringe upon our freedom of religion and by the way I think you are balding very well. Thank you. Sincerely, Caroline’s Mother.”

But this wouldn’t be how the note would go, anyways, because my mother’s first language is not English and inevitably I would have to write this letter myself, which would lead to a less polite and less respectful string of words on paper. For example, I would say, “Hi Tim. I was 15 minutes into illegally streaming 

 when a “virus” ate through my computer and caused five windows advertising “Women 50+ years old want to see you” to pop up and no matter what I did I couldn’t close them. Not only that but the Apple Terminal decided to open as well and give me a series of unhelpful cries for help written in Bash. (It seems you have a couple of atheist computer scientists trapped in your basement? The instructions for help were quite specific.) I even tried turning the laptop on and off. Your software was supposed to prevent something like this from happening. Either that or create “bug fixes” whatever that means. The worst part is that now I’m not sure if Iron Man makes it back to his wife and kids. Anyway, this is why I am declining to update my software anymore. Sincerely, Caroline.”

But while my mother is able to adhere to our religious morals because she simply does not have enough storage on her 2013 iPhone to update anything (she still doesn’t know FaceID exists), my religious practice is a little different.

For some reason, it aggravates me more to allow my iPhone to “update if connected to power between 11:00 PM and 5:00 AM” than to constantly hit “Remind Me Later.” It’s become part of my routine to lie in bed, snuggle comfortably under the covers, and 3... 2... 1... “Update tonight?” No. Remind me later. It’s almost comforting at this point — a gentle act of defiance against the Big Tech giants. I also use it as a reminder to go to bed at night. You might call it a religion of convenience.

The one downside that I have discovered from being a devout anti-updater is that I am no longer able to see the emojis my friends send me in response to my messages. Who knew that there needed to be more emojis than the crying-laughing face, the skull, and the two-streams-of-tears look? Apparently, Apple has recently added □□ to their emoji keyboard. Oh, you don’t know which emojis those are because they look just like rectangles made of a black-and-white void to you? Me too. Welcome to the club.

It is much harder to determine if your friends are appreciative of your text jokes or not in this new era of Apple updates. If you respond with □□ to my pun about eco-facism, how am I supposed to know if you are laughing or reporting me to the FBI watchlist?

But ultimately, I know the truth. Big Tech is God. And if I am not worshipping God, then I am worshipping false idols. I am a dirty heathen who needs to repent for two years in an Apple compound basement. If you see my name appear on your Bash terminal in the next month with instructions to Menlo Park, just know that I have been a brave martyr to my pagan religion.

Caroline Choi is a starving artist and also a senior at Harvard. She has written for Teen Vogue, Harvard Political Review, and once for MTV News. She has never won any kind of literary award. Caroline is a a big proponent of lingering in places past sunset, hosting dinners, and reading children’s literature. One day, she hopes to die having made the world a better place.

Spring 2023 - Decoy

The Anti-Anti-Anti-Technologist Manifesto

I have never written a book review before, let alone for an author that I have admired for a decade. This is the thought that ran through my head when reading 

, Daniel Handler’s latest book of essays. It feels 

 somehow, for me to be critiquing a book written by someone whose work I have leeched off of to fuel my own creative endeavors. (In fifth grade, I wrote a story that unfortunately parallels 

When I was 10 years old, I stood in line at a Barnes & Noble in El Cerrito to get my book signed by Lemony Snicket. Instead of Mr. Snicket, Mr. Handler was subbing in that day, and though it took me half the event to understand that the two men were the same people, I was still entranced by the prospect of getting to ask a real-life author about his books. 

Sadly, I was incredibly shy about talking to adults, particularly men, so I let the brave boy in front of me ask a question instead: “What happened to the Quagmire triplets?” Handler replied by telling him matter-of-factly that it was all in the books.

. For the next decade, I read and re-read the books trying to understand. What happened to the Quagmire triplets? What happened to the hook-handed man and Fiona? What about the giant pulsing question mark in the middle of the ocean? And most importantly, what was in the sugar bowl?

I read and re-read until I wasn’t sure whether the events that ensued at the Barnes & Noble even occurred. Was I making them up? Was there even a Barnes & Noble in El Cerrito? Was I ever in fifth grade? None of my questions were answered.

Many will read this new book in search of closure, like I did, only to find that we were – surprise! – wrong. There is no closure. There are no straight answers.

However, if there is anything one can learn from Handler, it is to embrace wrongness and enjoy incongruence. Handler addresses this directly in 

, recounting his son confusing parking citations with admission tickets into zoos, movie theaters, and amusement parks. Handler, being a good father, corrected his son. At the end of the essay, Handler professes his desire to cherish that moment of clarity, writing that “it’s a ticket, being wrong, not only a citation…”

Much of Handler’s newest book can be described as such – a citation (wrong!) and a ticket into a chocolate factory. The only way to receive a citation is to break the rules a little bit, just enough that you don’t get carted off to jail, and Handler certainly does so with 

 He toes the line and pushes the envelope. He talks about sex, paranoia, and a psych ward. He makes fun of babies! All things that angry suburban mothers would rope off from children’s eyes and, therefore, all the more important for a children’s author to write about. Handler uses these banned items to explore themes of radical acceptance and desire, both sexual and also the desire that fuels readers’ search for answers.

This longing pervades the entirety of Handler’s book, from discussions of the loneliness of reading to the drama of singing “You 

 feels less like traditional classroom reading, and more like an epic quest through time and space, led by a Gandalf-like figure named Daniel. Instead of carrying a ring of power, Handler’s readers are driven by desperate attempts to understand the world

Much of this book feels like a confession. Not because all of the details are 100% fact-checked – in fact, Handler confides that they’re not – but because it is clear that this is someone who has used every bit of his life to feed and inform his stories. His candor resonates with readers. It doesn’t matter that Handler makes things up – what matters is that he is being truthful about 

Handler reminds the reader that you are allowed to reshape and fabricate life, the same way Lemony Snicket is a made-up name and the same way that his story about his parents' first meeting in an opera box – spoiler alert – is also made-up. In one essay, amidst a funny story about a wedding in wine country, he urges us to find these blanks and fill them out ourselves, whether they’re right-wing questionnaires or empty index cards or details about a secret society called VFD.

Handler will never tell us what’s in the sugar bowl or whether Carmelita Spats got her comeuppance because that’s for us, readers, to continue turning over in our heads, like a slight you can’t forgive. You must accept the uncertainty, the way Handler describes accepting his sleep paralysis nightmares in 

– nothing is “real”. That, in itself, is freeing. It’s much more fun to stumble against the blanks that Handler sets out like little rat traps, being wrong and wronger, knowing that, as Handler puts it, we can always find more to love.

Caroline Choi

Caroline Choi

Notes

Notes

Antarctica Syndrome

Notes

The Anti-Anti-Anti-Technologist Manifesto

Note: All events described in this manifesto are either very true or very made-up. There are two doors and two brothers. Also two butterflies and a golden key. Choose wisely.

Notes

And Then? And Then? A Book Review?