Ben Extina is a recovered gooner who now limits his internet usage in an effort to unpoison his mind. He is also a smut writer and attracts older women who he gives funny nicknames to. Despite his efforts to stay off the internet, the damage from “the tubes” is already done. He has ruined sex for himself with excessive gooning sessions via an elaborate VR set-up, and his relationship with the hilariously nicknamed ‘Leviathan’ is one of convenience only.
The world presented in Scenebux is one alarmingly similar to the one we’ve occupied for the last few years. The shadow of AI looms large, acting as a passive antagonist throughout the entire book. Ben Extina is worried, scared even, of the world that is forming around him, around all of us. He may be quick-witted enough to make a joke out of it and convince himself, and the people around him, otherwise, but it does nothing to stop the shadow of this new world growing ever darker and larger.
To my memory, this is the first post-pandemic novel I’ve read, and it’s a sobering thought that such a thing even exists. A headline asking why the ultimate “internet novel” hasn’t been written yet was also at the forefront of my mind as I ploughed through the book, the right term, in this case.
The writing is certainly accomplished, brilliant even, in its casual utilisation of funny idioms without breaking the pace or feel of the prose. The saying “Get to know me before you bro me,” for example, had me laughing out loud, as did several other lines of dialogue, mostly by Ben Extina himself.
That being said, this is no easy read due to the sheer volume of what I can only really describe as either internet jargon, in-jokes, or just straight-up Generation Z lingo. This book, by design, is “terminally online,” and not something you’ll be able to lend to your ‘normie’ IRL friends.
It exists inside The Scene, take it out of The Scene and it becomes almost unreadable to the average person. As much as I loved this book personally, I’m acutely aware that it exists within a microcosm.
Yet what I’ve just outlined can equally be viewed as the book’s strength. It unflinchingly depicts a certain corner of the internet that both you and I occupy. This corner is the near future that Nick Land says doesn’t belong to humans, the same corner where Curtis Yarvin suggested we might consider turning excess humans into biofuel.
It’s no secret that the Scenebux of the title are based on the fictional (or true) ‘Thielbux’ meme, and the book references “neoreactionary billionaires” as part of the labyrinthine conspiracy that Ben Extina finds himself entangled in.
If you’ve ever found yourself concerned, or even outright terrified, by the occult-feeling new authorities of the world, then you are Ben Extina. This novel acts as a nudge and a wink to all of us who have logged on to the internet in the past five years and just thought, “What the fuck am I reading?”
If anything, it’s taken that world and satirised it into something even more terrifying, like pulling back a veil to reveal a cartoonised version of The Scene, like Dimes Square made into a Ren & Stimpy cartoon (I would watch this, by the way).
The noir elements of the book are perfectly executed, from grisly accidents to possible terrorist events. There’s no doubt that Cairo is a highly talented story-crafter, and there is value here even outside of the satirical layer. However, it’s impossible to read the book without that satire; it’s woven through it so deeply. There is no story without the reflection of the black mirror, Cairo Smith will not allow you to look away from the world we’ve found ourselves in. Rightly so.
If you’re in Our Thing in any capacity, you don’t get to get off the ride at this point.
The book balances comedy with noir and satire well, particularly at the start with the biker gang. When I first began reading, I thought it felt like Nutcrankr meets American Psycho due to the dialogue and playful nature of the first few chapters. As I got deeper and deeper into the book, though, I realised it’s more Nutcrankr meets Houellebecq.
I realised that sex had been reduced to something purely transactional, even in the instances it wasn’t paid for. Ben Extina’s ability to truly love is severely compromised. I realised the novel was far bleaker than it first appeared, and that it dared to plunge deeper into the abyss than I imagined it might.
To categorise this as a work of satire only does it a disservice, there’s more here than clever mockery. The heart of this book is as hidden as that of a shitposting irony bro, and even that fact serves the book’s greater purpose. You get the sense that Cairo himself is a character in this world, and I found myself curious which parts were Ben Extina’s voice, and which were Cairo Smith’s.
The book itself has a metaphysical quality, and part of me would like to see Cairo Smith as a character in Scenebux 2, in a Paul Auster/Bret Easton Ellis-style meta-narrator trick. I digress, but such thoughts show how engaging the book is, and how precisely it captures its place in the current cultural moment.
As just the second release of New Ritual Press, the small publishing house Rolling Stone wrote about in their article on “the anti-woke literary scene growing in LA”, it sets a brilliant precedent for how unconventional and bold the new wave of indie writers are turning out to be.
Viewed as a whole, alongside Nutcrankr by Dan Baltic (co-owner of New Ritual Press), Omar King’s wonderful Lynchian-inspired surrealism, and other involved authors such as Matt Pegas (the other co-owner of the press) and the “bright young thing” of the Rolling Stone article himself, Adem Luz Reinspects, it’s hard not to be excited about the future of this small corner of indie-lit, which is successfully carving out its niche in real time and energising a new wave of readers.
You can buy Scenebux, here.
And you should also subscribe to Cairo’s brilliant Substack, Futurist Letters here:
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