# Why Petshitter is my favorite book

*Yes - Pet SHITTER*

By [Indignified Worlds. CD's Projects - Tech, AI, Books, Worlds, Houses, Art](https://paragraph.com/@indignified) · 2026-04-17

unabomber, silicon, siliconvalley, gopherprotocol, romcombook

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A question I get asked sometimes: out of everything you've written, what's your favorite?

I always say _Petshitter: A Silicon Valley Romance_. I always watch people try to decide if I'm serious.

I'm serious.

It does something structurally that I hadn't seen done before: it runs a manifesto — the actual Unabomber manifesto, _Industrial Society and Its Future_ — as chapter epigraphs through a romantic comedy about two people whose names have destroyed their lives. The comedy is load-bearing. The romance is genuine. The manifesto is the argument. By the end of the book you've read all three simultaneously and they've done something to each other.

The protagonist shares a name with Ted Kaczynski. His entire adult life has been shaped by this. Not metaphorically — professionally, socially, specifically. He's 48 and still waiting for a break that keeps not coming when he meets a woman on a blind date. She also has an impossible name. Their recognition of each other is immediate and completely earned.

What they build together — nominally a dog waste startup, actually a mesh-networked alternative internet designed to dismantle surveillance capitalism — is where the book's real ambitions live. But the love story is the reason it works. You need to believe in them to believe in what they're building.

I think it's my favorite because it's the book where the formal ambition and the emotional core lined up exactly. That doesn't happen every time. When it does, you know it.

[_Petshitter: A Silicon Valley Romance_](https://www.amazon.com/Petshitter-Unfortunate-Names-Made-Good-ebook/dp/B0BPXSGT59) — on Amazon now.

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*Originally published on [Indignified Worlds. CD's Projects - Tech, AI, Books, Worlds, Houses, Art](https://paragraph.com/@indignified/why-petshitter-is-my-favorite-book)*