JK-LOL
By Patrick Barb
Release Date: January 14th, 2025
ISBN: 9798989173044
Pages: 122
A tech-savvy troll hiding behind his image as a start-up guru and family-man finds his life thrown into chaos when his online personality seemingly spills over in the real world, attacking and killing those he’d harassed virtually in the past.
With the authorities closing in on him, as a trail of bodies with ties to his online harassment appears across the country from California to Mississippi, Ted Hideman must abandon the protective anonymity of the online sphere and desperately search for answers in the real world. With the unlikely ally of a cybercrimes-focused federal agent who's been trying to nail Hideman for years, the disgraced Silicon Valley wünderkind is brought face-to-face with the living embodiments of the vile, hateful speech he's posted for years.
Following in the tradition of Black Mirror and Barb’s recent sci-fi/horror novelette Helicopter Parenting in the Age of Drone Warfare, JK-LOL highlights the dark side of tech and the connectivity that it offers. It is a story about the ease with which technocratic capitalist society allows monsters to be made and to thrive.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Patrick Barb is an author of weird, dark, and spooky stories, hailing from the southern United States and currently living (and trying not to freeze to death) with his wife two kids, and a naughty (but lovable) puppy in Saint Paul, Minnesota. As a writer, his short fiction appears in Nightscript, Diabolical Plots, and Cosmic Horror Monthly, among other publications. His longer works include the novellas Gargantuana’s Ghost (Grey Matter Press), Turn (Alien Buddha Press), and The Nut House (serialized in Cosmic Horror Monthly), the novelette Helicopter Parenting in the Age of Drone Warfare (Spooky House Press), and his debut dark fiction collection Pre-Approved for Haunting (Keylight Books/Turner Publishing). Barb is an Active Member of the Horror Writers Association and a Full Member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.