Buzzfeed Personality Tests Will Ruin You: Lexicon, by Max Barry

Think about how many times you've had to take personality tests - I take them occasionally (like the ones on Buzzfeed) to sate my curiosity.  Who am I?  What job would I be suited for?  What other personality types would I get along with?  What are my strengths and weaknesses? I take the results and explanations with a grain of salt because it's all in good fun.

However, in graduate school, I was actually required to take the Gallup Strengths Finder during orientation week. For a job interview, I had to take the Hogan Personality Inventory within 48 hours of receiving an email.  During my internship, it was highly recommended to complete the CORE Multi-Dimensional Awareness Profile. Most recently, I took the Myers Briggs for an company training exercise.  I took all of these tests without question because it was just another part of the job process.  It's amazing how corporations will pay incredible sums of money to administer these tests in order to slide and dice and label you.  In a way, it's incredibly helpful.  By understanding the way one's psyche works, you can leverage a person's strengths/weaknesses and likes/dislikes to work harmoniously with them.

Now what if the knowledge of psychographics were used with malicious intent?

Max Barry's Lexicon contains all your nightmares of the media's influence, compromised private security, mental coercion, and political corruption coming true.

Are you a cat or a dog person?

Answering such a "harmless question" can leave you vulnerable to mental attack.

In Emily Ruff's world, combinations of words unlock the protective filters of your brain and inhibitions, leaving you weak to the power of suggestion.  Ask a person a series of questions to reveal his innate character, identify the correct psychographic segment, and say the correct words pertaining to that segment... you now have a proseltye: an obedient puppet who is in your hands and is mentally compromised prepared to do your bidding.

"Words aren't just sounds or shapes.  They're meaning.  That's what language is: a protocol for transferring meaning. When you learn English, you train your brain to react in a particular way to particular sounds. As it turns out, the protocol can be hacked."

The masters of the lexicon are called poets, hiding their true identities and taking on the names of legendary wordsmiths like T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf.  One day, a "bareword" was developed; all who hear or read this bareword are rendered under the command immediately following it.  This bareword was unleashed in the town of Broken Hill with a horrific consequence: it effectively killed everyone and blotted it off the map.  Max Barry describes what happened in Broken Hill in such a horrifically graphic way that I actually had to set the book down, watch a youtube video compilation of silly cats, and then go back to finishing that particular chapter because I was still disturbed by the depravity of the scene.

The book alternates between what's actually happening in the world (like what happened on Broken Hill) and cuts into the storytelling with news/press releases that cover up all the poet-related violence with car accidents, troubled suicides, and random shootings, showing that the media and journalism are already compromised by this poet-organization.  This was the most terrifying aspect of the book.

I give this 5-stars because it's a page turner and a complete mind-trip.  Your brain is going to be a cluster while reading this one.  However, there isn't a completely neat ending where all the ends are tied together.  You're still going to have a ton of questions about the organization and what happens next, but keep in mind that this is ultimately Emily's story.  You have been warned.  Now go read it!