Like a lot of older books, it doesn’t quite give you that dopamine hit you get from today’s media. It’s a product of its time in that way.

But in other ways, it’s a timeless classic. I was rewatching the vice documentaries where they visit North Korea and I was absolutely blown away by the parallels between the DPRK and 1984.

When Kim Jong Un attends Vice’s basketball game with the Harlem Globe Trotters and talks about friendship with the Americans, the journalist points out how bizarre it is considering the fact that their entire trip has been nonstop “fuck the American Bastards” propaganda up until that point.

All I could think was “We’ve always been at war with Eurasia.”

Similarly, the way the North Koreans in the stands scream, “Live 10,000 years!” over and over and over when Kim Jong Un enters the room reminded me of the two minutes hate from the novel, just inverted.

I mean, whether it’s a riveting tale or not (I happen to think it is), it definitely serves as a warning. The novel seems absolutely absurd to us in modern America because we can’t believe that their society could really exist. We might know it logically but I don’t think it hits home for us emotionally that 1984 is a perfectly realistic outcome for a society gone wrong.