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There's a great piece in this week's New Yorker (not online, unfortunately) about Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, an advice manual basically designed to teach you how to get over. The book is full of all sorts of asshatty "laws" ("Crush your enemy totally," "Play a sucker to catch a sucker," etc.), and, not unsurprisingly, has become something of a bible for society's most repellent figures (Dov Charney has Greene "on retainer."), many of them from the hip hop community. Nick Paumgarten does a heck of a job drawing out Greene's douchery, and you should pick up a print copy to get the full flavor, but here's our favorite part, which takes place at a party celebrating the new Ludacris record:

From the number of guests hunched over their BlackBerries, you got the impression that everyone was communicating by text message, as though the room were full of invisible carrier pigeons. Greene borrowed a Treo to check his email, but had received only spam.

It's the little, telling details that do it.

In The Magazine [NYer]