INTERVIEW: Recently, The Atlantic’s blog commented on a controversial piece you submitted to Gawker about being arrested for trespassing at NYU’s bookstore. The writer, Hua Hsu said you reveal a lot about yourself but nothing at all, “Like a marvelous joke with no punch line.” Do you agree with that statement?

TAO LIN: I agree with him that you don’t know anything about me. But I think it’s because there just really isn’t anything to know. Unless you view concrete things that happen to me as knowing things about me. I actually don’t have…opinions. I’m not being secretive about anything. I just actually don’t have opinions about society. I can discern that certain things have an effect on certain other things but I don’t view those effects as good or bad. If a context and a goal is defined I could say if it’s good or bad. But overall I don’t view things as good or bad. So I’m like a robot or computer in that sense. So maybe that’s why people don’t think they know me when they read my writing.

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