Kara Swisher has been writing about the Internet’s ruling class since the 1990s. At The Wall Street Journal, her outspoken column, Boom Town, which covered the unhinged excitement of Silicon Valley during the dot-com bubble, became a must-read. She has founded tech conferences and news Web sites, hosted two podcasts, and is currently an editor at large at New York magazine, where she exudes an industriousness rivaled only by that of the tycoons she investigates. Burn Book tracks the beefs and the blowhards among our tech overlords, as well as her own rise to becoming a “one-person media entity.” Swisher is excoriating and never beats around the bush, especially not when quizzed on her least favorite things. —Jack Sullivan
LEAST FAVORITE NUMBER: Probably six. I don’t know why. I just don’t like the looks of it.
LEAST FAVORITE COLOR: Easy. Yellow.
LEAST FAVORITE TEAM: All of them. I don’t watch sports. I’m the only lesbian in America who doesn’t watch sports. I hate sports. And everyone’s like, “You have to like sports—you’re a lesbian!” I don’t. Sorry.
PREFERRED DEADLY SIN:
Pride. I have a lot of pride. You could call it arrogance, but it works for me.
FOOD THAT MAKES YOU GAG: I don’t really like fried foods—I really don’t.
BOOK YOU NEVER FINISHED: All of them. I have 100 books on my iPhone that I haven’t finished. I’m right in the middle of North Woods right now, and I love it, but I wish I had more time to read.
FILM YOU WALKED OUT OF: I didn’t like Dune—and I know everyone’s going to kill me for it. I didn’t walk out, but … I started texting. I text when I get bored in a movie. I just don’t like the whole Timothée Chalamet thing, and there was a lot of sand happening. And I know a lot of people like it, but I don’t. I’m not going to Dune 2. I heard it’s great, and I don’t care.
SONG YOU NEVER WANT TO HEAR AGAIN: “Let It Go,” from Frozen. But I’m going to hear it 100 times in the next hour. Because my children—my daughter particularly—listen to it over and over again.
WORST FORM OF TRANSPORT: Probably a boat. They’re slow. Not like a sailboat, but a cruise-ship kind of thing.
PREFERRED FORM OF REVENGE: Success.
FAVORITE CURSE WORD: “Fuck.” A classic.
THING YOU SAID BUT WISH YOU HADN’T: “No, AOL / Google / Amazon, I don’t want that job and the massive stock [options] you were going to give me back when you started.”
WORST ADVICE YOU’VE EVER GOTten: “Get in line.”
WORST ADVICE YOU’VE EVER GIVEN: I don’t tend to give a lot of advice.
LAST WORDS BEFORE EXECUTION: Well, I have something I want to put on my gravestone: “Fun! Fun! Fun! Death.”
Kara’s Inessentials
