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I never cared for the cool people. Me, I have always wanted to read books about outcasts: impossibly flawed and so truly themselves. I found comfort reading about people who didn't fit in, but who fit in their own skin. People who were themselves in their original way, who I wanted to be like, because they weren't scared of themselves. Jeremy Heere, the protagonist of Be More Chill is an outcast, a weirdo. But not in a way that I liked, as bitchy as that may sound. The entire book (apart from the ending perhaps) revolves around Jeremy completely changing himself trying to get laid. His only goal is being Cool, and he's willing to buy a six hundred pill-sized supercomputer for that. And when Jeremy is supah-dupah-cool his life immediately becomes great and amazing.

being Cool is obviously the most important thing on Earth.

It's kinda demotivating, because to me it seemed as if the main message is "be Cool or your life sucks". But of course, being cool does have negative side effects, and telling you that is no spoiler since it's also written in the blurb on the back:

But Jeremy discovers that there is a dark side to handing over control of your life--and it can have disastrous consequences.

Even though I didn't like Jeremy and his ideals, I did adore him for loving his friend and Christine the way he did. He could have any friend in the world and ditch Michael, but he still wanted to include him.

How does anybody do it? You get good clothes, walk in with confidence and shed unnecessary humans. Like Michael.
He's not unnecessary--he's my friend.

He could have all of the hot girls, but instead he only wants Christine:

"That's who I like and that's who I want to be with"

The book was quite painful to read, because it depicts adolescents as horny kids who don't use their brain but think with their dicks. But then again, it does contain some truth... I applaud Vizzini for not shying away from this, and even more for the humour. The quirky and fast-paced writing made the book not only bearable, but also fun. It's not a very serious book, but it can arouse serious questions about the influence of technology and peer-pressure on the lives of (young) adults. As David Levithan put it:

there are timeless, device-agnostic questions underneath --with every leap forward we take with technology, we lose a little something else when it comes to independence and individuality.