What if they just stopped? What if in a grand, scruffy stab at corporate disobedience, teenagers en masse simply stopped spending their money on the cynical crap that's relentlessly mainlined to them: the addictive and deadly cigarettes, the hateful music, the crude and desensitizing videos and movies? What if they stopped buying that $#!% - just to cause trouble? That's the radical notion behind Like We Care, a biting, clever, and hilarious satire in which two endearingly subversive high school seniors set out to monkey wrench the recording industry, the cigarette industry, the junk food industry - indeed, much of the American money machine. Marrying the internet to corporate America's own schemes and weapons, they slowly, reluctantly launch a grassroots campaign, with racial, political, and cultural implications, that harnesses the awesome, untapped power of teenagers flush with cash and inflamed by adult hypocrisy.
"In this hilarious debut novel, Matthews, a seasoned journalist and screenwriter, examines pop culture with a satirical, irreverent eye...Without a scintilla of sentimentality, he shows that despite teens' general apathy - and the corporate world's exploitation of the same - there remains a shimmer of hope that young people can muddle through and make a difference."
Booklist
"Tom Matthews takes sacred cows and satirizes them in a way that's simultaneously funny and sad. Like We Care is a story of two wise-ass students who know how to play the system and make it work for them, proving that if teenagers ever truly organized, they would have plenty of economic and political clout. This is a refreshingly original work that has a very special appeal to the younger crowd, a
