Presented without comment, a handful of excerpts from "Spring Break for Nerds: A skeptic learns the secret to South by Southwest’s success," which for some reason just went up on The New Republic's website.

"We’re all New York posse,” he explained with a sweep of a hand toward the gaggle he’d been trying to maneuver into the corner my friend and I were occupying. Davis, a successful investor with a well-read blog whose personal website explains, “I breathe start-ups,” had struck up a conversation with an eye toward a hostile seating takeover. “

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Saltzman, whose website declares that he owns “the most badass coworking space on the planet,” bought us whiskeys and wassoon yelling things into my tape recorder. “Innovation,” he intoned. “Collaboration!”

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There are endless options all competing for your attention: hundreds of parties, both official and unofficial, 30,000 other attendees to meet, and more than a thousand panels on topics ranging from “Getting Started With Angel Investing” to “The Comfy Chair! Are We Sitting Too Much?”

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“Technology as a growth pattern has grown exponentially in our lifetime to where we’re going to be solving some serious fucking issues and living forever. I know it’s a crazy thing to think about, but we’re solving the world’s problems.”

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Alex Karpovsky, the “Girls” actor, walked by, and my head turned with everyone else’s. I tuned back in to hear Saltzman saying, “My point is that the growth patterns of technology are taking off at such a constant supersonic rate that this kinda shit promotes the whole thing.”

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Less successful was an app that was supposed to be something like Words With Friends, “but for numbers.” It was promoted by a pack of pretty young women in T-shirts

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Pete Cashmore in an American Gothic homage and of Grumpy Cat herself, superimposed onto a lumberjack-shirt-wearing human torso standing in front of a laser-show background.

Wait, nevermind, I take back the part about presented without comment: almost every noun in the above section is horribly obnoxious and difficult to read. But the article itself is a sharp, terrific slice of cultural terror—read the whole thing for more cloying bits of startup ego, if you have a tough enough stomach. [TNR]