Is This Rainbow Sex Ghost CHILL or NOT CHILL?

​Kindle Cover Disaste​rs is one of the most delightful single-serving Tumblrs to cross our screens in a while. The allure is less about taking sick pleasure in mocking the hard work of random internet people (which is pretty lame), but more focused on our own awe at the sheer diversity of the DIY fiction ecosystem. It provides some wonderful insight into how authors envision their own books when they don't have a publisher telling them how things should look, which tends to result in a rather d​epressing homogeneity.

Scrolling through Kindle Cover Disasters, one author stands out: the delightfully-named Max Wood, a rather prolific author ​of​ supernatural gay erotica (which happens to be a ​deeply diverse and SEO-driven genre). And by far his most striking cover is that for Pounded by the Biker Rainbow Come to Life. The book would seem pretty self-explanatory, but one question remains: Is that sunglass-wearing biker rainbow chill or not? The question has become so contentious around the office that Motherboard's Sarah Emerson and Derek Mead decided to debate.

Look at this guy. LOOK AT HIM! Look how chill he thinks he is. Look at how chill everyone thinks he is. Well, he's not.

Now, you might be thinking, "Sarah, are you seeing what I'm seeing? This is literally the international symbol of Chill, and he's wearing cool-ass shades and leisurely mounting a powerful motor vehicle. Not even a lizard slurping on a piña colada while sunning itself on a luxury yacht could touch the chill of this guy. And you're right! And that's why I'm right.

Let me tell you, there's only one thing less chill than furiously banging out 300 words on the merits of Chill, and that is someone who thinks they are chill. The kind of person who says things like, "Just kickin' it," and thinks that wearing a LiveStrong bracelet is a good life choice. The type of guy who unsolicitously pats you on the back even though you are obviously a hermit who shuns human affection, and the sort of woman who chides you for not eating more than one piece of pizza and, like, oh my god I devoured five slices last night and I'm still so hungryyy!

The type of rainbow dick who slaps on some sunnies, sits back on a Harley, and watches as the world burns under the heat of an apocalyptic chill wave.

I said it on​ce, and I'll say it again: Chill people are just crazy people, deep down inside. And as we cling to them like a raft in an ocean of neuroses, we only drag them down deeper into their own insanity.

Look, I'm not arguing that Chill is dying, but when rainbow dicks are leading the vanguard of good vibez, it makes you wonder if Chill hasn't already been dead for a long time.

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As a self-professed explorer of chill vibes, I find myself having trouble pinpointing what singular feature makes this rainbow phallus, which is actually the ghost of a guy named Rico, so blatantly chill. Like pornography, which this probably is, you just know it when you see it.

The sunglasses are an obvious choice. The motorcycle may be strangely stretched, and the floor left under the wheels adds to the one-dimensional paper cutout effect, but we all know choppers are chill.

And then there's Rico's lean. Goddamn that's a good lean! Rico's post-death being is an incorporeal blur of hot ghost sex, and yet you can STILL see him crossing his arms boss-style while he leans on that cardboard hog and sizes up our "mourning hippy" protagonist. That is clearly very chill!

Earlier this week a story by Alana M​assey made the rounds in which she very capably eviscerates the concept of "chill" as a positive attribute in the hellish vortex of nitpicking Seinfeldian nonsense that is modern dating. It's an enjoyable read, and makes very strong points that I agree with. But it also is based on a definition of "chill" that is entirely incorrect.

Massey rails against guys who describe themselves as "chill," which is fair, because all of the guys she describes sound like fuckboys. A person who texts a love interest to say that he or she "admires" that person's "chill" clearly has little grasp of how the word should be used, but that's beside the point.

"Chill" in a dating context is not chill at all; it's a 311-scented security blanket for someone terrified of spending an appreciable amount of time with one person because, hey, they have that one weird tooth and you never know, someone more attractive might slide across my screen the next time I'm dating while taking a shit.

What Massey is really railing against are wishy-washy assclowns who, attempting to reject their life of coddling in the pursuit of coddling, have co-opted the hard-learned language of good vibes for their own mid-20s self-reimagining. A person isn't chill because they listened to a Dennis Brown album once, or because they say "no stress" in low-stress situations, or for any other physical attribute that you throw on because it might help score babes at Coachella.

Someone who is truly chill has learned, through the rough and tumble nature of actually living life, to accept who they are, who they want to be, and the sheer difficulty of getting from one to the other. Shades aside, that's what makes Rico so chill. Even as an incorporeal being, Rico the rainbow dick is laser-focused on riding his motorcycle and gettin' some, but it's not like he's making a big show of it. And that is very chill.