#max marshall

THE GLITCH 👾 Episode 4 of my web comic is up on Webtoon! This chapter is my favorite so far, so go check it out!

Hannibal: malcontented, disgruntled, miserable, desolated...

Max: Ya know, just summoning demons and making wax dolls. The usual

Book #38 of 2024:

Among the Bros: A Fraternity Crime Story by Max Marshall

One part ethnographic history of the modern American college fraternity scene; one part true-crime reporting of a million-dollar benzodiazepine ring that operated within that ecosystem at the College of Charleston in South Carolina. To lay out my biases, I was active in a fraternal organization myself not too long before the events detailed in this book, although my experiences couldn’t have been further removed from the extravagant abuses that author Max Marshall relates. (As one of the 3% of frat members he notes don’t consume any alcohol, I witnessed plenty of underage drinking around me, but never any hazing or harder drug use.) My quiet university as a whole wasn’t exactly known as a big party school, either.

But I was aware of such extremes in the broader ‘Greek’ subculture, and was interested to see them described so analytically, especially in an early passage when the writer traces the impact of popular movies like Animal House and Old School on perceptions and expectations of fraternity life. Certainly the ‘bros’ he describes in this book seem to have taken the excesses of such works as aspirational, along with the cash-fueled blowouts depicted in The Wolf of Wall Street. It’s an element that merits widespread scrutiny from our cultural commentators, as does the racism, misogyny, and rape culture that’s often endemic in such spaces (though is treated only passingly here).

But most of this text is given over to the dealers and their illicit products, which they would buy off foreign suppliers on the dark web in powder form, press into pills themselves, and then market to their classmates as a way to curb anxiety and enhance the effects of alcohol and other drugs. If Marshall’s sources are to be believed, the blackouts that accompanied such usage were generally not intended as date-rape aids, but rather seen as a benefit for the buyers themselves, freeing them from the burden of having to remember any specific debaucheries in the cold light of morning.

The author’s insider view and years of dedicated research are appreciated, but his account at times veers into sensationalizing the glamor of the young men’s lifestyle — they hung out with rappers like Waka Flocka Flame! — and minimizing the real-world harm perpetrated by their actions. He also quotes heavily from text conversations and the comments section of websites like Total Frat Move, which seems more like an excuse to share scandalous off-color humor than providing any necessary support for his points. The fratty tone extends throughout his own writing in this book too, such as his repeated use of the acronym GDI (G** D*** Independent) for an unaffiliated student, in lieu of a more neutral alternative term.

Still, the title dwells on the case of one trafficker who wound up shot to death and another currently serving time in prison for his role at the top of the criminal enterprise, which ran in successively less lucrative layers like any multi-level marketing / pyramid scheme out there. That it took so long for the mostly rich, white, male offenders to be brought to justice speaks to the absurd degree of privilege in their community, but this work at least attempts to grapple with that and show how consequences did reach a few of the perpetrators, eventually.

★★★☆☆