There was a time when buying cult books was a more involved process than going to the section of a record shop with that title, and choosing from the top sellers by Hunter S. Thompson, William Burroughs, and Charles Bukowski. Independent bookshops could be found off the beaten track, and the people working there were often committed to…well, something other than just making money for Borders.

I mention this having seen Choke, an adaptation of a Chuck Palahniuk novel. And something has happened, either to Chuck or to the world at large, since David Fincher’s searing 1999 version of his Fight Club hit the screen. Where Fight Club was raw and provocative and bulging with dangerous ideas, Choke seems pretty much like its trailer presents it, a knockabout comedy for audiences who’ve enjoyed Pineapple Express and the life and works of Kevin Smith (like it or not, they come as a package deal).

Now, I do enjoy a lot of American comedies, but I can’t help thinking Choke aspired to being more than that. Whether the problem is in Palahniuk’s source material, its translation to the screen, or wider issues, I’m not quite sure. After all, a story about a guy who attends a group for sex addicts, has a warped Anjelica Huston for a mother, and fakes choking incidents in restaurants so he can get emotional and sometimes financial support from the people who rescue him, should be kind of disturbing, shouldn’t it?

The fact that this all plays well enough as comedy is what’s truly disturbing. YouTube has created a culture that not only watches car crashes, but rewatches them and sends them to its friends. People kill themselves online and are egged on by viewers, or jump off buildings after being taunted by a waiting crowd recording what happens on their phones, to reference two recent news stories.

Now, I am fully aware that this is a partial picture, and that there are plenty of fine things coming out of our new digital age. Collaborative endeavours are being realised that wouldn’t have been possible without computing, and even computers at rest can contribute to the search for cancer cures and so forth through distributed software. All well and good. But is it possible too that exposure to a myriad shocking images has numbed us to the power of something more shocking still: the radical concept?

Maybe writer-director Clark Gregg intended for mainstream success in his take on Choke. Or maybe, norms have changed so much that what would have had shock value a decade ago now just gets a cynical response. It’s hard to rage against the machine when you depend on the same machine to get your product out to the consumer, after all. And when that rage itself has been commodified, become just another brand value, where is there for the would-be radical creator to turn?