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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   25050 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 29, 2025

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I don't believe people want to game or watch TV endlessly on repeat though, I certainly don't. Regardless of how good something is I want to cycle between different sorts of stimuli and types of activities, some providing "fun" and others "meaning".

This seems to be a lot like gambling and many addictions to me. The vast majority have no issues to engage in moderate use while a small minority can't control themselves and self destruct, and young people are more vulnerable.

I don't believe people want to game or watch TV endlessly on repeat though, I certainly don't.

The fanfic industry gives the lie to this. Many of us do indeed want endless streams the same media with a few changes and wrinkles thrown in. Most of these fics are very derivative even for an inherently derivative art form even where it doesn't make sense - see Stations of Canon - and many are just bad yet we slog through them hoping to find the few that let us recapture the same feeling we got consuming the original work.

The popularity of thousand-chapter webfics indicates otherwise. If the AI learns to generate cultivation LitRPG isekai with ten thousand chapters (and tailor it to the reader's taste), a lot of people will never touch anything else.

I don't know about thousand chapter webfics, but I've been reading Hajime no Ippo for nigh on 20 years, and it's over 1000 chapters. It's a particular relationship between reader and author, a long running manga like this. You get someone's idiosyncratic direct creative output, without the design by committee aspects of a lot of other media. You watch them grow and develop, not just in their craftsmanship, but in their perspective, which often comes through in how the story evolves. As you age with them, they continue telling a story that hits right at your mutually changing maturity level.

Hajime no Ippo and Berserk are more or less the only manga I still read anymore. Everything else either finished, or I lost interest. Now the question is if I live long enough to see anything resembling an ending to either.

That's not quite what I'm getting at. I don't really care if someone wants to read a an endless webserial or not, I don't see how that matters. What I tried to respond to was the media addiction part, with the implication that sufficient amount of quality media of ones preferred sort, like endless office episodes for those who are into that or an endless webserial, would lead people to only engaging in that, essentially amounting to a low tech wireheading.

My point is that even if we got endless episodes/chapters/whatever, most people would still want to do a variety of things outside of media consumption.

Do people pick these up and read forever though? A lot of these webfics are serialized, people reach the end and then just read chapter by chapter.

One of the big draws for me with webfiction is that I am a very fast reader, and if I was buying everything it would bankrupt me. A million word story can give me a nice week of reading, but I wouldn't be spending more than a few hours of leisure a day, and most of the time keeping up with ongoing web releases is ~1hour a week

Better yet, imagine a story where you are the main character, playing in a rich world with real agency, learning things, judging, fighting, ruling, plot threads springing up around you. We could have that too, a whole new fusion between games and literature. We have that right now, albeit in a limited, experimental form.

That's just called "life".

Kind of. Compare "life" to a game though...

  • You only get one chance to play, with permadeath. That means you have to be really, really careful and avoid taking risks.
  • No fast travel. It takes forever just to get anywhere
  • There's only one server and way too many players, so all the best stuff has massive queues
  • It's been running a long time, so a lot of stuff is dominated by powergames and guilds who started long before you were ever born
  • Completely OP, some stuff is just way better than other stuff, and if you choose wrong you're screwed
  • Tons of trolling and toxic players who never get banned
  • Most of us never get to fight or rule anything. We're just stuck grinding at a boring job
  • Tons of random luck

I don't know, someone needs to revamp this "life"

How about "Life 2.0"? With adventure, romance, high-speed chases, daredevil stunts, whatever you want.

You can have all that already!

Can you?

Can the 55 year old accountant with a bum leg and asthma really be James Bond if he just REALLY tries?

Can he really be Genghis Khan? Would it be wise or even good if he could?

A high-speed car chase in VR is fun and thrilling. In real life, it's tragic and destructive.

But no, people can't have everything they want in life. A big part of growing up for most people, who are ordinary, is coming to terms with and accepting that you are, in fact, not special - and that's ok. You'll never be famous, you'll never make a great scientific discovery, you'll never make a speech that shakes the world, you'll never have 1 second let alone 15 minutes of fame. Hell, for most, you'll never even be an ordinary rich guy. Sure, people shouldn't be complacent and should work to get what they can, but don't pretend that there aren't limits especially for the 50% of the population below the median. Because that's the brutal truth: there is always a bottom half.

Why shouldn't they be allowed some escapism?

"That's just virtuality, imitation of life. Can AI VR let you truly enjoy adventure? Find romance and fame?"

"Can you?"

Not the romance, and if you try the rest it usually ends in short order with death, hospitalization, or jail.

Banned for targeted personal attacks (on me).

I wish there was more actually good Xianxia, 3k chapters just isn't enough.

I'm writing one, don't worry. Hopefully it's good. ;D

Send me a link!

Sure, here you go. https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/133044/seed-of-the-radiant-grove

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