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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   32797 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026

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I was in the waiting room of a doctor's office yesterday and my wife noticed a number of....spicy? (I think was the term) books on the bookshelf. None of the current monster/dark fantasy stuff thats all the rage right now, but absolutely text based pornograrphy for women. About a dozen of them. The exact same shelf, immediately adjacent to the smut books, were three different editions of the Bible. This was an office in a Catholic hospital.

... and pointing it out is impolite due to the subject of conversation.

Its impolite because its only men that seem to take issue, and its inappropriate for men to criticize women. Full stop.

I've left out the absolute best part imo. The overwelming majority of these books are written in a non-omniscient* first-person, producing an entire generation of women "readers" who struggle with, or fail completely, to parse the meaning of third-person prose. They can't keep track of who is doing what; literally can't tell who the subject/object of the sentence is and get so confused they give up on the book. The meme is "3rd person is immediate DNF" (did not finish).

*non-omniscient in that the main PoV character often lacks the knowledge of what the main PoV character is thinking or planning.

https://tiktok.com/discover/i-cant-read-third-person

https://old.reddit.com/r/Barnesandnoble/comments/1lhiwrs/third_person_difficulties/

https://old.reddit.com/r/romanceunfiltered/comments/1nys2bs/illiteracy_driving_first_person_pov_trend_in/

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/what_were_reading/4854296-struggle-reading-books-in-third-person

To be fair, some of that reflects people who 'can't' read third-person in the performative 'just can't even' sense; they're capable of it, they just don't like to do so, or don't find it as entertaining. There's a pretty sizable BookTok force that has a similar reaction to first-person perspective books or fanfic, as well, generally seeing it as schlocky and prone to confusing action-state errors. The third-person diehards aren't necessarily any freer of messy fanfic behavior (eg, y/n fics are pretty common in both first-person, second-person, and third-person), but it's a lot less of a clear dividing line than you'd expect.

((Though, yes, the people who literally-literally can't read third person works exist, too.))

I tend err toward third-person than not, but I do have some sympathies, here. From a writing perspective, first-person lets you get away with a lot of scenes that would devolve into endless pronoun problems or feel bizarrely clinical, and there's a lot of mystery or action gimmicks that either don't work or come across as author fiat in a third-person work (even one where the pov is highly restricted to one person).

producing an entire generation of women "readers" who struggle with, or fail completely, to parse the meaning of third-person prose.

Damn. As a commenter on one of those reddit threads mentioned, I always thought first-person was the "weird" way of writing a story. Haven't these women read anything in school? Or even Harry Potter? Or... oh, shit! Hunger Games is first-person!

This is a bit of a blackpill.

It should be, relates nicely to the way Men and Women engage with video games, (huge generalization here) women like to insert themselves into the character and "roleplay" as themselves, while men typically embody the the true abstract character's motivation, roleplaying as some one who isn't going to necessarily act like themselves.

The exact same shelf, immediately adjacent to the smut books, were three different editions of the Bible.

I wonder which book they were most often opened to....

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