This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The point I'm trying to make is that there's plenty of good books that aren't difficult (surely that should be clear from the examples I gave). It's not clear to me that reading slop helps read good books any more than watching tiktoks helps you enjoy movies.
I imagine you read a lot, so I think your perspective is skewed by what counts as difficult. You are underestimating just how simple RoyalRoad is, and how that simplicity is very useful when you haven't been reading your whole life.
The first issue is that you're competing with TikTok, video games, and twitch streams. I can promise you that there is a gulf between Treasure Island and your average RoyalRoad story in terms of ease of reading.
And the second issue is that, or at least this is my perspective, is that it's fun to read books that are contemporary. I've read Count of Monte Cristo, and in it I clearly saw a lot of inspiration for what the modern WebFic world developed from. In many ways it's a proto webfic. And yet, I would say it's also much worse than modern web novels. Is it better than the average RR slop? Of course, is it as interesting to read as the above average RR stories? I don't think so.
Reading RoyalRoad stories is like eating popcorn. I'm a very fast reader, depending on the book, I can reach up to 400 WPM. I'm obviously an outlier, but the way I reached this is by just reading a lot of slop. Reading is a much a muscle as anything else, and you do develop it as long as you do it. Even if you read slop, you will get better at consuming slop more quickly.
I've started reading translated xianxia slop, then webfics like Worm, and now I've also read "highbrow" authors like Pynchon, and Burroughs. But I don't think I would've enjoyed them anywhere as much if I hadn't developed my ability to consume words on the lowbrow stories first.
Sure, RLS might require the average moid to look up a few words. But basically anything in the past 100 years is easily digestible for a literate adult.
Uh, cool, I guess, but I don't know what the point of this is. It isn't necessary to read faster than average to read something that isn't slop.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
"Not difficult" isn't sufficient. We need fun books to get boys and men to love reading-- and literary fiction is often written in direct subversion of what it takes for a story to be "fun." Reading about depressed writers getting cuckolded by their mistresses might be interesting if you've read a thousand stories about Buffguy McStrongJaw beating up the Unquestionable Evil Species of Alient Bug Invaders, but first you do have to read those thousand stories.
--Also, this went unaddressed in my earlier post, but twenty thousand years of human literary history doesn't matter one whit when someone feels the need for currency, or in particular a story told using the language and aesthetic of their lived experience. Yes, every theme is ultimately universal. Yes, we haven't come up with anything truly novel since Grug came up with the idea of telling his kids that if talked back to him the terrible LionSnakeFalcon would drop out of the sky and murderize them into little bits. But boy is it a lot less cognitive effort to read a story about a farmboy fighting a dragon instead of a caveman fighting a LionSnakeFalcon, and that leaves a lot of extra cognitive effort to spare for contemplating the deep truths common between both stories.
You have an incredible talent for talking to someone without responding to them.
The essence of my post is that we're not publishing enough books that are interesting to men. The essence of your first reply was that we already had published plenty of interesting books. The essence of my first reply was that those might have been interesting to you, but that you're atypical and that therefore your reply fails to contradict my thesis. I understood the essence of your second reply as being to claim that old books aren't necessarily unreadable, and replied that "not unreadable" != "interesting". If that was noncentral, and the essence of your reply was actually something along the lines of, "there's no point making books more interesting when that doesn't necessarily make them more useful", then I encourage you to go back and read my article without skimming because I use most of it to explain why the present state of the publishing industry disadvantages books that provide any sort of value to men, and therefore why, if you care about "good books", it is necessary to first convince publishers that men like to read by reading and paying for any books, so that they see the need to select and cultivate good books. If that was noncentral, and your central point was that you men probably won't start reading good books just because they're reading bad books, then I would claim that my central point is that they definitely won't start reading good books if they're not reading any books... and as per my earlier points, that in a tautological but also very true sense men won't start reading books if there are no books they're interested in reading.
(if the central point of your 2nd-to-last reply was something totally different than my three proposals, feel free to clarify that now.)
It clearly wasn't, which should have been obvious given the examples I gave of interesting books. It's quite simply wrong that there are no interesting books published before current year plus ten.
As written, your response implies that you disagree with the position that "old books aren't necessarily unreadable"-- meaning, you think old books are unreadable. Responding against what you actually mean to say-- that "old books are interesting"-- I would counter, "nuh uh." Well not actually, but c'mon-- are you totally incapable of seeing how a person might enjoy recency and currency in the media they consume, and thereby prefer to look for classes of media where they can find it?
No, my response implies that the essence of my second comment was not that old books merely readable.
Sure, in the same way that I am capable of seeing why a person enjoys reading books written in the first person rather than the third, or why a black woman enjoys reading books about black women. I simply consider this a blinkered perspective and if I never read, for example, Hemingway because I think bullfights are barbarous and reprehensible, it would be ridiculous.
I do not believe that you can learn to expand what you like by reading more of what you already like.
Why are you making a moral argument instead of addressing my mechanical one? I'm not saying that reading old books is bad or worthless, I'm saying it's going to be much harder to get kids and men to read good books without first instilling a love of reading, which is very likely to take bad-but-entertaining books. I absolutely loved Eragon as a kindergartener. Was it the absolute peak of literary achievement? Absolutely not. But it hadn't been for books like Eragon, I never would have been interested in reading books like the Dragonriders of Pern, or from there Foundation and I, Robot, or from there Anathem and Void*Star.
I am wondering if we are even having the same conversation. Are my messages getting through? Is there some corruption in the database?
You enjoyed Eragon not because you were a kindergarten-level reader but because you were a child. If you are already not a child, or not a kindergartner, there is no point in starting with children's literature to cultivate an enjoyment of reading: you should just read actually good books.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link