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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   6435 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 10, 2026

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That argument doesn't really make much sense to me, considering that Hugo and Shelley are considered classics of literature that many people (young or otherwise) enjoy to this day.

Given the ever-dropping number of young and old readers, I would say that this isn't the argument you think it is. "Everyone I know who saw the supergirl movie is woke!" "Everyone I know who likes books is fine with reading old ones?"

Well, who are you catering too?

I do not see how this reply is relevant to what I said. Your argument that I responded to (paraphrased) was "those books are old, comparable to [other old books], therefore kids are going to be disinterested". But books being old has never precluded interest in them before, even from kids. Therefore, books from the 20th century being old doesn't seem likely to preclude interest in them now.

But books being old has never precluded interest in them before, even from kids.

This is factually wrong and you know it. You can defend the bailey that people will not lose literally all interest in a novel simply because it is old, but cannot defend the motte that a novel's age has literally no relationship to the amount of interest people have in it. Yes, kids aren't going to be totally disinterested in old books-- but in proportion to the age and irrelevance of the novels they find on shelves, they will less interested.

He has a much stronger factual basis than you realize. You see it a lot more in music where older things are more popular than current things. Also very true with movie stars where it feels like we haven’t had a new movie star in 20 years. There are areas in the arts where we basically decided to freeze in time.

Personally I feel like most of the books I’ve read in my life are older. But in general the current popular book are aimed at the mass market which would exclude most people here. For the top 5-10% intellects you likely do need to read the great novels.

This is factually wrong and you know it.

I know no such thing. I think you are way off base, though I wouldn't go so far as to say it is a fact you are incorrect as I don't have hard evidence. But neither have you provided a basis in fact for your claim, so I guess we are just going to have to agree to disagree here.

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