It is quite common in the world of literature to hear that "people are reading less and less", "nobody goes to the library anymore", "everyone now prefers to watch soap operas on TikTok or Instagram", "that current generations are illiterate", etc. What is not said is elitism within literature. For some readers, no book is good. Or even, that certain books are "slop": Dumas? Slop. Pynchon? Slop. HP LOVECRAFT? Slop. Dickens? Kafka? daddy issues slop. Slop Stephen King? ULTRA-Slop. POE? Slop. Dostoevsky? semi-slop. etc. etc. In the entire Western canon only three books are good: MOBY DICK, Ulysses, and the sacred bible. Only they realize the depth of novels; only they know/can write a good review; only they can grasp the subtleties of other people's prose. Then they don't understand why no one reads it anymore or prefers to do something else. I even understand complaining about Dark Romance or self-help. Now this? It's already too much. They turn something that IS meant to be pleasurable into a job. READING SHOULD BE FUN; not something you do to impress your peers or to feel better about others. Yes, you can have fun reading something that requires more effort, I'm not saying we should all just read Paulo Coelho and Stephen King. I'm trying to say that we SHOULD NOT KEEP WATCHING what I read by others. Not knocking on anyone's door to 'check their bookshelf', just like I don't want anyone on mine. Please don't destroy the damn hobby.
>>25620615Please go on a writing course or something, deciphering this mess was a chore and not at all worth it. I'm starting to sympathise with that anon complaining about a new type of ESL invading this board.
>>25620629You hurt my feelings.
I also blame the school system>You MUST read this book as a matter of duty and it doesn't matter whether you like it!
>>25620629Why are you so rude, man? >>25620615People are annoying as fuck on the internet about every hobby. Find a club of people with the same taste and expand from there, or if you can't find that, start a book club.
>>25620645Sorry pal, may you read a textbook on English grammar, pour over the OED, and return to us triumphantly.>>25620653>>reddit
>>25620674And for this wonderful piece of hypocrisy, I blame phoneposting. Pore.
>>25620685nigga, aint gonna read noffin
>>25620698Come again?
how many people do you think stopped reading because of some lit autist? the "elitists" are such a minority i doubt they have much impact on how many people do or don't read on a wider scale
>>256207143
>>25620615It's not that people stopped reading, this is not a new or recent phenomena, they just never had the opportunity to pick something for themselves because reading is forced on them in school, while tiktok is not. Why would you care about the yapping of some random old person that lived 200 years ago that has no relation to you or your generation if you can watch thousands of shorts made by your peers.I would argue that many had positive experiences with reading, harry potter or percy jackson being some of the most popular titles, but then people get this idea out of nowhere that you are supposed to grow out of that and you are supposed to read things oriented to """adults""".So the problem is not elitists gatekeeping a hobby (which is impossible btw, like how does that work in pratice, some asshole bitching at something online?) since people don't get exposed to it in the first place, I doubt that the first thing someone does after finishing their first book since high school is to go on 4chan lit to argue with random people about irrelevant topics, the impact of elitsts is negligible at best if you consider the general audience of readers (which is mostly interested in manga or YA smut that nobody here discusses).
We've been over this a million timesWhen people say "people aren't reading these days" they're using data of checking sales of new books by queer POC authors about diaspora
