/lit/ - Literature

>>14585306
Depends on what you read.
Something like ASOIAF is not different from a TV series.

>>14585306
>He fell for the "Everything is a meme" meme

>>14585306
Yes because typically reading takes more effort, just like how I’d consider weightlifting or chess better as ways to spend ones time than video games and going to the bar

>>14585306
Out of all of these only video games are mindless consumerism, and even then I'm not 100% sure

>>14585306
I wouldn't say video games are mindless. TV and movies you can partake simply by being there- there's usually nothing to think about or bear in mind. Books you need to at least construct the aesthetics and "hang the scene" in your mind. Video games are completely active as you are 100% responsible for your character. People who think video games are 100% mindless have no imagination and assume all games are fortnite when in fact there's many games you can strategize and build things.

Generally I would say the critique of consumerism and generalized video game hate is simply based on the fact that some people don't like video games and say they are a waste of time- essentially NPC boomers who can only play mindless AAA titles and get mad when they're forced to be creative in a virtual world.

>>14585314
this

>>14585339
> the only one where you need to take action and think about what you're doing
>mindless

So many fucking retard pseuds on this board.

>>14585331
>going to the bar doesn't take effort

>>14585339
>not tv: the literal board approved, status quo reaffirmation brainwashing that bookends advertisements
Think again

>>14585347
>>14585351
You have to go back.

>>14585339
Visual Novels can be better medium than books.

>>14585306
It's like alcohol, you can tell if someone is using it to add to their life in a healthy way or escape from their life in an unhealthy way.
There's plenty of dudes on personal journeys of self improvement starting with the greeks on this board, except their end goal is to feel superior to everyone around them and justify their retarded antisocial habits. This is the equivalent of a guy drinking a quart of whiskey a night on his own while he watches videos of people dying and eats mozzarella balls on a mattress on the floor.
Or, you could read the exact same stuff at the exact same rate because it fascinates you, enriches your life, or improves your approach to your academic field. Plenty of other reasons I'm sure too. These are the young college kids who are out pounding beers trying to get pussy, it's all in good fun and they're going to be fine.

>>14585366
>It's like alcohol, you can tell if someone is using it to add to their life in a healthy way
Alcohol is haram anon

Novels were just the original binge watching. But hidden among them are spectacular studies of the human mind, both intentional and accidental. Reading the right books can make you grow as a person, the same can be said of every medium but most modern material is tainted by the concept of a perfect consumerist formula that doesn't leave enough space for actual individuality or accidental depth.

>>14585359
You can watch TV shows for the sake of analyzing them, it's not necessarily mindless consumption.
But vidya is just bubble gum for the brain, some games do train you with logic puzzles and reflex shit, but eh

>>14585375
OK bud.

>>14585361
Go back to where? Did I do wrongthink because I'm not jerking myself off on an anonymous literature board pretending to be a middle-aged dad? Kill yourself my man.
>>14585366
This guy knows. How you consume things is what makes them healthy or unhealthy.

>>14585351
Is "pseud" the /lit/ equivalent of "Dyel" on /fit/ ?

>>14585375
As are many books anon

You can definitely be a consoomer of books.

>>14585351
You need to “think” about what you’re doing I guess but unless it’s a well-designed strategy or puzzle game it requires far less intellectual effort to pretend to shoot people than to decipher a challenging book. I also have to “think” when I go to the grocery store to decide what I need but that doesn’t mean it’s a particularly intellectually valuable exercise.

>>14585409
I don't play video games but I've always understood the appeal of COD type games over the plot driven stuff. It's basically like going paintballing without the welts, right? I could see myself enjoying if I didn't suck from never playing them.

>>14585384
I can analyze a puddle of shit, it wouldn’t necessarily be a good idea: analisys ought to be in the end of some discovery revelation, tv is literally made to run for years (in most cases) unless analysis of it is acknowledging it’s inherent to manipulative nature it isn’t very profound

>>14585347
Fuck off and play vidya, then.

I'm not a moral busybody, so it doesn't bother me that people engage in this or that media. I like reading myself. What makes it different, for me, is that I find peace and fascination in books, and not any in other mediums. Other mediums also make me feel autistic and untalkative. Books, as much as they pull me in, don't prevent me from spending an evening talking to my wife or playing with my kids. That may be just me though. I don't consider my knowledge of books any better than a sports fan's expertise on the in and outs of sport.

>>14585427
I do but I also read because I can balance my hobbies and social life. I'm tired of retarded middle-aged dad wannabes pretending because they spent the weekend reading some book no one cares about that anybody cares at all.

No one cares about you or your dumbass holier-than-thou life.

>>14585306

Distinctly different, depending on what you read. Literature covers both fiction and nonfiction; you have great classics within both of those categories that are so good, a person would be worse off in life without reading them. These classics do not simply exist to entertain, but to enrich the human lives of those who read them. Compare with "mindless consumerism," which is just a way to pass the time. Can you really say with a straight-face that Fifty Shades of Gray and Plato's "The Republic" are at the same level of quality? Or that reading "The Prince" is equivalent to playing through a level of Sonic the Hedgehog? Of course not.

With audiovisual media (ie: videogames, movies, TV, music, etc...) make no mistake, you can have classic titles that pull off a similar level of human soul-enrichment as a classic novel. Dark Souls is one of these games, which is a large part of why the game developed an almost religious following, and why the game is largely regarded as the best of its decade. That's not to say you can't play it in a way that is "mindless," but there's a real story in there that you can delve into and become a part of, and one which you will be better off for having immersed yourself in. That all being said, AV-media are, by default, much more sense-oriented, and therefore more distracting, than literature (which instead demands that you free yourself of distractions and use your mind to paint of a picture of the world within the text.) Therefore, while quality is scarce across the board these days, it remains much easier to distract yourself 'mindlessly' with a game than a book.

>>14585421
This is true but I think they meant that TV doesn’t have to be passive in that there could hypothetically be TV shows worth analyzing. Whether or not those TV shows exist is a different question.

The same applies to vidya. In theory it could be possible to make a game with artistic merit, but virtually none exist in reality.

>>14585357
not if you're not a neet sperg

>>14585451
Legit as fuck

>>14585420
Yeah I’m not knocking anybody for enjoying it necessarily but it’s definitely not an intellectually valuable experience.

>>14585453
>worth analyzing
this is the wrong mindset.
You study the special once you have a deep understanding of the general. But you can use the common to study the aspects around it, for example the social structure that would make someone write a Friends episode is a much deeper topic than the use of repetition in a particular Faulkner work. The later will only give you information on a very specific and forgetable topic instead of complex general issues.

>>14585306
Yes.

>>14585454
Exactly my point. Get outta here if going to the bar isn't a real trial for you, you don't belong

>>14585395
Fuck off, Pajeet.

>>14585493
Well, I'm an alcoholic, so it's still easy for me. Get rekt.

>>14585409
Play Spec Ops: The Line, it's not very long. It might feel boring and bland at first, but trust me, it shows what games can be, but often aren't, especially in the story-telling sense (I should also mention Pathologic here).

>>14585331
>Plays video chess at the bar in between sets of drunk push-ups.

>>14585331
>playing video games doesn't take effort
found the shitter

not sure how reading or watching tv or playing video games or going to church are any different they're all just COPE to distract you from suicide

It isn't that any format is inherently bad, some just suit higher types of content better. It is difficult to propose a philosophical theme in a video game or make a beautiful tv-show.

>>14585331
what about if you play games that take effort?

Demonising consumerism without being a hermit is the biggest joke ever. Samsara and Nirvana are intertwined and you'd know asceticism isn't woth a clot of semen if you'd read Siddhartha.

Music is release. Literature is release. Cinema is release. Sex is release. It's through release and effort one can learn to fish - the fish will have to be eaten, you know?

>>14585306
Reading /lit/ meme books helped me do well in the GRE, so it's already way more useful than vidya or movies.

>>14587665
Take your fucking pills

>>14585384
I can tell you don't play video games, and not in a good way.

>>14585306
No one should procreate.

>>14585306
As long as you pirate everything :^)

>>14585306
Movies and TV are mindless trash, but video games are more mentally engaging than books while also being significantly less pretentious and boring

>>14586535
>Spec Ops: The Line

Embarrassing taste my dude

>>14589087
youre just wasting your problem solving skills on meaningless task, and the reason you think books are boring is because you do mentally passive things like play video games. youre just retarded for implying that books are somehow automatically more pretentious than video games

>>14585339
Some viddies can make ya think. A good grand strategy game, for instance. Or a well done CRPG.

>>14585306
everything is language in current year. reading is the intentional, personal practice of language. now, there is reading where you simply absorb someone else's words and narratives, and this is commercial writing, no different from any propaganda media, designed to withhold challenge. There is also, and far less so in modern trend, reading where you must think and reason your entire way through. This can also be the same for other media, though the line in literature is far more defined, due to historicity. What is misunderstood is the aspect of meta-language. In any situation, can you discern subtext within pretext? If this question concerns you, I would not suggest what you pay attention to in media, but how you pay attention to it, and also and foremost yourself within it all.

>>14585451
>Can you really say with a straight-face that Fifty Shades of Gray and Plato's "The Republic" are at the same level of quality? Or that reading "The Prince" is equivalent to playing through a level of Sonic the Hedgehog? Of course not.
You'd be surprised how many people will and have made a similar argument for their favorite vidya or ya genre fiction with a straight face.

>>14585306
No form of media is mindless unless you consume it mindlessly. Any piece of media can become a product if you consoom it as one. Collecting funko pops wouldn't be any less degenerate if they made one of Leopold Bloom.

>>14585314
i am reading the witcher series right now and am feeling guilty af

gotta say the books are pretty darn fingerlickin good though

>>14585306
No. It's all onions reddit shit...