/lit/ - Literature

I don't know

Good luck writing a novel about people sitting inside doing nothing. I'd avoid it like the plague, hah!

>>18112926
Pathetically and melodramatically.

>>18112926
idk

>>18112926
We will probably be overrun with memoirs and some medical genre shit, couple coming of age stories, etc. Most books will be set after and look back or end around the start of it all. Probably will be some thinly veiled apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic/conspiracy shit. We might get a couple worthwhile things set during it all but I would not count on it.

>>18112929
>>18112938
Wait...did /lit/ really just say ‘i don’t know’?

If i asked /lit/ about the cause of mortal suffering, I’d get 10 responses absolutely certain in their belief.

...this question is really the stumper?!

>>18112926
nigga I don’t read anything that isn’t at least 50 years old

>>18112962
Talking about medical memoirs, When the Air Hits Your Brain is incredible.

>>18112926
nobody gives a shit about covid-19. fake gay virus.

>>18112926
If i were writing a contemporary fiction novel, i’d avoid the hassle and just set it in 2019 or 2022.

Either your story is about COVID (yawn) or it’s just going to distract from the real plot.

>>18112986
Absolutely not. I had it :3

It was a terrible virus indeed, and I even went to the ER for some side effects (non-lung related)

Needless to say I got my vaccine shot and it may have removed some long-lasting side effects. It is one weird hell of a virus.

>>18112971
I couldnt tell you

>>18112986
Even if that was the case (and 500,000 Americans were just pretending to be dead or w/e), you can’t say that the interruption of normal life for over 1 year isn’t a big deal.

As a parent i can say it’s affected nearly every waking moment of my life, and i am really looking forward to rediscovering ‘normal’. Good luck writing a realistic character that just ignores this.

>>18113010
I can’t

>>18112986
You're a retard and I can't wait until you are being shipped off to a concentration camp.

>>18112926
It will probably be pozzed so hard that it'll hyper-dramatize the affects of the coof and remove all responsibility of the governments for their actions and praise the vaccines or something. One thing's for sure, it'll be written at elementary reading level.

I'd like to see Vollmann write an autistic tome about it like he did with climate change

>>18112986
Based
Look at the trannies seething

>>18112926
Someone will release a diary one day or another, and even if it is as dull as fucking harry potter it will get tons of praises from sojos and such
(Wish i did that at the start of the pandemic desu)

>>18113027
Go back to bunkerchan faggot

Nobody is gonna want to hear about it and it’s gonna seem like not that big of a deal in hindsight. Im sure there’s already been COVID novels released but even if it wasn’t a shitty premise they are going to look like Princess Diana Commemorative Plates by 2025.

>>18113012
Yeah but at this point you should probably just be pissed at the teachers unions since lots of schools opened up just fine last fall

>>18112926
>interesting era
interesting?
it is fucking boring.

>>18113298
Same desu, fuck

>>18112926
What will come will be rotten. It will be for literature what mold is for decaying organic matter. Not a return to the life of a berry, but a synthesis into a fungal system.

>>18112932
>a novel about people sitting inside doing nothing.

>>18113298
Yeah there’s gonna be 500 identical diaries but we’re just waiting to see what the media pins a gold star on and decides is gonna be the definitive masterpiece

>>18112926
I was thinking about this today too. I can see a shift towards more positive, spiritual, and idealized subject matter. I think we will see the emergence of new mythologies and a shift in writing style that favours simple language and rhetorical language.

>>18112926
I think authors will pretend that it didn't happen or overblow the whole thing.

>>18113005

Not him but you did not contract the virus and the Covid edidemic is not taking place.

>>18112926
It will be written by Chad and Stacy, depressed from losing the rush of group sex

>>18113487
Dumb

>>18113005
If you actually had covid you wouldn't need the vaccine and vaccines don't remove long-lasting side effects anyway.

The only literature I would consider even interesting is the one that deals with more uncomfortable questions about what impact the internet had on global policy and the mindset of the average person around this. Basically asking why everyone turned completely crazy and why there is so a clear schism between people.
I am really, really not interested in the opinion of the average coastal elite Twitter dunce. I already stopped consuming any modern media because I can not take it anymore.

>>18112926

Probably like 9/11 in american literature. It will have surprisingly little impact. Some books will of course be directly about the pandemic, but most books set in the vague early 21st century will probably just ignore it or just mention it in passing.

>>18113005
You mean they told you you had it and you believed them. PCR tests are incredibly flawed and not fit as a single means of diagnosis. Hell, even the guy who invented them said this

>>18114465
in the strict sense it affected New York and Bagdad, but not every major city in the world and every economy. of course in the broader sense 9/11 brought us mass surveillance and creepy laws, but these things are found in Bleeding Edge, The Cirlce, etc..

>>18112926
I highly doubt anything good will be written on it for at least another 50 years.

>>18114445
how the fuck could you ever consume modern media to begin with? i guess via osmosis when you see tv's in public or something...?

>>18113005
Glad you're well :3 poster

>>18112926
Probably only Knausgaard could write a book about the pandemic and quarantine that’s interesting. Otherwise it would probably be unbearable.

>>18114465
Best answer

>>18112926
>>18112932
this decade and the next decades' culture will be porn and only porn

>>18112986
people who disagree with you are braindead normie sheep
>>18113012
shut the fuck up and go back you worthless faggot. fuck you and your future tranny kids.

Literature today, like covid, doesn't exist.

>>18112962
>>18112926
In my college, there was a radio/Spotify play by students written about the very start of the pandemic, when things changed. It ends, as predicted, at the start of it all.

>>18112926
>We’re living through an interesting era.
I think it’s the opposite.
>How do you think literature set in 2020/21 will treat COVID?
I don’t think it will. What are you going to write? “Yeah, I spent 2 years of my life holed up in my house.” It’s like all those authors you read about who had their lives and careers delayed by one or both of the world wars, only this time there’s no war and it’s actually nothing. You just had to sit in your house and go nowhere for 2 whole years. It’s pathetic honestly.

I've taken advantage of the free time to translate several novels. I imagine that there will be a lot of output that on the surface seems unrelated to COVID but was in fact caused by it.
Another project I've been considering is doing an adoption of Welcome to the NHK, which seems like a topical novel at this point in time. Of course, it this version will have a lot more poverty and an overall more pessimistic feeling, as well as subtle nods to more modern conspiracy theories like Q-anon and Epstein. The only problem is that I need two more people to work as dedicated actors and help out with this and I don't have any friends.

>>18115098
Idk, there's a whole generation that's pretty much had their career trajectory fucked by COVID. The same generation that has heard for years about how nothing can be done regarding wealth inequality, mass migration, global warming, etc. etc. because that would be heavy handed and totalitarian and has just seen their entire local economies decimated by heavy handed totalitarian measures.

Just the fact that everyone has spent two years existing within conspiratorial online echo-chambers has had a noticeable effect on the public. I wouldn't be surprised if we have years of riots and political extremism following this.

Eventually this is going to end, and people are going to want to get away from their screens, meet new people, sleep with strangers, party, etc. etc. and it will be a crazy time with a lot of repressed emotions coming out. You think at no point people will start smashing windows and looting? Not to mention that there is a financial collapse on the horizon

>>18112926
Covid is a hoax.

>>18114813
nah, now that GDP got cancelled and pornhub is basically destroyed, porn has nothing to offer at the moment

These peons making "art" about the "pandemic" love to think they know what suffering and sacrifice is. They'll know one day and if they're redeemable they'll repent for being so fucking lame. The world is soft and if there's one thing I won't accept the closure of my gym

>>18112926
No one wants to read about it. I certainly won't. Expect more escapist entertainment.
In terms of non-fiction, I see plenty of books examining the scam that was COVID-19 and studies done into the needless irreparable psychological damage done to kids and stuff

>>18115177
Imagine thinking like a cucked salaryman

>>18114695
knausgård lives in bumfuck nowhere sweden, he’s hardly affected by the rona

>>18115177
>You think at no point people will start smashing windows and looting? Not to mention that there is a financial collapse on the horizon
That would be interesting but considering the complacency we have seen during this crisis I am doubtful that this will happen.

>>18115177
I don't think 1+ year of lockdown has really fucked up their career trajectory; at least, nowhere near as much as outsourcing and the ballooning of the labor pool.

I'd be more interested in the effects of the massive increase in social-media usage during this time. Undoubtedly boosting narcissism to new heights.

>>18115269
How is wanting a decent job, security, some role in society, etc. cucked? There is a generation of people in their twenties who have been permanently handicapped by this pandemic. Whats more, there's a clear divide between the 'haves' (who holed up in their nice homes, worked online, and only suffered insofar as they couldn't vacation in the bahamas over christmas) and the 'have-nots' (who have spent two years in perpetual underemployment with little or no protection from an apparently deadly virus being told they cant even go to the bar or the movies after work) that has certainly created a feeling of resentment.

Give it a year for things to return to status quo. The government shut down the entire country, and I'd bet good money that when this is over it will turn around and tell the growing unemployed and angry population that wage increases, affordable housing, etc. are beyond its capabilities. The hypocrisy of this pandemic has been palatable, and there's a very real violation of the social contract thats happening not on the level of individual politicians, but between entire generations and classes of people. Private property only exists with the good graces of the poor, but the propertied class has forgotten this and come to believe that the current state of affairs is their inherent right.

>>18115357
You underestimate the potential of a mob. Right now people are isolated in their homes. When this is done, vaccines are rolled out, lockdown restrictions are lifted, I'd predict a summer of block parties as people pour out of their homes. You get a few hundred (or thousand, in larger cities), people out in the street making noise and celebrating and all it takes is for one malcontent to start heaving rocks into windows. In such a situation I think most people would join in just to have some excitement. I know I would.

>>18115364
>>18115364
>I'd be more interested in the effects of the massive increase in social-media usage during this time. Undoubtedly boosting narcissism to new heights.
Has it? If anything I've had the impression that social media use has declined somewhat noticeably. There's been a clear shift across all major platforms (twitter, facebook, but also 'neutral' sites like 4chan and google) towards greater censorship and curation of content which has paradoxically made online life much more boring over the last year.
What I've noticed, from talking to people irl, is a much greater proportion of the population is prone to conspiratorial thinking and political extremism. I've heard more theories about NWO, the zionists, fiat currency, etc. in the last 8 months than I had in 4 or 5 years combined before covid. Theres a significant portion of the right that genuinely believes most of our elected officials are part of a satanic cabal of pedophiles, and once you start thinking like that almost any means are justified to get rid of them. Meanwhile the left wing and upper class midwits have seemed to fully embrace Critical Theory, which is very much old anti-semetic conspiracy theories rehashed with 'white people' being the nefarious (straight, cisgendered) man behind the curtain and a large dose of wishful thinking about racial rejuvenation through violence that would give Hitler a hard-on.
All Western society has going for it right now is inertia.

>>18115523
I think what you are describing is part of the side effects of heavily increased social media use. I have noticed from my friends, too. They have started parroting common narratives and talking points that I usually only know from internet circles and which are often years old. I feel like all of the stupid internet culture wars are reaching the masses. It has been a bit tiresome. I was hoping to keep this stuff away from irl.

>>18115177
It’s literally the exact same shitty white collar labor market growth that’s been going on since 2007 though. The story of young people from middle class households having their careers stall is very old.
>Eventually this is going to end, and people are going to want to get away from their screens, meet new people, sleep with strangers, party, etc. etc.

People never stopped doing this though. As usual there’s just a huge disconnect between what the media chooses to represent and what actually goes on in American life. They are ridiculously out of touch. Most people never even worked from home during COVID.
Sure there were precautions but most people never seriously stopped seeing all their family and friends.
The whole work from home thing is just a small set of white collar urbanites that happens to include our nation’s advertising professionals and journalists. A typical day for one of these idiots is something like:
>wake up
>accept UPS delivery, furnished from an Amazon warehouse
>go to the market
>go to the liquor store for a bottle of wine
>order dinner from local restaurant for delivery by Seamless
>have zoom happy hour
>write culture piece about how literally everyone is working from home

>>18115450
>There is a generation of people in their twenties who have been permanently handicapped
You can not be so out of touch that you don’t clearly understand that people did not begin saying this in 2019

>>18115573
The problem is that the stupid culture wars have metastasized into real life movements that actually have significant power. Critical theory is getting tens of millions of dollars of funding from various governments, universities, and think tanks to propagate its ideologies. /pol/ is looking more and more like the only viable future of the republican party. I think its likely that the internet culture wars have themselves a lot of institutional backing behind the scenes (Alexander Dugin, for example, is often only one degree of separation from any influential neo-volkish movement, while Chinese spies/political actors often repeat word-for-word the arguments and accusations of Critical Theory), but now that they are themselves institutions in their own right we're witnessing the ideology metastasize into something uncontrollable.

>>18115606
>>18115598
The point is that the pandemic has moved these assertions from the domain of theory and statistics (ah yes, another jpeg about wage growth compared to profit margins, how compelling /s) and instead scared the bourgeois into a full retreat into gated communities whereby inequality becomes a tangible reality without the normal means of escapism by using restaurants and cinema as a way to live the experience of being wealthy by proxy.

>>18115598
The commercial district of my town has been barren since the lockdowns started and I've been bouncing from one job to another for the last year without any job security at all. Maybe its because I dont live in America, and my country has put in serious lockdown measures, but I can feel a noticeable difference. Those white collar urbanites embody a decent chunk of the nations ruling class, and their retreat from public physical existence has created a parallel society removed from normal society. Maybe I'm an extreme case but my family very much did cut contact with me and make it clear that I had to choose between them and having friends/social interactions with anyone. I'm sure I'm not the only person.

>>18115598
Yeah part of what this pandemic made me realize is how out of touch the common journalist is (or what they want the world to be like)

>>18115670
>/s
You know where you need to go

>>18115670
>The point is that the pandemic has moved these assertions from the domain of theory and statistics
No, people have been screaming about Millenials not getting jobs and affording houses on social media and in popular publications for like 15 years.
The Economic malaise of people under 30 is not a COVID thing.
If anything it’s the other way around, the internet noise about the arrested development of the nation’s young people has always far outweighed serious analysis and consideration.

>>18115690
Do you ever add anything to conversations or do you just comment for the sake of hearing your own voice?

>>18115450
>the 'have-nots' (who have spent two years in perpetual underemployment with little or no protection from an apparently deadly virus being told they cant even go to the bar or the movies after work)
I'm not sure where you live or who you associate with but this has not been the case around me at all. Shit barely shut down around here, and the people who adhered to the lockdown rules the most stringently were all upper-middle class professional types

>>18115364
>>18115598
Exactly. As if these people weren’t just going to flounder from useless job to useless job or be unemployed for several years anyway...

This whole thing has changed nothing besides literally just erasing a yet undetermined number of years out of the record of our public lives.

>>18115711
All this hollow speculation about society makes for incredibly dull conversation

>>18115690
You should go to /b/, newfriend.

>>18115710
There's a difference between screaming about affordable housing, and a large portion of the people who own houses retreating from public life entirely for years at a time while passing legislation that decimates local industries and economies in order to save their own ass.
But let me hear your serious analysis and consideration, since you are clearly above the noise.

I am actually interested to see how the whole thing could inspire works in the horror genre. Remember January 2020, when we were reading about a virus somewhere in China, watching videos of panicking nurses/doctors, overflowing hospitals, etc.? There was a great deal of fear there. And the reaction to the disease, the paranoia, the delusion, the flawed government responses: it's a gold mine for horror content.

>>18115723
I'm sorry about your extra chromosome friend. Maybe you'd be happier on /mu/ or /fa/.

>>18115718
How old are you?

>>18115742
>large portion of the people who own houses retreating from public life entirely for years at a time
Again this didn’t and hasn’t happened. There was like 8 weeks of what you might call “lockdown” last year that ended on Memorial Day when everyone collectively stopped giving a shit because I guess it was too nice outside to worry about disease. Then there was another shorter phase of lockdown this past winter that even less people were willing to observe.
And no, i genuinely don’t know what you’re talking about when you say “retreating from public life”

>>18115747
Isn't The Plague all about this? There is a reason it became a meme this year.

>>18115712
American? I'm in Canada and I can't even go to a restaurant and sit down to eat a meal. Bars have been closing at 9pm per government mandate, and many places of worship have been restricted in capacity and periodically shut down. Universities have moved to almost entirely online classes. Maybe if you're established with a circle of friends its different but I moved towns just before the pandemic started and the last year has felt like a social and economic wasteland.

>>18115770
Where do you live? In my country there have been actual laws passed to restrict movement, close businesses, and impose curfews on people, and this has been going on for over a year. Its even worse in most European countries. You're either from a sensible brown country not governed by hypochondriacs or woefully out of touch.

>>18115800
Im in Pennsylvania dude

>>18115775
Yeah, but there's always room for more. One could zoom in. Off the top of my head I have this idea:

>There's a serious pandemic going around, and in the midst of the chaos a charismatic mystic has created a rapidly growing cult. The main pull to him is that for some reason, his adherents do not seem to catch the disease, and his message of hope and a structured life appeals to the stressed, panicked population. An FBI agent is sent to infiltrate the cult and learn both why the cult members are not getting sick, and what the cult's long-term goals are. What he finds is something grim: bioweapons, human experimentation, and a man who sees himself as a prophet, born to usher in a new world.

>>18115800
>tfw Germany
>tfw everything has been closed for half a year already
>tfw curfews
>tfw fines everywhere
Just kill me. The German bureaucratic machinery is slow to roll on but once it is in motion it is devastating. Last year there were basically no restrictions, but now policy makers have gone insane.

>>18112926
Millenials aren't talented and have no worthwhile experience to write anything good. Zoomers have had their brains liquefied from an early age. I have no idea who you're actually waiting for to actually write anything.

>>18115052
Wake up sheeple

>>18115849
As if we’ve ever balked at letting Boomers dictate what’s to be cultural zeitgeist

>>18115809
So a sensible brown country not ruled by hypochondriacs and wine aunts. Not every country is like yours.

>>18115828
What pisses me off is how half assed the initial response was. The government basically sat on their ass and let the virus spread everywhere, and now that its uncontrollable they're doing everything they can to destroy the economy alongside it. It wouldn't have been that hard to shut down flights and create checkpoints along infrastructure bottlenecks for a couple months, but instead they decided that the upper classes have to be allowed to visit their vacation homes and chose to just fuck up small businesses with a bunch of unnecessary restrictions and fines.

>>18115824
I'd buy it in paperback form at an airport and read half of it before I flip to the last chapter to see how it ends desu.

lots of mask derangement syndrome on 4chan

>>18115670
Yeah dude, the bourgeois are really scared this time around
They've just invented gated communities, this radical new concept
Dude, the effects of the pandemic in the long-term will be negligible, there's a reason nobody puts the Spanish flu in a macro historical lens. Unless the pandemic plans on culling at least a tenth of the population, it is historically irrelevant

>>18115908
This level of delusion and arrogance can only come from an American. Go rot in your pigsty hylic, humans are talking.

>>18115849
Boomers accelerated the decline of Western civilization. I'm sorry but it is true. Also America is a cultural rot and the civilized world is ashamed of you.

>>18115908
The Spanish Flu was only around fpr about two years, and a world war was ending, which is probably a little bit more significant.

>>18115780
I love seeing retarded extroverts like you whine and cry as if you are in a concentration camp because you can't go to a bar lmao. Melodramatic monkey...Jesus Christ dude have some self respect you honestly do not realize what a whiny cunt you sound like?

>>18115960
And despite being economically hobbled they all apparently live alone

>>18115896
>Pennsylvania
>a sensible brown country
What?

There hasn't been a good work of fiction in at least 70 or 80 years, so COVID will have zero effect on literature.

>>18112926
This entire pandemic has been so boring. I thought I would be locked in the house with a gun and books all year living out my comfy apocalypse, but instead I’ve been working 40 hours a week the whole time and still going out and about almost every day, it’s just less stuff to do outside but people acting like we’ve been in bunkers for a year are ridiculous. There was maybe a month of bunker-tier quarantine and since then it’s just been normal life but you have to wear a mask and eat your food outside of restaurants.

>>18116013
And cash in your 401k for a Peloton

>>18115960
>>18115977
I was working in a bar and when it closed down I was homeless for a couple weeks.
I'm sure you've been incredibly comfortable for the last year though. Great job.
>And despite being economically hobbled they all apparently live alone
So unless I live in a slum apartment complex crammed with immigrants I have no right to complain? Do you have any idea how out of touch you are? This kind of attitude will ruin you.

>>18115849
Whatever little of worth the millennials could have done has been utterly fucked by social media memery and this gay market of self-promoting conmen. Lots of great artists were reclusive and misanthropic. Then lmao not even a war can save the zoomers

>>18116186
So you went from being homeless to living comfortably in a one bedroom and were still too good for a slum every step of the way? And you apparently have no family and lose all contact with friends once bars and restaurants close?
I’m getting the vibe that if COVID never happened you still wouldn’t be posting about the stimulation of your vibrant social life.
Once again you’re assigning problems that have been widely acknowledged for 15 years and have been accumulating for almost 30 years to a topical even and the result is going to read back as cringe in 2025.
I also don’t think you can be homeless in Germany or Canada

>>18116186
>the only options are living alone or living in a slum
Around here it is common for several friends to rent a house together

>>18115978
If you take a look at Philadelphia, it’s no untrue. But anyway, I’m guessing you actually don’t live in Philly area or Pittsburgh area because it is, in fact, a clown show in both places. We are just a very wide, and very rural state.

I think it'll be really hard not to make it feel like a gimmick. Maybe people will avoid setting books in 2020/21 unless something else happened that they are playing off of like some sort of historical fiction.

>>18115960
>muh children in africa and other people have it worse mimimi

Signs of a true bootlicker. How about not accepting servitude and unreasonable regulation when it does not make sense to you? Pathetic collectivists.

>>18115849
Sometimes I feel like my brain has been too poisoned by video games, anime, stuff like that to even come up with an idea that isn’t raw fantasy. 10+ years of playing Skyrim, watching Monogatari will do that to you. My mental catalogue of fiction is like 90% fantasy or sci-fi. I can only imagine what it will be like for zoomers. At least I can concentrate.

>>18116259
>Pathetic collectivists.
Literally every problem in American society exists because we aren't collectivists

>>18116258
Covid won’t look very important but the fall of the Drumpf regime will be very important for the history of our nascent one party state

Nothing. This whole thing is a snoozefest and we all we’ve done is shave off at least a year of our lives by locking ourselves inside. We live in the most static, inert, and boring times in human history to the point that literal global pear clutching is considered a historic event.

>>18116254
I live in Philly. The vaccine roll-out has been pretty shit but things have been getting increasingly normal since spring started. You can eat indoors or go to a bar now, and have been able to for quite awhile

>>18116244
>the problem is obvious so it should be ignored or assigned to personal failures, *le cringe*
You don't have a coherent train of thought you just regurgitate talking points to shut down discussion.
I mention a migrant slum because that was my living situation before covid hit. Now I live in a tiny cabin on a trailer park.

>>18116251
I don't have friends. That doesn't change the material reality of the situation.

>>18112926
read the plague by Camus, no need to write other books about public freakout
>>18113005
stop promoting the jab, I'm not gonna take it. glad you are all right though
>>18115200
>GDP got cancelled
really? I quit porn but big F
>>18115908
>he thinks we will get back to normality
>>18115960
based, fuck NPCs

>>18116259
>gets called a whiny cunt
>keeps whining
Nice

>>18116254
In my area a lot of he MAGA signs i pass on the way to work were erected after November

Living like a King in Western Australia because we acted early. Have only ever worn a mask for like 3 days. Have had businesses open for a year. Have been living like COVID never happened. Meanwhile, Americans seethe and cry and screech and scream. You WISH you had quarantined early like us. You could be living good. Instead, you're crying and coping. YOU did this to yourselves. You have yourselves to blame.

>>18116284
>I don't have friends
Truly shocking

>>18116287
I am not the same guy. Seeing bugman arguments like these just annoys me. I have thorough disdain for such complacency.

>>18116282
Well, I don’t know what part of Philly you’re in but I can tell you where I am that mentally, socially it’s still a clown show and I don’t think it’s going to not be for a long time, maybe ever. These people have pretty much lost their minds and spending time with family up in the Scranton Wilkes Barre are really highlighted just how local and social it all is. You see and talk to people in some Philly suburbs and you might think we’re living in Neo-Chernobyl if you had just woken from a coma.

>>18116275
And yet the US is doing much better currently than Europe (I am European). Asian countries do not factor into this. They are dystopian from the get-go.

>>18116285
The guys that made GDP and their company got sued out of existence and now there’s noone to file the DMCA takedown requests so they are everywhere now lol
No new episodes though

>>18116305
Ok you snivelling child

It's going to need to be a combination of Saramago, Orwell, and a little bit of Kafka. I feel like Orwell with how absurd government rules are during lockdown and Kafka with the alienation.

>>18116292
No, we don’t because it wouldn’t have mattered if we did. This is an opportunity for pearl clutching and the pearl clutchers are going to clutch pearls as long as their delicate little fingers can hang on and they were always going to. It is really that simple.

The direct representation of covid won't be in serious literature for at least a decade. We have seen a handful of TV shows attempting the video chat format, but it's all been placating 'experimental' trash. No one wants to actually hear about this shit that we are directly living in. Ship of Fools wasn't written until three decades after the start of ww2. Keller didn't write catch 22 until 61. It's only recently that we are seeing the early 2000s used in media as a nostalgic framing device.

The long term effects on the business of literature is that covid murdered local bookstores that were already on their death bed. The only real local book store I know of that had any sort of notoriety was also a music venue for pesud underage faggots who liked the idea of 'books' but never read. Used book store chains, b&N, and amazon are the only things that will really be left. Meaning that the finding of nitche literature will be wholly within the realm of amazon KDP, which is 99% smut and trash, so it'll be even harder to find things of value. /lit/ will continue to sink into it's "nothing good has come from modernity and the past 30 years" without realizing that it's neoliberal capitalism lost futures bullshit and not the fact that the jews run amazon or whatever. Just like with modern music, there are more people creating now than ever before, but the structures of what defines things and propagandizes a work to fame aren't the same anymore and covid is the nail in that digital milieu.

>>18116312
>Philly suburbs
There's your problem. People on the mainline and shit are exactly the type who would follow everything to the letter, be over-cautious to the point of absurdity. Alot of my family lives in Upper Darby and they give even less of a shit than people do in south Philly

>>18116312
That’s not a very equitable description of Philly if you get my meaning

>>18116316
What is GDP?

>>18116317
Keep clutching your pearls in your basement to please your lords.

>>18116298
So first I'm a retarded extrovert, then I'm an whiney friendless cunt, and everything I point out is just the result of decades of /politics/ and have nothing to do with covid, so that means we shouldn't discuss them at all, because this is all purely a matter of personal blame and responsibility, and actual laws that have been passed impacting businesses don't matter because in your personal experience you haven't experienced any change at all.

How do you manage to hold so many contradictory opinions at the same time? You've contributed nothing to the discussion, you just derailed the thread with name calling because someone questioned the status quo. You aren't even honest enough to come up with an actual defenses of the status quo, you just deflect that the status quo has been questioned and critiqued /elsewhere/ so any discussion /here/ is superfluous or whiny or this or that.

I hope you get raped to death in the streets next round of rioting. You personally represent everything wrong with America and I'd bet money you're a clueless out of touch baby boomer who thinks poor people deserve it for not voting democrat enough.

>>18116347
You are arguing with like 4 different people dumbass

>>18116284
I genuinely don’t mean to harp on your personal situation. It just bothers me that the cumulative effect of twenty years of erosion of the social condition and the effects of wage stagnation and the housing market are about to be explained away with a handwave and a shrug where people say “yeah, Covid was really rough”

>>18116346
Keep imagining that your tantrum is a profound act of resistance

>>18116354
>Gets called out for hypocracy
>Immediately resorts to gaslighting
What do you get out of this?

>>18116368
Direct your arguments towards this guy >>18116365 you stupid bitch. You are indeed arguing several different people

>>18116332
Right but that’s a huge swath of the population and most of the people controlling the levers of power so what’s your point? If you just live among powerless working class people, things are normal? Okay.

>>18116367
I practice what I preach. And I have had a fairly good year because of it. I was able to build a circle of good, trustworthy, old and new friends that ignore all this nonsense. This crisis has been a good litmus test.

>>18112926
with current governments literature will only be what they say it can be

>>18116266
that honestly sounds like a you issue, having been a NEET (and still continuing to be one, just partaking in different ways of passing the time), the years of vidya and anime really don't factor into the ideas I develop, at least on the superficial level
t. elder zoomer

>>18116259
Stop whining, child.

>>18116365
>>18116379
Whats to argue? I don't disagree, but COVID has made the growing inequalities of the last several decades much more tangible than they were before. People can no longer go out and interact with the professional, managerial class (which has mostly locked themselves away in their houses) and even vicariously experience the good side of wealth inequality. The bread and circuses of the lower classes have been shut down and people instead have mostly been spending their time online in political echo-chambers or going down conspiratorial rabbit-holes. Any sort of claim to nobles obligee has been discredited as the upper class (not the vague "elites" either, but the tangible professional class which exists in every city and town) has had no problem decimating small businesses and local economies in the name of saving their own ass, and the poor have had no choice but to carry on with work as usual only now in a drastically more competitive and unstable economy without seeing any kind of substantial help from governments aside from lip service.

Acknowledging this new political reality isn't an attempt to undermine your gay pseudo-socialist agenda. If anything I think that this is a uniquely excellent opportunity for a break with the status quo.

>>18116315
>And yet the US is doing much better currently than Europe
lol, ask me how I know you're lying about being European

>>18116315
>They are dystopian from the get-go.
They work, and they work well. That is what matters

>>18116365
>>18116379
Whats to argue? I don't disagree, but COVID has made the growing inequalities of the last several decades much more tangible than they were before. People can no longer go out and interact with the professional, managerial class (which has mostly locked themselves away in their houses) and even vicariously experience the good side of wealth inequality. The bread and circuses of the lower classes have been shut down and people instead have mostly been spending their time online in political echo-chambers or going down conspiratorial rabbit-holes. Any sort of claim to nobles obligee has been discredited as the upper class (not the vague "elites" either, but the tangible professional class which exists in every city and town) has had no problem decimating small businesses and local economies in the name of saving their own ass, and the poor have had no choice but to carry on with work as usual only now in a drastically more competitive and unstable economy without seeing any kind of substantial help from governments aside from lip service.

Acknowledging this new political reality isn't an attempt to undermine your gay pseudo-socialist agenda. If anything I think that this is a uniquely excellent opportunity for a break with the status quo. I just don't think you should be overly dismissive of the real effects of COVID on the social contract. We've seen a complete shift away from the gridlocked 'politics as usual' used to justify the perpetual inaction of western parliaments, and I think that there will be a very real resentment towards the political/financial classes when they refuse to apply similar measures towards the environment, wealth inequality, and infrastructure stagnation.

I think escapism becomes more popular because people are bored out of their minds. I don't think that much literature will be written about "The Pandemic" because it was mostly fake.

>>18116483
I am German...
Lebe gerade in NYC und das Leben ist viel besser dort. Die Leute tragen aus irgend nem Grund Masken draußen, aber der Staat respektiert wenigstens die Grundrechte.

>>18116462
And I suppose you’ve actually tried to write stories?

>>18116509
Isn’t it time for prayers?

>>18116501
You're grossly misinformed about covid. Virtually all of the nonsense I see peddled by people who think the pandemic is overblown is disinformation that is purposefully pushed by foreign actors (namely Chinese intelligence). The virus that causes covid was manufactured in a lab and was either released accidentally or on purpose. Once the genie was out of the bottle there was no going back and a decision was made to politicize everything. Make no mistake this marks the beginnings of a new Cold War. You're an idiot if you think otherwise. I'm not discounting the political realities and I think that things like social distancing is nonsense and not grounded in sound scientific reasoning because the virus is airborne anyway, but you need to understand what a quack you sound like when you whine about businesses being closed. You're a selfish faggot who only thinks about himself and you don't have any understanding of what covid can do to a person even one who is healthy because your brain is full of /pol/ cum. If anything the severity of covid has been UNDERSTATED by the media.

>>18116509
Hello Mehmet!
>>18116553
kek beat me to it

>>18116553
>>18116565
Is that some /pol/ meme?

>>18116571
Germany is a muslim country

>>18116571
It's simply reality.

>>18116589
>>18116593
I live in Bavaria. I would not know about that.

>>18116556
>noooo don't talk about economic inequalities or government accountability... we need you to get in line to die in a useless war with China (and maybe Russia and/or Iran too) first and /maybe/ then you can have a decent standard of living
How dumb do you think I am? If there was a shed of evidence about covid being manufactured by the Chinese, why would western countries (which have been accusing China of genocide and doing everything they can to inflame tensions) not capitalize on that fact?

>>18116633
>accusing China of genocide
It's just talk, most AUS/CA/NZ/US politicians are bought out by China

>>18116503
A lot of people at work who know that I read have been asking me lately about which books I read, something they would never do otherwise. Lord knows none of them would be able to write to save their lives though. I think they were disappointed when I didn’t say Harry Potter.

>>18116633
> If there was a shed of evidence about covid being manufactured by the Chinese

It's not a question of if at all. There is an unfathomable amount of circumstantial evidence to suggest that sars-cov2 was a product of gain of function research. But because the CCP has full control they shut out the world and covered everything up. The WHO investigation was a sham they never even pressed the Chinese government for more information. They were essentially given a guided tour. Some Western countries such as Australia have called for deeper investigation into the origins of the virus, but that is all they can do because there is no concrete evidence in the public realm. The bigger picture however is economics however. Why would you unnecessarily alarm your own population when the economy is hanging by a thread? If the government announced that covid is a bioweapon the fear and panic that would spark among the population would be uncanny. Not to mention that there would be pushback from the CCP. You don't just publicly accuse them of something like that without consequence especially if there is only circumstantial evidence which can and has been denied.

>>18116333
I do not

>>18116668
It's like saying that Long Island is representative of New York

>>18116408
Hate to break it to you but NPR wine moms and their spreadsheet jockey husbands are not the drivers of policy or culture

>>18116633
>How dumb do you think I am?
you're pretty dumb

>>18116689
>Hate to break it to you but NPR wine moms and their spreadsheet jockey husbands are not the drivers of policy
You think? I work for the government. You are dead wrong.

>>18116666
>You don't just publicly accuse them of something like that
Trump did. I don't disagree that maybe this was a product of lab research, in fact it even seems likely, but that research was funded by the US as well as China. It seems unlikely that COVID was unleashed as a targeted bioweapon, as opposed to simply being carried out on somebody's lab coat during a lunch break.

>>18116689
>Hate to break it to you but NPR wine moms and their spreadsheet jockey husbands are not the drivers of policy or culture
They kinda are. You would be surprised how much influence twitter has these days.

>>18116714
I thought it was because somebody ate a bat (in china)?

>>18116724
That was the initial story. It is just as likely that the virus was a breach from the Wuhan lab.

>>18116716
It’s not that they kinda are. They are. I work for the government. These are University administrators and MPA graduates from places like Penn and Villanova as well as their affirmative action hires. They speak in Reddit and Twitter slang even. If I took a shot for every time I heard “Ya’ll” I’d be a bigger wine aunt than they are.

>>18116716
>>18116742
I even know for certain that a few of them listen to NPR every morning lol

>>18116742
Are you really trying to tell me that college admins and accountants are the ones running the world? Jesus christ man

>>18112926
Daniel Defoe has already described the its effects. Giorgio Agamben has already described its causes.

>>18116714
The West is not only comprised of the USA.
And Trump fucked up the USA's pandemic response. In fact he discredited any potential political efforts, lied to his own people by saying shit like pic related, and sent his own citizens into the jaws of a contagious virus that has the potential to seriously harm your lung tissue and internal organs. You Americans are so god damn stupid.

>>18116754
I’m trying to tell you that they’re the ones who work in city government.

>>18116766
He did a great job and if people hadn’t cried xenophobia at his attempts to lock down on travel he would have done even better.
He also got it himself which is a better show of solidarity than most world leaders

>>18116766
I am not a fan of Trump but he did barely do anything wrong. The pandemic would have gone the same way under Biden. The states essentially do what they want. I am always baffled by this argument. It is the same level as Republicans claiming they are best at the economy three months after a Republican president took office.

>>18116768
And they, like you, are mere civil servants dragged along by the requirements of their jobs

>>18116772
Getting sick at a fundraising event isn't "solidarity"

>>18116754
Who do you think runs the world? A secret cabal of based and redpilled Jews who sit around reading Plato and discussing the political implications of contemporary philosophy?
You're really out of touch if you give the ruling classes that much credit. Most people who matter are part of the twitter mob, and those who aren't have been forced out by those who are over the last five years of cancel culture.
It's not like you cant do your research online and look at the direction and tone of most major industries and cultural powerhouses yourself. Its very easy to find, for example, what goes on behind the scenes at Penguin Random House (https://youtu.be/AJ21iod6F9Q)), or do you not consider the biggest publisher in the Western world a driver of culture?

>>18116766
Okay? What does any of that have to do with COVID being a bioweapon?

>>18116781
>>18116754
Yes. They are advising policy makers and heavily influence decisions.

>>18112932
Ha!

>>18116781
Who is it that you think decides to shutdown schools and impose lockdowns?

>>18116927
People higher up the chain than them

>>18117003
They’re all the same people is what I’m saying.

OP here, shocked that this thread is still going strong!

Great responses initially:
>i don’t know (respect anons who admit they don’t know everything)
>most /lit/ will probably skip over it as a distraction from the plot
>there will be inevitable books actually about COVID which will doubtless be shit

Then we get here:
>there’s nothing interesting about this period (blatantly wrong, anything that alters so many people’s lives can’t be uninteresting)
>it’s not COVID, per se, but the cultural changes that make 2020/21 so strange (agree, but also you can’t brush off a global pandemic so easily)
>COVID is a hoax

And now we’re just yelling about Trump, inequality, Chinese conspiracies, etc.

You have answered my /lit/-related question, the rest of you can fuck off back to /pol/

>>18117207
I wrote an effort post trying to answer your question to the best of my ability in this thread and didn't get a single (you). :(

>>18113005
You're a sad little faggot with your gay face and you're also a brainwashed guinea pig? Color me surprised.

>>18117207

This sort of discussion is hard to have right now honestly. The truth is we just don't know and anyone who says otherwise is overconfident.

I still think my prediction will be close to what will end up happening, that writers will ignore it for the most part if they set a book in the vague early 21st century or just mention it in passing if it's set on a longer timescale, but I have no supporting evidence other than, "that is what usually happens". The biggest worldevents that went the other way and had a profound impact on literature are the world wars, but even those left an indirect mark on literature. It's not like all interwar books area bout the war, but it had an influence in themes and styles. I think covid-19 falls far short of the impact of the wars so I can't imagine it having such a large effect.

It will have a bigger impact in non-fiction. Every book that talks about psychology, sociology, economy, politics etc. will talk about the pandemic as a case study at least.

>>18114424
Exactly the opposite of the truth lmao. Are you actually retarded or do you get paid 1 cent per disinfo post?

>>18117207
The quality of responses is related to the quality of the question

There's 0 reason for a healthy person under 30 or 40 to get the vaccine. If you're an octogenarian or have some sort of autoimmune disease then yeah get it. But pushing this experimental vaccine on young people who have a low IFR is stupid hysterics.

Nvr 4gt

>>18115747
There are plenty of plague/infection horror stuff out there already. It just stands to wonder how it could evolve or mutate if you will, to be more effective

>>18112986
This. No one will remember about any of this in 1 year.

>>18114665
It affected more than that, moron. The reason why so many refugees escaped to Europe traces all the way back to 9/11 and how the neocons reacted to it.

>>18119061
9/11 was likely a blood sacrifice by the satanic cabal that runs the western world so they could carry out their plans for new world order. Its been 20 years now and there still hasn't been any trail where evidence is produced to demonstrate that 9/11 was actually carried out by al-qaeda. The commission investigating the matter was one of the least funded in US history, and all the testimonies connecting Islamic fundamentalism with 9/11 were obtained under torture.

>>18112926
Covid is fake and gay

>>18119061
You wish, European libs desperately wanted to import browns which would have happened regardless

>>18116266
Just read better books. Most contemporary fantasy is shit compared to the classics

>>18112926
I’ve already seen a bunch of books with stupid names in my country “children of the pandemic” and whatnot.
Also my country is a shithole and we’re currently going thru a very rough political crisis picking between a historically and evidently corrupt candidate and an extreme left candidate that has links with the Shining Path. I’m so fucking tired of this shit.

>>18119061
They've been doing that well before 9/11. Look at what they did to Asia.

>>18112986
This. Pathetic thread, OP.

>>18113391
Based beckett poster

>>18112926
I wouldn't want to write about COVID, honestly. People getting mild fevers doesn't have the spice that you expect from novels about outbreaks

Some young woman in NYC is already writing a future award winning novel about the cock carousel being closed for a year.

>by far one of the least dangerous and deadly epidemics the world has ever faced
If you want to write anything about covid, you must by force do it from the perspective of conspiracy theories, pointing out and inquiring why all of this was projected onto our minds as a huge epochal event when it is actually a trifle. I mean, unless you start from this obliged reflection you will probably write worthless drama shit that you can read on every fucking newspaper.

>>18120828
I forsee some great conspiratorial literature being written in the future.

>>18120862
By necessity. Naive confidence in a "just and democratic world" is dead and will remain dead for a long time.

>>18120885
For people like us. Do not know if that extends to other sections of the population.

>>18120888
Most people are still asleep, of course. But I think the change is happening faster than ever.

>>18119061
>The reason why so many refugees escaped to Europe
Whos gonna tell him that most of those people are not from any sort of warzone. Just places that suck. But Americans are somewhat to blame for that. Depends on the place.