/lit/ - Literature

>>18818893
It doesnt exist.

>>18818893
/lit/

Kyiv, Ukraine.

>>18818927
Say it ain't so...
>>18819027
I was expecting somebody to say that, but isn't the physical part integral to it
>>18819046
What makes you say that

>>18818893
unironically me and my friends

>>18819112
i was just joshing but honestly i've traveled to many places in search of a so-called "paris" and none of them qualified. Altho, idk, I'm from Philly and it feels like we're really ahead of the discourse but maybe I'm biased.

>>18818893
I lived in Argentina for a while and it was pretty close. Lots of wealthy educated expats drinking and doing coke and talking politics, meanwhile there are plentiful cheap whores, a great music scene, and everything feels laid back.

>>18818893
probably somewhere in China there's a great literary place
in the west there is no such actual movement

>>18818893
London

>>18819298
Absolutely not

>>18819457
Explain. I found it to be an international centre of culture.

>>18819460
It's an absolutely soulless megacity like any other, it has no authenticity left whatsoever
The only 'culture' there is business and money

>>18819136
Not the answer they wanted.

>>18819136
Yeah I'd expect it to be in south america, southeast asia, maybe eastern europe
somewhere kind of developed but not really

>>18818893
We live in a virtual world. And that place is here….not Reddit or tik tok but here.

If only we could start our own printing press….

>>18818893
no
>>18819046
no, and I say this as someone who lives here
I really wish it wasn't like this, but almost every european capital is culturally superior to Kyiv

>>18819027
sometimes it really did feel like it back in the day when I was in college, but I guess nothing really ever came from it

>>18821225
There is never any ending to /lit/ and the memory of each person who has lived in it differs from that of any other. We always returned to it no matter who we were or how it was changed or with what difficulties, or ease, it could be reached. /lit/ was always worth it and you received return for whatever you brought to it. But this is how /lit/ was in the early days when we were very poor and very happy.

>>18818893
>Is there even such a place at all?
No. Check back in a few hundred years.

>>18821203
I agree with you that Kiev isn't it, but it's certainly not as bad as you paint it either
It's better than most European capitals, that's for sure

>>18818893
>Massive cultural center which has attracted artists of all media.
Los Angeles? I know it's soulless commercial rehashed product bullshit, but that's honestly the center of the artistic world these days.

>>18821225
>>18821234
>>18821183
there's enough hobbyist writers on this subforum that could produce original thoughts and publish them somewhere online, but there's no one with the will to actualize anything significant. Look at this pathetic pit:

https://4chanlit.fandom.com/wiki/Original_Content

Barren, empty. People like >>18819534 cry out "Soul! soul! soul!" but never want to bring any to their own homes, this here forum. I might make more posts addressing this vacuousness.

>>18821855
They forgot to add one of my personal favorites

>>18821725
>It's better than most European capitals, that's for sure
in terms of cost of living and services in bars and restaurants, sure
but OP was talking about cultural and intellectual aspect of a city and Kyiv is a stagnating structure in that regard

>>18821883
damn i forgot this one, that story about the girl in WWI was kino

>>18821883
looks like a menagerie of 4chan memes, but typeset. would you really recommend it to someone to read?

>>18819131
Am also from Philly. I can confirm we are not the new Paris.

>>18821855
So many missing. Here's my list
'9gag only has four posters_files'
'9gag only has four posters.html'
'9gag only has four posters.pdf'
amp_001.pdf
amp_002.pdf
amp_003.pdf
amp_004.pdf
amp_005.pdf
amp-006.pdf
amp-007.pdf
Anonymous_Hypersphere.pdf
Anonymous_Leftopia.pdf
'A Walking Aphrodisiac by Nicholas Blacksmith.pdf'
BeheadAllSatans
burgers.docx
'Catgirl Misaki the Vampire Hunter.txt'
ChinkShitInfo.pdf
'Coronameron 2.docx'
'Coronameron 2.pdf'
Coronameron.docx
'Coronameron More.docx'
'Coronameron More.pdf'
Coronameron.pdf
'Da Archive Annex - August 6 2018.pdf'
'Da Archive Annex - March 1 2018.pdf'
'Da Archive Annex - May 19 2018.pdf'
'Da Archive Annex - October 10 2018.pdf'
'Da Archive Annex.pdf'
Dreamscape.docx
Dreamscape.pdf
Gifts-Evil-and-Good-2021.pdf
'Gifts Evil and Good.pdf'
'Gifts Evil and Good (print).pdf'
guenonmag1.pdf
"L'anomie.docx"
"L'anomie.pdf"
"L'anomie_v01.pdf"
'Lit Quarterly - Fall 2019.pdf'
'Lit Quarterly - Spring 2020.pdf'
'Lit Quarterly - Winter 2020.pdf'
Lit-Schizo-Ramblings.pdf
'LondonFrog - Last Binge Ever Volume 1.pdf'
'LondonFrog Vol 2 Final Draft.pdf'
'LondonFrog Vol 3 Final Draft.pdf'
'Moby-Dick - A lit Annotated Edition by Herman Melville.pdf'
Pinecone_1.pdf
Pinecone_2.pdf
'Professor Kafir - Pol Gets a PhD in Islam (2019).pdf'
'Rags and Bones.pdf'
'Rags and Bones (print).pdf'
'Redgrave - Paleblood Hunt.pdf'
TheAprilReview.zip
'The Complete Works of God II.docx'
'The Complete Works of God II.pdf'
'The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra 3_ Tokyo Drift.docx'
'The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra 3_ Tokyo Drift.pdf'
'The Legacy of Totalitarianism In a Tundra in Miami - Chapter 1 [GO TO CHAPTER 2].docx'
'The Legacy of Totalitarianism In a Tundra in Miami - Chapter 1 [GO TO CHAPTER 2].pdf'
'The Legacy of Totalitarianism In a Tundra in Miami - Chapter 2 [CHAPTERS 3_4 OPEN NOW].docx'
'The Legacy of Totalitarianism In a Tundra in Miami - Chapter 2 [CHAPTERS 3_4 OPEN NOW].pdf'
'The Legacy of Totalitarianism In a Tundra in Miami - Chapter 3.docx'
'The Legacy of Totalitarianism In a Tundra in Miami - Chapter 3.pdf'
'The Legacy of Totalitarianism In a Tundra in Miami - Chapter 4.docx'
'The Legacy of Totalitarianism In a Tundra in Miami - Chapter 4.pdf'
'The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra.pdf'
"The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra Presents_ Kolsti's Adventure in the Everglades_ A Novella.docx"
"The Legacy of Totalitarianism in a Tundra Presents_ Kolsti's Adventure in the Everglades_ A Novella.pdf"
'The _lit_ collection.docx'
'The _lit_ collection.pdf'
'The Manifesto of SaintMarx and Pope Doug.docx'
'The Manifesto of SaintMarx and Pope Doug.pdf'
troll-culture.pdf

>>18819027
came here to post this

>>18821982
>"L'anomie.docx"
>"L'anomie.pdf"
>"L'anomie_v01.pdf"

were these `ls`ed from your computer? that's part of my point. look at OP's picture, people sitting around a table smoking and talking and sharing. look at your filelist: hoarded and shallow and obscure. we should enlist /g/ to make us a resilient site where these can get uploaded, and things like 'The Legacy of Totalitarianism In a Tundra in Miami - Chapter 2 [CHAPTERS 3_4 OPEN NOW].docx'
would get more than a half dozen readers in it's entire lifespan.

>>18821982
Plz make a torrent.

Haven't been here in a while, does Londonfrog still post?

>>18822206
he killed himself, along with oxfordfag

>>18822206
No. He got a seven-figure job in technological super-finance and now he spends his time driving around a in his sports cars or frolicking with his harem of super-models.

>>18822026
New art movements back in the day always used to set up their own galleries. I think we should do something similar (or resuscitate &amp)

There obviously isn’t one. The 1920s was the apex of our civilization. We are now in its twilight. If the people who first spread this sentiment are to be believed then you should be looking to Eastern Rurope and Eurasia over the next few hundred years.

>>18821889
>a stagnating structure in that regard
As are most European capitals, if not all
At least it's not soulless yet
Trust me, the big cities of the east and south east are a hell of a lot better than those of the West

>>18821855
please, I bring the soul with every post

>>18821883
and the Moby-Dick annotation

>>18818893
nothing
there's no white intellectual capitol or capital anymore

>>18819131
>Altho, idk, I'm from Philly and it feels like we're really ahead of the discourse but maybe I'm biased.
I've never been there but I love the attitude.

Melbourne

>>18822941
>muh whiteys
You only help propagate stagnation nigger

>>18823123
/thread

>>18819534
BASED.

>>18821982
>>18821855
Flash fiction anthology #3 will start taking submissions in a couple months. It will have the same writing prompt format as the previous anthologies and accept stories for 30 days.

The bohemians of 1920's Paris didn't meet up in cafes because they liked lattes, they did it because their apartments lacked cooking facilities. They didn't spend all day bullshitting with each other and composing poetry because they knew that time and culture had coalesced to form a certain milieu which was slipping through their fingers and they needed to wring out every drop of wisdom while they still could, they did it because they couldn't afford a radio or plays. They didn't dress like they did to set themselves apart from office drones and manual laborers, they did it because certain patterns had recently gone out of style and were now on discount. People only began to romanticize that lifestyle much later, but back then these people were seen as trailer trash who needed to get with the fucking program and get a real job.

You can probably see where I'm going with this: 4chan is the new Paris. The modern day bohemian probably has very little choice in how he lives, is probably far out of step with modern styles and tastes, and probably spends a lot of time seething about society. Now before you get too excited, you need to understand the most critical aspect of the 1920's Paris movement: we only really remember the good ones, but most of them were stupid. Statistically speaking, if you are reading this, you are not one of the profound, insightful "4chan bohemes" that may one day cause society to look back and wonder what exactly it was we were all doing that made us so cool. You are the greasy retard who is wasting his time before he finally grows up and comes to terms with his mediocrity.

>>18824361
>Statistically speaking, if you are reading this, you are not one of the profound, insightful "4chan bohemes" that may one day cause society to look back and wonder what exactly it was we were all doing that made us so cool. You are the greasy retard who is wasting his time before he finally grows up and comes to terms with his mediocrity.
Whoa there mate, we're a long way off from that. Might as well enjoy it while it lasts.

>>18824361
Problem being ownership. By nature nobody wants to attach their real names here, and understandably so. So either you make an NFT of your shit, or else you simply accept that anon is anon and always will be. Or go full retard and claim IRL credit I suppose.

>>18824408
Couldn't that be solved by tripcodes? Or let posterity figure it out; hell, it's really only the soul that matters anyway.

>>18824361
>You are the greasy retard who is wasting his time before he finally grows up and comes to terms with his mediocrity
Every man takes that risk, and most of them fail and come to terms. Such is life. I'd still rather be one of the ones that tried, even if I was just some smelly cigarillo-smoking nobody in the background while Proust got drunk.

>>18824361
There are multiple journals which say plainly that they enjoyed drinking, eating, and mingling at the cafes.

>>18822778
you're maybe right, i don't know you or your posts.

>>18822383
how much effort are you and i and maybe 3 other anons willing to spend to make into a gallery the likes of >>18821982's list? i've never read ChinkShitInfo.pdf, but i don't know if i would even sacrifice 40 hours of my time to put it out into the world.

oh >>18821982, I'd like a torrent or a mega to your list of files.

>>18824361
there's another difference in measure:
>but most of them were stupid.
what percentage? and what percentage of us are trite idiots who parrot memes into book form? what percentage of us have achieved something more than >>18823386's picrel?

>>18824408
i don't agree that that's a problem. i think there's a dissonance between admitting that writing, as a hobby, will stastistically never give us external reward, then what's the point of names?

and one other thing that >>18824361's post misses: there was an intentional effort by art movements to get their work noticed. here, there's very little effort to do so, with the exception maybe of &amp, although correct me if i'm omitting something significant.

I'm really getting the indication that anons are itching to start some kind of literary renaissance and don't really know where else to go but here. Is this a new thing, or does this happen all the time?

>>18824470
>does this happen all the time?
Pretty much yeah, plus nothing substantial will come of it because /lit/ is too pretentious and not well-read enough on average

>>18818893
Who are those people in the picture? I know that guy with the mustache on the right is Hemingway but I don't recognize anybody else; is that Nabokov sitting across from him?

>>18824470
I think people on this site have a common affliction of very transient, dense motivation. There's a central question this boils down to: are the likes of guenonmag1.pdf worth the effort of making into something?

>>18824474
this is defeatist. there's a way to answer this more: making a recurring general thread, called something like the /ILAM/ - is lit a movement, and actualizing things like a website to host, volunteer editors and designers, etc. maybe a competitor or peer to &amp latent in our souls, anon.

>>18824445
Rags and Bones and Gifts Evil and Good contain the best writing attributed to /lit/.

>>18821958
Lots of nigger shit last year in Philly. My condolences.

>>18818893
>>18821855
it could be /lit/. that's part of the reason I started coming here, but it doesn't seem likely
Paris 1920s was cheap, like SF in the 60s. I know few writers and artists who went to Bucharest but nothing really happened with them. there also needs to be some genius and they don't really have it.

>>18824499
I get the intuitive sense there's enough talent and societal angst if not here, then someplace like it to make something happen. Just where else would all the talent go?

I guess it doesn't need to be institutionalized or anything. Anon could just start writing and later it's found out that he lurked on occasion.

>>18824512
>Gifts Evil and Good
Mac rated it it was amazing
I have independently thought of basically every branch of philosophy I've come across. Every question of existentialism which I've seen discussed in SMBC or xkcd or R*ddit or anywhere else, the thoughts haven't been new to me. Philosophy has pretty much gotten trivial for me; I've considered taking a philosophy course just to see how easy it is.
Psychology, I actually understand better than people with degrees. Unlike engineering, there's no aspect of psychology which I don't have a very good understanding of. I can debunk many of even Sigmund Freud's theories.
I'm a good enough writer that I'm writing a book and so far everybody who's read any of it has said it was really good and plausible to expect to have published. And that's not just, like, me and family members, that counts strangers on the Internet. I've heard zero negative appraisal of it so far; people have critiqued it, but not insulted it. (less)

So Mac characterizes my concern. But I haven't read (or found on libgen) many of the works mentioned here, so I remain ignorant for now.

Per >>18800449, maybe the best bet is to stick with &amp for now. Or maybe, another pastiche magazine can be branched out and started instead, from &amp's slush pile with less effort in editing and more in getting creative ideas onto somewhere readable by the world.

>>18824470
Idk I think we have this thread about every week or every second week.

>>18824652
Doesn't have to be a bad thing, I guess. Just means anons are interested in being part of a scene.

>>18824431
I just didn't want people to read my post and think I was going for one of those "4chan is the vanguard of intellectual innovation and freedom!" copypastas you get from someone who just stumbled across the site three weeks ago. >>18824445
>what percentage?
Who knows or cares? If you've been on the site for a while you have a pretty good idea that idiots represent the majority.
>>18824436
Yeah and I like going down to the lake to have a swim on my day off, but it isn't really the best way I could imagine to spend a day, just the best option available to me.

Basically what I'm trying to say is that places like 4chan have replaced the concept of the "public forum where intellectuals sit around to jerk themselves off" and if you try to straight-up emulate what that type of lifestyle looked like in the past, you'll just flag yourself for a shallow poser. In terms of the answer to the question, the modern "Paris of the 1920's" isn't a city, it's poverty mixed with High Culture and a wide variety of differing opinions, which you can really only get from the internet, and more specifically from 4chan. You can argue with the conclusions I drew, but I think that basic answer stands.

>>18822026
Yes, these were ls'ed from my computer.
I'll make a resilient website for them.
>>18822189
>>18824445
Meanwhile here's a link to download all the files I listed.
https://1.filedit.ch/1/XVdXhlXTjMeHisqbrCp.zip
I forgot project nano/lit/ so here it is in a separate file
https://1.filedit.ch/1/oExnQAaDczqZYMzkrNhc.zip

ChinkShitInfo is simply a compilation of chinese knockoff electronics available on aliexpress, compiled by the folks over at /g/. I didn't include it in the zip file.

>>18824750
thanks anon. on an unrelated note, does anyone know how to avoid downloading pizza from some random chinese top level domain?

>>18824768
Hah.
I used fileditch.com and didn't notice their download server is .ch, i'll upload to mega i guess. Otherwise, I don't know how to check for pizza on zip files before downloading them. But trust me, there's none of that stuff here *wink*

>>18824828
Still uploading but here
https://mega.nz/folder/Seo1kSBa#3WmesL71uxmNLA6jzqbuvg

>>18824862
thanks. went and downloaded the original via vpn, looks clean boys.

>>18824470
no one remembers post-meta dada i see.

>>18824470
>anons are itching to start some kind of literary renaissance
I think it's born from a reaction to the MFA pipeline. Stale, by-the-numbers garbage keeps getting heaped with praise mostly because we're on the fourth-or-fifth generation of "born writers" who go from school>college>post-grad writing degree and then think they've mastered the art of literature without ever really having the experience necessary to create rich and vivid literature. Basically a more sophisticated version of the idiot who thinks he can assemble the perfect story by browsing TVtropes.

So we can all sense that mainstream literature has passed into the uncanny valley of human behavior, but the odds of any individual writing a novel which is going to rock the literary world is incredibly slim, precisely because the literary world breeds its own gatekeepers. Most of the reviews are written by other writers, who are obviously going to be biased in favor of themselves. We can all sense that as well, the best we'd get from the New York Times review column would be "a fun read, but not much depth" if we focus on entertaining the reader, or "the author has some very wrong political notions" if we actually strive to vocalize our experiences with society as it stands right now. And that's if we can even get a publishing contract, which is pretty unlikely if you agree with most of what you see on 4chan and want to maintain your integrity.

It's more or less understood that the individual author can't meet the establishment on equal footing. We need to create momentum in order to crash across the masses like a thundering wave. If we all get on the same page and start rolling out material all at the same time, we'd get the momentum we need to create a viable alternative to the pipeline. Hence the urge to kickstart this renaissance, but all the attempts keep failing because trying to come up with the next hip genre without any material to show is really just trying to offload the serious work to others.

What we need is a messiah. A truly selfless individual who isn't afraid to publish directly to 4chan for 4chan utterly without thought of profit. One who can absorb all our social "sins" and fearlessly allow his work to be crucified. Someone with superhuman insight, compassion, and technical skill, who can take the truth we all feel and make a story that can't be discarded on grounds of grammatical/stylistic errors. Someone who doesn't just understand us, but understands the people we oppose, and who genuinely loves them despite the knowledge that he will never be loved back. Someone who doesn't care about labels, even when those labels are created to serve him.

If this sounds like something you'd like, be sure to keep an eye out for my upcoming self-pub. I'll figure out the plot later, but it's going to be a floridawave novella. Floridawave is, like, that floridaman meme but in book form.

>>18821032
Maybe in Spain or Portugal?
I could see Madrid, Barcelona, or Lisbon being a decent ‘Paris’

>>18824889
>Someone who doesn't care about labels
>Literally styles himself as a messiah

Nice effortpost. Remember each of us will read a finite number of books in our lifetime, why should yours find itself on our lists?

>>18824889
Even the hacker 4chan can't really serve as anything but an occasional boogeyman on the Fact-Based News Hour. And he's actually famous. Like it or not people are wired to respond to people, be it with praise or disdain or shrieking violence. Someone who actually managed to distil this thing of ours in an effective way and then attached his real name to it would probably end up crucified, but he would be remembered, that's for sure. Problem is most of us aren't good enough and would just end up mocked and ignored. The flash of actual genius is one thing you can't call up on demand, but if the dude ever shows up we'll know him for our own.

>>18824828
What's wrong with .ch?

>>18824361
i'm secretly one of the good ones, thanks

>>18819141
Chinese literature has a brief burst between cixi and mao but sadly self censorship is far too rewarding for artistic expression to be in great supply nowadays
Source: I don’t know, read chaguan for a better explanation of this feeling

This will be lost to the threads of time, but mark my words, I will foster a new strand of literature through a project I'm planning with a best friend of mine. Remember these words: SUBURBIA ULTRA

>>18824703
>Yeah and I like going down to the lake to have a swim on my day off, but it isn't really the best way I could imagine to spend a day, just the best option available to me.
Stop it. They were lost generation dilettantes, enjoying the frivolous advantages bestowed by a favorable exchange rate. Harry Crosby was probably the single most relevant publisher in Paris at that time and he was a Boston Brahmin, JP Morgan’s nephew with a trust fund. He spent all his time writing poetry, publishing, drinking champagne, and suntanning. They bought an old mill in the French countryside and threw enormous parties, which all these “starving” artists attended and which he also funded. They “starved” but they starved comfortably. They all wrote about how they spent their time comfortably at cafes and drunk. They weren’t hanging out in the Parisian underclass of genuine poverty and at no point did they have to “eat at cafes because their apartments lacked cooking facilities”. That’s just simply not true. They were dilettantes, decadents, LARPing artists who chose to blow their money on parties and cafe food for the sake of art.

>>18826897
>They were dilettantes, decadents, LARPing artists who chose to blow their money on parties and cafe food for the sake of art.
Sounds like your average /lit/anon sans the parties. Now here we are 100 years later and still talking about them.

>>18827131
but the parties are the crucial element! sometimes i learn more in one conversation with a smart friend than myriad inane posts online.

New York in the late 60s/ early 70s was like Paris in the 1920s
Now there isn't such a place
The digital technological revolution was a disaster for the human race, we are no longer human
There will never be another Paris in the 1920s

>>18826897
Yeah I just read The Sun Also Rises and it sounds like they were just spending money on exorbitant amounts of alcohol and partying and if there was any poverty among them, then it was due to that

>>18827460
You become convinced you have found truths more easily one on one than when the relentless autism of anons around the world keeps pointing out where you're both full of shit.

>>18827561
Same function as rich people depicting a romanticized lifestyle via Instagram. In both cases the viewer uses the content for escapism.

>>18824889
>We can all sense that as well, the best we'd get from the New York Times review column would be "a fun read, but not much depth" if we focus on entertaining the reader, or "the author has some very wrong political notions" if we actually strive to vocalize our experiences with society as it stands right now. And that's if we can even get a publishing contract, which is pretty unlikely if you agree with most of what you see on 4chan and want to maintain your integrity.
All we would have to do is take the cream of the crop from /lit/, go someplace where there's not a bunch of ironic memes and more people take literature seriously than don't, and publish on the internet until a publisher worth their salt in artistic integrity, somewhere, takes notice. That is, if a decent number of us really do have the requisite talent.

I posit that you would be right in that lots of established publishers would sideline anyone that dares express the hint of an unorthodox viewpoint if the writer doesn't already possess some sort of high standing in society, to the point that if someone were known to be browsing here they would likely be instantly blacklisted in some fashion. However, with the advent of the internet could come a sort of second iteration of the discovery of the printing press in publishing volume.

I don't think something like that would be strictly necessary, though I suppose it could help. It could be beneficial to get to know anons maybe by a pseudonym other than "Anonymous" and get editing tips and general feedback that doesn't constitute a bunch of people wandering into a thread calling them a pseud.

>>18827460
And when you put it like that, it suddenly doesn't sound so appealing.

>>18828132
>>>18827460
>And when you put it like that, it suddenly doesn't sound so appealing.

I'm serious about this point though: >>18827651

That the old gatekeepers created important movements and found new talent is undeniable, but they were also no less prone to forming cliques and excluding unpopular truths than any other group of people anywhere. What makes the """anonymous""" internet unique is that some social dominance games cannot be applied anymore. You can't just ignore and forget about where you're full of shit, because anon Just Keeps Posting About It. That's a genuinely unique moment. Sure, the demo skews to marginal young males and it shows a lot of the time. But there's potential here to create new things; in fact it already does at some level since 4chan was already seen as the vortex of hate that creates a lot of the internet's significantly new content not long at all after it was turned on.

End of effortpost.

>>18828132
>All we would have to do is take the cream of the crop from /lit/
Has this place *really* produced works of value? Do we have a consensus of what constitutes this cream? Finally, why would sending it out to a publisher "worth their salt" picks it up -- why's that the goal?

These threads might recur, and similar ideas will get repeated again. To >>18827651, maybe I'm just romanticizing the distant past in which I went to parties.

>>18828251
>You can't just ignore and forget about where you're full of shit, because anon Just Keeps Posting About It.
Which I would classify as both a boon and a curse. Many of those types really aren't all that bright themselves and just don't really know that they aren't helping anyone or that they've even been proven wrong. Helpful instruction is good, namecalling due to some petty disagreement, not so much.

>>18829226
>Has this place *really* produced works of value?
Well, see this quote from the post above yours:
>But there's potential here to create new things; in fact it already does at some level since 4chan was already seen as the vortex of hate that creates a lot of the internet's significantly new content not long at all after it was turned on.
If it hasn't, there's at least some potential here and the place has not held insignificant sway in world cultural phenomena. Where we can agree that we appear to be in a bit of a dry spell when it comes to output of literature, where else would the types that can produce great literature go? What I'm asking, not telling, is, if not here, then where?

>Do we have a consensus of what constitutes this cream?
No, I wouldn't say so, though I assume they'll know each other when they see them.

>Finally, why would sending it out to a publisher "worth their salt" picks it up -- why's that the goal?
It would likely be hard to sustain a life of writing literature, or facilitating the maintenance of some kind of scene otherwise. I would assume the point of why a lot of people are here is little more than to read and write and talk about literature with like-minded individuals; that might make it easier to do so... perhaps away from those types that might not take this kind of thing too seriously. Feel free to disagree.

Really, to me, this is all some kind of distant idea, but not unattainable. I admit I'm not well-researched when it comes to the lives of authors whose works I've read, and indeed a very many of them could just be recluses that have no interest in being around their contemporaries, but one could likely guess that writing circles of myriad forms tend not to exist for no purpose.