/lit/ - Literature

Can't monetize free thinking

Who cares if something I've thought of before was thought of by someone else who happened to be published? Do they own my intuitions now? Why do I have to write all these complex citations at the end of a paper in the age of Google? Here's the name of the paper and author, find it yourself.

I hate MLA
I hate APA
I hate Chicago
Simple as

Who are these professors to flunk students for "plagiarism" when they charge thousands for midwit regurgitations of texts I could supersede in an afternoon googling? Do they really think the privilege of discussing these texts with fellow midwits and hungover pseudbros is really worth going into debt for my hoop jumper certification? Why is college such an absolute fucking joke?

>>19121652
Just use a reference manager like Zotero bro. ezpz.

>>19121652
Just learn to use BibLaTeX, it is so easy for the humanities student.

>>19121652
what do you mean?

>>19121652
>mrw i realised i forgot the bibliography

>>19121933
>BibLaTeX
>Humanities
What? I thought only STEM students used LaTeX?

>>19121671
>tfw you get punished for self-plagiarism
i didn't even know that was a thing

>>19121942
Take a quick look at BibLaTeX, and then at humanities citation and bibliography management needs.

You'll get the joke soon.

Citation nonsense killed my love of studying literature

>>19121652
If you don't research your ideas before writing your essay the teachers will be forced to reread the same poorly stated and thought out ideas over and over and over. 99% of students are poorly read and have a massive chip on the shoulder. Chances are you fall into that 99% or you would not have asked the question.

>>19121963
Universities aren't interested in producing well-read, knowledgeable students, they're interested in the perpetuation of a style, a formalism.

What I know and understand about the world does not depend on me being able to translate it into academese.

>oh nooo I have to build off others' ideas and not just make shit up as I go along!
If you just want to write random essays and "speak your mind", you don't need a diploma for that.

>>19121969
>What I know and understand about the world does not depend on me being able to translate it into academese.
It does if you want a degree.

>>19121652
I don't have to worry about that because I've never even finished high school, lol.
But I know 4 languages and am well read in literature, philosophy, history and mathematics.
Can't find a good job though.

>>19122026
The first guy in the chain was "making up shit as he goes along", maybe I don't want to build off other people's ideas? Maybe I think endless self-reference is a symptom of a civilization too old and too tired to say anything of note anymore?

>>19122029
Then universities are not interested in producing models, but iterations of models. Every great thinker is sui generis.

>>19122058
>Then universities are not interested in producing models, but iterations of models
Do you not understand how the world works? They are producing commodities which the market needs.

i agree with you OP. the culture of citations is basically a way of academia maintaining its power structure. i am much more interested in peoples feelings and intuitions than i am in them just citing what others have written. our thought patterns absorb things from endless sources as we live our lives, why exactly do we have to act like we owe so much deference to single sources?

the irony is that having to cite sources seems to have the opposite effect of what is intended. it doesnt help you produce original thoughts, it keeps you in a walled garden. original thoughts generally spring up when you are not restricted and can just follow trains of thought anywhere regardless if they may have been thought before. having to cite also makes you paranoid you dont accidentally state something that needs to be cited.

>>19122070
Of course I understand, I'm questioning their pretension to being a "university", a place of learning and the cultivation of young minds.

>>19122081
Well, go back to school and learn to formulate a proper question.

>>19122080
truth is a cry in the wilderness with 0 citations, when thought strains toward recognition and positivity it commits suicide. there are reasons we'll never shut up about Kant and Hegel but Shestov goes unsung, and they have everything to do with making excuses for the world.

>>19122082
epic comeback bro

citing sources is dumb because if a thought is truly original, then it is almost always self evident where it came from. when you attack objective views of truth then everyone knows you are inspired by nietzsche without having to cite him. if you bring up concepts like "doublethink" or "thoughtcrime" then everyone knows orwell came up with it, or at least is the most famous version of it. everyone knows the allegory of the cave was by plato. and for a modern example, when you bring up a concept like "antifragile" then its evident where the idea came from (taleb) without the citation. to even use a citation is redundant

a truly original, mindblowing thought will be so new that who its attributable to will be immediately obvious by almost any literate person. if you have to cite where a thought came from then the thought is probably not terribly mindblowing in the first place, and is something anyone could have come up with. so you might as well just say it without caring about where it may have come from

>>19122058
>The first guy in the chain was "making up shit as he goes along",
And then was referenced and scrutinised by the rest of the chain.
>maybe I don't want to build off other people's ideas?
Then you definitely don't need a university, you can do this on your own.
>Maybe I think endless self-reference is a symptom of a civilization too old and too tired to say anything of note anymore?
Constantly referencing the culturally central texts (Bible, Aristotle, the Greeks and the Romans in general) was the cornerstone of western culture for many centuries. Your desire for originality is in fact typically modern, an individualist and egotistic mindset, and usually a delusional one at that - what you consider original has most likely already been said, but you were too lazy to read the literature about it.

>>19122080
>why exactly do we have to act like we owe so much deference to single sources
Because in academia you're dealing with particular data, not with impressions of the world. The latter might work within philosophy or literature department at most. Elsewhere, relying on impressions is absolute quackery (and even within literature and philosophy it usually is like that as well, unless you really are well-read).
Anyway, yeah, obviously the academia works so that its knowledge is reproduced upon its students. Unless you want some radical Illich-style deschooling, it is beyond pointless to complain about it - especially since you willfully signed up for it. There are other avenues for exploring art, such as criticism and essays, where you don't have that sort of academic guidance/control, so go try that instead.

>>19122176
>when you bring up a concept like "antifragile" then its evident where the idea came from (taleb) without the citation. to even use a citation is redundant
Most people don't actually know about every online meme philosopher.

>>19122197
there arent really other avenues when public schooling is universal and university is basically required for any serious job. the issue is that our modern society uses this dumb citation education as a nucleus around which everything else revolves

>>19122176
>when you bring up a concept like "antifragile" then its evident where the idea came from (taleb) without the citation
who?

>>19121652
Then don't

>>19122197
Bibliographies are chores both for the well-read and the under-read.

>>19122212
>therefore I give no sources, because it is indifferent to me whether what I have thought has already been thought before me by another
This is unironically true and based.

This reminds me of a fella I used to know, he came to the conclusion that his difficulty with math was the base 10 system and that if everything was in base 12 he could understand it, so he created a set of base 12 numerals and then proceeded to learn math with them. He did not get very far.

>>19122251
yeah rejecting the onanism of academia is totally like counting in base 12, damn I got btfo

>>19122202
Wait, you're studying English or philosophy, and you're talking about getting a serious job? Come on, lmao.
Get your head out of your ass for a bit, seriously. 95% of sciences need citations in order just to know the stuff isn't made up. Or would you go to an economics class and give some statistics that nobody knows the source for, or go to a law class and talk about criminal justice without referring to any real laws? Your English/phil classes requiring the same is to be expected, unless you want the course to be some sort of intellectual kindergarten where you're trying random shit out.

>>19122223
I didn't really notice it being a chore, in fact it's pretty simple to do. To me it is mainly an act of politeness and clarity - go read this and that if you want to see for yourself how this works, that's where I learned from, this is what I agree/disagree with, etc.
E.g. in the previous post I mentioned "Illich-style deschooling" - maybe someone hasn't heard of deschooling yet, so it's useful to mention the name as well, to be able to google it easier and learn about it.

>>19121652
>citing sources
Fuck this, when I was 14 I had to write I don't know what for my batshit history teacher and I came up with my own shit, but citing sources was mandatory so I picked up a bunch or random religious books from the house's bookshelf. Those books were written by Jehovah Witnesses in the 80s or 90s and the bitch couldn't check if my sources were legit or not.
Fucking whore.

>>19122271
i had the impression op was not merely talking about english or philosophy but about education in general. i had to cite sources throughout all of grade school and college even when not majoring in english

>>19122271
this whole respect for intellectual and academic integrity basically exists to prop up (at best, weakly critique) a system of incalculable violence and degradation, it's just so ridiculous and provincial, you'd think men and women who do nothing but plumb the depths of human thought would be a little more self-aware about it

>>19122271
>95% of sciences need citations in order just to know the stuff isn't made up.
and look at where academic science is now. its an absolute joke that has lost almost all its respect.

>>19122279
That's something else, then. I only got to write sources in university, and anyway most people ITT seem to be talking specifically about the uni.

>>19122281
You're so melodramatic you sound like a vegan or something.

>>19122284
lmao what? In whose eyes has it lost respect? When did it supposedly have more of it? And what does citing have to do with that at all? Science would be more respected if the articles said stuff like "as we all know, COVID-19 is going to kill 59 000 000 people by the end of the year because that's so obvious dude", is that what you're saying?

>>19122318
You're not dramatic enough. Are you proud that you take your sedatives twice a day just like the doctor told you?

use google scholar auto bib button

>>19121652
it exists to prop up the ridiculous profit margins of the scientific magazine publishers
it is truly a bizar industry, in this internet age there is no need for periodical magazines and their whole business model is do nothing except steal from others and resell the package
i mean academics produce work give it away for free and then it gets reviewed again by the same academics for free and the publisher puts it on the internet which cost almost nothing
the only thing that is paid for is the prestige of getting your name in big thing and the taxpayer pays a huge fortune for it
at the end of the day it is that academics have arrested development and are still stuck in elementary school levels of status obsessed personalities but they hid it in pompous rituals and complex jargon

i can confidently say during my academic career 90% of my references were bullshit
now don't get me wrong they are not all bad, you should reference the main ideas on which you build or if you took raw data from somewhere, but today there exists a zeal to put them everywhere
i have taken bullshit articles not related at all, referencing old books that only exist in print not digital, using old soviet science publications which have indexes but that aren't available for reading on the internet and claiming i can read them with google translate and just downright referring to myself some shit i put online somewhere
i never got called out for any of this showing that indeed nobody bothers to read this shit, they only check the volume of references, at the end it was a standard of 100 references per 10 pages of text so you just know nobody has the time to verify them all

>>19122678
>ask people do busy work
>don't even bother to check it

Why the FUCK are employers and professors like this?

If you want your "original thoughts" to be heard, you shouldn't be in academia because that's not the point of academia. The point is to dissecate the thoughts that are already considered relevant. The likes of Russeau, Plato and Spinoza are not relevant because they've been approved by a board of professors in their respective areas, but because they were read by lots of people and influenced the world around them to an extent.

If you write, and somehow get read by others and build an influence for your work, you'll be the one being dissecated in academia.

>>19121671
What's more foolish: the college pedagogy, or you paying them thousands for it?

>>19123053
The one paying, but better foolish than malicious.

I'm not in humanities so please explain. What sorts of things do you have to cite? I would have assumed it's only factual assertions or direct allusions. Are you telling me that if I independently arrive at some non-empirical idea, like "cogito ergo sum", I have to cite Descartes even if my train of reasoning on the page is not derived from him?

>>19123081
My point is the formalism that chokes the life out of these papers, mainly because most of these students don't have much life in them to begin with. It's a shitshow all around.

>>19123095
Example?

>>19123081
Obviously not, only what is pertinent to your work, that assist in building a meaningful whole. Retards ITT think academic writing should be like writing a blog or shitposts on /lit/, don't take them too seriously.

>>19123118
What's it say, though, that I've read great shitposts on /lit/ that have advanced my knowledge of this or that topic in a way that most academic papers are too turgid for?

>>19123111
I'm well-read, and so spend a lot of my time getting the required amount of citations in my paper, references, hunting for the "appropriate" resources, it feels like an easter egg hunt.

>>19121667
>I hate Chicago
Format or City? Either way I agree

>>19121652
Nietzsche was criticized for not having any sources when he wrote Birth of Tragedy. Never happened again of course and now nobody cares. So just be a genius I guess.

>>19123120
You should simply maintain an index of ideas. For every possible allusion and idea you can remember, find the source, compile all this, and you will have a lifelong bibliography of your brain you can copy paste at will

Everyone in this thread is too retarded to realize you could just cite sources as counter-arguments which you then tear down with your "original" thought. You don't need to cite sources to support your ideas. You just need to cite sources to show you've thought about how your idea engages with the current or past discourse. But all of you are too narrow-minded to understand this.

>>19121667
Footnotes

Having read and talked to my gf about the papers she’s written for school, it honestly seems like you’re just supposed to repeat what you’ve been told. I’m a criminology dropout if that matters