/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.12469083]

Why don't kids read for fun anymore? Most people my age I've talked to say they never read as a kid and have only since read for school. It seems like most people in general under 40 just don't read. Why? I read as a kid just the same if not more as I biked, drew, and played videogames.

[Anonymous No.12469093]

Those kids end up being the ones who read YA novels as adults.

[Anonymous No.12469094]

[Anonymous No.12469122]

>>12469083
They're all flossing and playing on their Ipads

[Anonymous No.12469126]

>>12469093
Nah that's just any female slightly less thotty than the norm. As much as I hate literature aimed at women, they at least fucking read something as opposed to modern adult men who are the most brain dead retards ever born. The potato I ate for dinner last night is smarter and more knowledgable than your average party-going, whore-fucking 18-28 year old male. Post digestion, no less.

[Anonymous No.12469135]

>>12469083
>under 40
that's an exaggeration

it's probably just children and teenagers, and it always has been like that
it just happens now they have more thing to entertain themselves with

[Anonymous No.12470651]

>>12469083
I think it's that elementary/high school english classes are the biggest joke in all of education. You give kids "high literature" that's far too dry to appeal to the kids who want something more unrealistic, and couple it with strict lines of thought and forcing the class to write drivel about it ruins it for the students who might've liked it to begin with.

Students have a thing they enjoy ruined by the school system, and so they stop doing it. Because they don't do it, their kids are never exposed to the idea of books as being something that can be enjoyed, and so they just hate it even more when it's their turn in the classroom.

I loved reading as a kid, and it took me two years after highschool to pick up a book again, and it was only because I forced myself to go back to something I used to enjoy and try it again.

[Anonymous No.12470669]

In the future we'll all be telepaths.

[Anonymous No.12470674]

>>12469083
Kids like to play, no generation of children has ever historically had an interest in literature. Yes some kids do but their abnormal. Most people can only really get anything from reading when they're older but are turned off from it in their youth.

[Anonymous No.12470686]

>>12470669
This, basically

At the very least, once people start having their brains directly connected to the internet most communication will be done through sound and images. Most people in the future won't even know how to read or write because it will no longer be a useful skill. The death of literature and the written word is just a part of the natural progression of things.

[Anonymous No.12470704]

This was true even before television it's not the case that at one point reading was the hobby for any majority

[Anonymous No.12470724]

>>12470674
>>12470704
This. There was no golden age where plebs lined up for the latest literary masterpiece.

Schopenhauer was complaining about people playing cards and laughing whores at the theatre.

[Anonymous No.12470725]

>>12469083
>anymore

They never did. The biggest bookfag myth is that there was some utopian period in the past where everyone was a bookworm. For most of history the majority of people were too stupid to read and were too busy with there miserable peasant lives to have time anyway. Once mass literacy became a thing it didn't matter anyway because now there were tons of other distractions that the average person finds a thousand times more enjoyable than books. A kid in the 40s would much rather have been playing kick the can or whatever than reading just like how a modern kid would always choose Fortnite over a book.

The typical person of any age group has never given a shit about books in any time period. Statistically, most people never touch a book again their lives once they leave high school and stop having assigned reading.

[Anonymous No.12470742]

It's crazy how you're all trying to ignore the obvious truth
Even anons don't know yet how bad things really are

[Anonymous No.12470758]

>>12470724
>>12470704
America during the 1800's was highly literate, and the public was generally very politically involved through the writings/arguments of their politicians. It is true that this was not the case for everyone, and people weren't any smarter than they are now, but reading was the only real way to stay informed in a nation that valued info heavily.

[Anonymous No.12470771]

>>12470758
>America during the 1800's was highly literate
that's just the chumpsky line

[Anonymous No.12470877]

>>12469126
>they at least fucking read something
it would be better to read nothing instead of reading YA

[Anonymous No.12470915]

>>12469083
Their parents didn't read to them.

[Anonymous No.12470919]

>>12469083
I-Im reading your post right now

[Anonymous No.12470980]

>>12470651
I see this a lot, and I think its kind of bullshit desu, for two main reasons.
First, the books in high school generally aren't "high literature". No one's making a 16 year old read Ulysses. In most high schools you'll only ever read anything on the difficulty level of catch-22 if you're in an AP English class, at which point you should damn well be able to read something of that level.
Second, anyone who suddenly hates reading after having to read a few classics didn't love reading in the first place, IMO. That's like saying because you often watch shitty educational videos in high school and have to take specific notes on them kids are likely to leave hating movies. It just doesn't follow.
Now I see nothing wrong with kids not wanting to read even easy classics at that age, obviously most teens are going to want to read sci fi or fantasy, but someone who really does love reading really shouldn't have that extinguished because they had to read catcher in the rye one time.

[Anonymous No.12471010]

>>12470980

It isn't necessarily having to read them I think, as much as it is being told what/how to think about them and then write papers about it to draw some sort of conclusion.

I remember being given a list of interpretations for a few books when I was in highschool, and it was not being able to read and interpret a book how I wanted that did it. When a book becomes a chore, just reading through pages looking for examples to support and argument you were given before you started, that's where the issues are. Kids are forced to read an analyze, without opportunity for thought or pleasure.

[Anonymous No.12471018]

>>12469083
prolly cuz the people that do read and make it a part of their personality then go to online forums and post pictures of promiscuous cartoon girls

[Anonymous No.12471061]

>>12469093
like the lord of the rings?

[Anonymous No.12471069]

>>12469083
the 20 somethings i know have only read a few books but most listen to audiobooks of pretty terrible shit (name of the wind, we are bob, something called "the land chaos seed", etc.

What is the retention rate for those things? 10%?

[Anonymous No.12471070]

>>12471018

Also this.
If anything can be interpreted in any way as "fancy", "classy", "sophisticated", or any other similar term, there will be people who avoid it on principle.

[Anonymous No.12471078]

>>12471070
also known as "acting white".

[Anonymous No.12471094]

>>12470980
I think it's the over analysis of the works that drives kids away and the fact that they're forced to read them. I hated most of the stuff they had us read in school at the time but over the years I've reread a lot of them and found them quite enjoyable. No teenager is going to love reading A Tale of Two Cities in a week when they have 5 other classes with of work to do and on top of that they have to write multiple papers on the novel. Most kids who like reading hate english classes.

[Anonymous No.12471118]

going on twitch and asking the chat and streamer what the last book they read that wasn't YA always produces results. They get so butthurt.

[Anonymous No.12471191]

>>12470980
Have you ever been in an American English class? Or have you forgotten. EVERYONE bitches about having to write essays and over analyze themes. When I was in high school it got to the point where I would write ridiculous essays well enough that teachers had to pass me. I knew a guy who wrote an essay about how Oreos save the world and got an A.

Not only is it overanalyzation, it is also repetition. I read no less than 4 books on the Holocaust in high school and it was mandatory. Reading depressing literature as a kid over and over while already dealing with hormones and stress can grow resentment.

[Anonymous No.12471229]

I think there are a multitude of reasons. One of them is the fact that the industry pushes out a non on of bullshit and there’s no marketing like there once was. But more than anything I think it’s just not in the cultural lexicon as a signifier. Which is to say that reading books is actually quite a social activity for how specific to the individual it is. For example Harry Potter became huge because other kids could relate and talk about the lore and characters as a shared experience. In no world would millions of women or most people pick up a fantasy book like that unless it wasn’t pushed through the prism of pop culture as something you could talk about and as you age put on a tinder profile. People don’t talk about or know about books, but if the industry was ready to embrace unique voices again that aren’t simply thinly veiled monolithic politidal tripe or children’s novels I could see it coming back because people like stories and I don’t think video games or other entertainment take as much away from books as people suspect.

[Anonymous No.12471662]

>>12469083
ADHD is fucking rampant now. I'd blame netflix too honestly

[Anonymous No.12471676]

>>12470674
What about fiction? Obviously I wasn't reading stirner at age 12

[Anonymous No.12471694]

but they do
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41218284-fortnite-tale

[Anonymous No.12471700]

>>12471694

[Anonymous No.12471754]

>>12471018
They don't like promiscuous cartoon girls? What are they, gay?

[Anonymous No.12471831]

>>12469083
For me it was because other kids didn’t so I had no one to talk about them with so while I enjoyed reading I gravitated towards other things for social reasons. Also severe depression made me not want to do anything lol. I read more now that I’m an adult and being treated, but I think that it’s because there’s so many more instantly gratifying things for the youth to do so even kids who do enjoy reading move towards other things to stay socially ‘relevant’ for want of a better word. I think the quality of children’s literature and YA literature is a factor as well. I found myself unimpressed with a number of things I read in my youth, I realised even back then that they were obviously substandard and no effort was put into their creation, so it felt like a waste of time. There seems to be a stigma that writing for younger audiences is somehow ‘lesser’ than writing for an adult audience, which I don’t necessarily agree with. It’s quite admirable that someone would dedicate their career to creating quality literature that engages kids and gets them into reading more adult oriented works in the future and just expanding their horizons in general.

[Anonymous No.12471854]

>>12471061
there's nothing wrong with lotr

[Anonymous No.12472109]

>>12471831
I uh, never had anyone who cared for me to care about being socially relevant to. I guess I was always disconnected from society.

[Anonymous No.12472646]

Reading 160 characters or less is much easier than reading half that number of pages or more and the young like to take the easier route if it's all in the name of quick entertainment

[Anonymous No.12472816]

>>12469083
> live in a liberal metro
> a majority of bus/train riders all reading
> a mix of ages/races

Your town might just suck.

[Anonymous No.12473031]

Yeah, I never read as a kid.
TV and video games took up all my leisure time.

[Anonymous No.12473060]

>>12469126
>The potato I ate for dinner last night is smarter and more knowledgable than your average party-going, whore-fucking 18-28 year old male. Post digestion, no less.
This.
Capitalism was a mistake. It sacrifices culture and humanity for immediate hedonism.

[Anonymous No.12473063]

>>12470758
>America during the 1800's was highly literate,
Literate in the "I can write letters in passable cursive and read a newspaper" sense, not in the sense of being well-read or particularly educated - and the literacy rates were still much worse than today.

[Anonymous No.12473109]

>>12470771
I vaguely remember hearing him say something in one of his anti mass media remarks that it wasn't uncommon for working class neighbourhoods back in the early 20th century to have weekly get-togethers discussing the works of Shakespeare and so on.
I appreciate that less social mobility left genuinely bright and engaged people at the bottom back then, but this image of literary get-togethers in most working class neighbourhood always seemed preposterous to me.
Especially preposterous is his premise that the media has dumbed us all down and therefore the working class now would be engaged in high art forms in their leisure time if not for trash entertainment. The modern working class in countries with welfare nets and 3rd level education that allows people too poor to attend through grants has created a situation where most of the people who are working poor are generally either unintelligent, have a poor attitude towards work, or a combination of both.
Looking back at most of the people I grew up with in England who lived in council estates, it is just one case after another of genuinely stupid and loud people with terrible habits that they pass on to their children.
Voting to leave the EU is the first principled thing they have done for the country in their whole lives.
>>12473060
The hedonistic culture all around us is more a product of left-wing cultural liberalism than it is of capitalism, which has existed for longer alongside a restrained society than it has alongside this nihilistic post-60s devolved culture of cheap pleasure-seeking.

[Anonymous No.12474733]

>>12469083
I don't think it's linked to any institutional failure, but rather to the death of high culture.

In the golden ages, persons who created culture for the masses to consume were well-educated, literate, and wanted to create something "good" for the consumer. The consumer they were targeting was also not the common man in most cases; they were other educated and literate people, though many exceptions exist.

Now, "content creators" seek to create cheap and easily digestible media for the broadest possible market in order to maximize profit. Parents give children technology starting from a young age, and these young users gravitate to content tailored to them. They are in effect being trained early on to prefer quick-satisfaction forms of culture.

Once they become a teenager, suddenly the floodgates open and they too can become the "content creators" they so idolized! Instagram lets any person share snapshots of their supposedly idyllic lives, never mind that ennui and self-loathing sit right outside the frame.

By the time they reach adulthood, the smarter among them realize something is missing. Yet, they don't seek out the advice of their high school English teacher, who only has two friends on Facebook and no Instagram. Instead, while scrolling their Instagram feed, they see a "content-creator" with hundreds of thousands to millions of followers recommend "Generic Young Adult Book" or "Pop-Sci Trash". Being the skeptical mind they are (keep in mind these ARE smart people, but misled), they check the reviews on amazon and look it up on Reddit. They see glowing reviews lauding the complexity and eloquence, so they buy it and read it.

The vast majority of the reviewers, however, are the same as our hypothetical. They've had no exposure to works of true literary value and the trash they review IS complex and eloquent compared to the piles of shit and piss they consumed before.

[Anonymous No.12475649]

>>12473109
Modern capitalism and post-60s liberalism go hand in hand

[Anonymous No.12475887]

mom used to read me a book almost every night ,then one day she stoped and waited what I will do. I picked the book all by myself and began to read .I only read thanks to her.

[Anonymous No.12476018]

>>12471191
>I read no less than 4 books on the Holocaust in high school and it was mandatory.
And nothing about the Bolshevik revolution? Really makes me think

[Anonymous No.12476451]

>>12475649
Care to elaborate on the difference of capitalism before and after the 60s?

[Anonymous No.12476638]

>>12473109
Even the more intelligent people can't become capitalists with wagework alone. Unless you own shit (or e.g. succeed in becoming the investment of a bank), the situation is unfavourable, because you're doomed to a life of perpetual wagework that allows nothing more than reproduction for you (intelligent or not), while granting accumulation of wealth you produce for the employer. Even if you are in the ostensibly convenient position of an owner, you will have to compete to preserve your position, all for the sake of vain wealth.
At least it looks to me like this. So while your post sounds plausible to me and poor people get smart kids from time to time that manage to climb the ladder thanks to the invention of subjective rights, it just doesn't seem like a sensible system to me to have a process of production based aimed at wealth accumulation of the owners instead of commodities and utilitarian quality of life (not for moral reasons, but for pragmatic ones - since the people who make up the state and the material beneficiaries are in the minority and the system is sustained through their power).
I mean, fuck, should I just slug down my empathy and put up with less intelligent people getting fucked social-darwinianly just because might makes right and this being the current state of things? Hell, I'm not calling for the council republic of the dumb, but I cannot stay I'm content as it is either.

[Anonymous No.12476665]

>>12476638
>or e.g. succeed in becoming the investment of a bank
This is literally not hard at all, secured loans are easy ass fuck to get based on what you already have and unsecured loans pretty much go hand-in-hand with your annual salary. Get a few of your buddies in on it and it's really not hard to start your own business. Most people would just rather settle for a comfortable upper 5-digit salary with a mcmansion and a 5 year old luxury car than saving to build something their own.

[Anonymous No.12476840]

>>12476665
I didn't mean it was, it just doesn't sit right with me, since the whole logic behind this system implies that material wealth is somehow an end in itself when it's really just a means. Just look at people and their interactions, the "virtues" told to people in media, the shit they teach you at school, the ridiculous narratives of politicians, ideologues and moralists. I'm not against struggling or labor, hell nothing feels as good as overcoming hurdles in self-realization, but the way things are now I feel alienated with the conventional social and work life I previously pursued. Maybe the problem is me and I fail to see certain things, but I currently engage in academic studies and self-employed medical teaching (current source of income) for further reflexion and above mentioned reasons.

[Anonymous No.12476861]

>>12469094
/thread
don't know why anything else needed to be said

[Anonymous No.12476886]

>>12470725
>Statistically, most people never touch a book again their lives once they leave high school and stop having assigned reading.

I feel like this might be true but I don't want to believe it and want to see the statistics for myself, you got salsa?

[Anonymous No.12477090]

>>12476840
I'll preface this by saying that I'm by no means defending the neoliberal status quo, I'm way far to the right of liberalism. I think the problem with the system right now is that it is so hypercompetitive that people below a certain {intelligence/creativeness/whatever word you want to use to describe their fitness in navigating society} level are robbed of opportunity. In other and previous societies this competitiveness level was lower so more people were able to succeed beyond their means. But for whatever reason (capitalism/jews/protestants/bourgeoisie/technology/whatever) most people reach a point where they are comfortable enough to be passive but not wealthy/powerful enough to focus on immaterial pursuits and exert their will. My point though, I guess, was that while the per capita number of people who are above this fitness level is smaller than it otherwise could be, the real number of people above it is still incredibly large and those people are entirely capable of following their will. And I say this as someone who's personally above this level and was able to escape wagecuckery by saving my money and taking risks that were ultimately successful.

[Anonymous No.12478750]

>>12471070
This and it is so frustrating. My brother gets better grades and goes to a better college than I do but thinks I'm "weird" for reading philosophy and listening to obscure music..