/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.4771518]

>go to elite university where students pride themselves on their intellectualism
>actually have serious conversations with people about literature

so /lit/, what's it like being solitary readers whose only true socially-mediated encounter with literature occurs when you smirk knowingly at the librarian as you check out Lolita from your local library?

[Anonymous No.4771540]

You had me until the whole "checking out Lolita from my local library" thing. Seriously, what the fuck.

I buy my classics with my money, read them in my comfy apartment, and live in the "real world". Have fun living in your little bubble. Protip: nobody outside of it cares at all about it. Sorry your ass hurts.

[Anonymous No.4771564]

>>4771540
>2014
>still believes in ivory tower

[Anonymous No.4771568]

>>4771518
I went to an elite university. It's the same shit.

People either consider it homework and don't want to talk about it, or are defensive as fuck and scared that you will find out that they know as much as they would like you to think and when you meet someone willing to talk it suddenly becomes a competition of who has a the biggest reader penis and how many words per minute one reads and various position shouted just because fashionable (basically it becomes lit).

[Anonymous No.4771595]

>>4771568
Sounds like you were projecting your own insecurities onto others. If you can't be bothered to seek out—and exchange ideas with—authentic readers at a concentrated place of learning, you don't deserve to be there in the first place.

[Anonymous No.4771598]

>>4771568

I went to a state school and can confirm that it was exactly like this as well.

But there are always some cool and humble people who just like literature and philosophy. You probably won't find them proudly reading a tome in public- they'll walk up to you and say something about the book when you are doing this.

[Anonymous No.4771600]

>>4771518
really? Because I'm being honest with you here, I didn't notice that much of an increase in intelligence of peers when I went from urban university to small liberal arts school (Whitman). Just an increase of economic class.

I also like how you conveniently omit the actual name of your uni. I've never understood why people do this, except so they can't be called out on their bullshit when they meet someone who actually goes there

[Anonymous No.4771607]

>>4771595

Sounds like you have created a shit thread.

[Anonymous No.4771608]

Self-ownership, though people always put a price on trivialities. I enjoyed reading much more before interacting with the people I'm supposed to be reading for. There's nothing promising about education and God knows what the teachers fulfill.

[Anonymous No.4771617]

>go to elite university where students pride themselves on going to an elite university
>actually have conversations with people who think they're automatically the future president of the universe because they got in
>they're all retards

[Anonymous No.4771622]

>>4771568
This exactly.

Watching it happen between history majors is always good. It's always "[acknowledgment], [rapid transition into stating new tangentially related trivia]".

[Anonymous No.4771625]

>>4771600
>implying that economic class doesn't correlate with the ability to understand and talk about literature

[Anonymous No.4771627]

I've attended two elite universities. Even at the latter, as a postgraduate, I was surrounded by average people with exceptional grades. People can get a BA and an MA by endlessly repeating feminist theory which you could learn in two weeks.

[Anonymous No.4771629]

>>4771564

I didn't say ivory tower. Speaking of "projection"...

[Anonymous No.4771630]

>>4771625

le william shakespeare face

[Anonymous No.4771632]

>>4771625
It doesn't.

[Anonymous No.4771633]

>go to elite university where students pride themselves on their intellectualism
>noone actually reads books, most people just seem to read sparknotes and short studies ON the books, all to avoid reading them so they can go out and party on the weekends

That's been my experience so far. It's basically training on how to sound like you read the books and avoid that pesky detail of actually reading them.

[Anonymous No.4771643]

>>4771625
Actually if you want to find people that have a sincere love for literature you will find it in the children of ascending families going from lower middle class to upper middle class.
That's because they are families that see in culture a validation of their status.

I rarely have met more well read people latinas and black girls whose father was the first guy to go to college.

[Anonymous No.4771646]

>>4771625

I haven't found that to be the case. Some of the brightest people I met at Edinburgh and Oxford were working class. Evelyn Waugh even refers to "proletariat scholars" in Brideshead Revisited.

[Anonymous No.4771647]

>>4771633
so it's basically like /lit/? cool

[Anonymous No.4771649]

ITT: Bourgeois scum

[Anonymous No.4771654]

>>4771643

Elite institutions are actively soliciting these students. With the most generous financial aid available, elite universities are in the best position to support and educate people of that background.

[Anonymous No.4771656]

>>4771633
This IS university now. You go so you can find out the correct opinions to have about Nietzsche. Not to read Nietzsche.

[Anonymous No.4771659]

>>4771643
the most well read people i have ever met are all former british subjects, usually indians, especially bengalis from calcutta. they devour western and especially english literature. african americans and hispanics, not so much.

[Anonymous No.4771662]

>>4771625
Rich people don't read.
Even if they go into book publishing as a career they treat the whole industry as an excuse to make dinner and lit related events.
The only books they care about are the latest fashionable ones (like the goldfinch or the love affairs of nathaniel p.) and if they study they study the editors of the newyorker hoping to get an internship there.

[Anonymous No.4771663]

>>4771617

>Implying everything in the real world isn't based on your ability to network or have connections in general

[Anonymous No.4771665]

>>4771627
>People can get a BA and an MA by endlessly repeating feminist theory which you could learn in two weeks.
I don't think you would know how to apply it.

[Anonymous No.4771670]

>>4771665

Apply it towards a master's thesis that counts how few lines are given to the women in a TV show.

[Anonymous No.4771671]

>>4771518
Why not make a thread that facilitates "serious conversations with people about literature"?

For someone claiming to be so smart, you sure made a stupid thread. dickhead

[Anonymous No.4771676]

>>4771627

>Girlfriend does a postgrad at UCL
>Got a 4.0 GPA in the US
>Struggles to get a 2:1 grade along with all the other americans

lel

[Anonymous No.4771678]

>what's it like?

feels in accordance with the universal and inevitable solitude of this life, anon

[Anonymous No.4771683]

>>4771676

>English people are smarter than Americans

We get it. You could at least give the expats a little credit.

[Anonymous No.4771684]

>>4771676
>lel americans are so dumb guize am i funny yet? XDDDDD

[Anonymous No.4771686]

>study literature in college
>room mostly full of visibly normalfag girls laughing in groups
>guys with piercings and/or "nerd" glasses sitting with the girls
>sit at the front alone as usual
>prof is a woman in her 60s who spends 20 minutes providing a monotone biography of the writer
>spends 20 minutes explaining how Kerouac is sexist
>spends final 20 minutes telling some anecdote about her student days which has very limited relevance to On The Road
>lecture ends
>discussion hour
>obvious half the class haven't read it
>girl is put on the spot to explain her thoughts
>says in a dispassionate voice that women are treated like quote "pieces of meat" in the book
>guy says it's a quote "cool book" but it's "sad that there aren't any strong female characters"
>lecturer says the beat excluded women
>put my hand up and name Diane di Prima, Hettie Jones and Joanna McClure (that I'd read about in a book about Bukowski and his relation to the Beats)
>she says they were marginalized
>females look at me as though I'm wearing a tinfoil hat
>get a high grade for writing a feminist critique of Kerouac

[Anonymous No.4771687]

>>4771683

Only because of a shitty higher education system (at undergrad at least). Not their fault.

[Anonymous No.4771704]

>>4771633
this is common to all universities. you first read works to understand other authors to understand them and then you read the author itself

[Anonymous No.4771712]

>>4771704
lol I should go to sleep
can't even write a proper sentence

[Anonymous No.4771720]

>>4771518

It's shitty. All my friends are, and I despise this term, the plebbiest of the pleb.

[Anonymous No.4771740]

>>4771518
I don't know what it's like, because that's not my situation.

I'm in graduate school surrounded by people who love literature, history, art, etc. I had a very nice conversation with one of my coworkers on Friday about medieval monastic history.

[Anonymous No.4771751]

>>4771633

I'd prefer to get general ideas related to works rather than doing a close-reading of everything and never getting outside the text.

If I find something interesting, I'll read more on it, but I'm not reading the whole of the Phenemology of Spirit when only certain theories are needed and they can be gathered by ctrl+f in the 'cambridge companion to hegel'

I imagine it's the same for english majors

[Anonymous No.4771753]

>>4771662
>The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P.

Don't want to derail the thread but how did you feel about this novel?

[Anonymous No.4771758]

>>4771518
Seeing as how I hate intellectualism I'm fine with that. Nothing is more annoying than when people want to talk lit with me, the worst is when they actually think I'm smart.

[Anonymous No.4771759]

>>4771643
>>4771659

This, unfortunately (and I'm not just saying this as a non-British Indian). I really have yet to meet any black or hispanic person who's read much beyond the required stuff. They're out there, but I haven't run in to them yet.

[Anonymous No.4771772]

I attend one, and have had such conversations.

[Anonymous No.4771776]

>>4771686
I feel for you anon, I really do.

>Diane di Prima
I read her sex memoir and it was kind of bad.

[Anonymous No.4771780]

>go to elite university in Germany to study English and German literature
>you are the only person who has actually read most of the books mentioned during classes and lectures
>all the other students are horrible plebs who read Harry Potter and Twilight

Fuck you, OP.

[Anonymous No.4771785]

>>4771753
I felt it's the book form equivalent of the Girls tv show.
It has that same exaggerated ny glamour tailored for the midwestern (think about all the descriptions of what is a specific neighborhood as if it was a travel guide) and it feels incredibly fake.

Also I think I'm largely at odds with the moral values of the author so I really couldn't care less about pages and pages mocking a guy who in her eyes is an asshole for not calling back girls after dates.
That wouldn't be a problem if the book managed to engage on any other level, pass any idea or have a semi-decent prose, but it doesn't. It's a book about a type that the author decided to parody not realizing that her vision is even more conservative and reactive than that of the poor guy N.

Also consider this: those people don't even do drugs. How fucking boring are they?

But I'm interested in knowing what you think.

[Anonymous No.4771801]

>>4771780

this is very true. I took a Medieval Norse literature class this year and half of the comments that students made were comparing the sagas to things like Harry Potter, Forest Gump, Twilight etc. And although the Tolkien comparisons were a bit more legit, everyone just made so many Lord of the Rings comments it was intolerable. And their eyes always lit up and they got so excited anytime the prof would talk about Tolkien

[Anonymous No.4771876]

>>4771785
>poor guy

I thought Nate was a sniveling shit, but that might just be my bias against effete names like "Nate."

I did get a Girls feel from the whole thing, and the constant passive-aggressiveness of it all just got to be too much. I'm making it sounds as though I hated the book, but in truth I thought it had brief cadenzas of decent writing. I liked the breakdown of that airhead-ish girl's authorial motives towards the end of the book.

I still don't quite get why that girl got crazy for seemingly no reason other than to engineer the kind of breakup that would reveal Nate to be the asshole that the author presumes he is.

[Anonymous No.4771896]

>>4771876
>attacking a traditional hebrew names

take it to /pol/, fascist.

[Anonymous No.4771902]

>>4771568

yep had this experience. people think discussing intellectual subjects is like discussing homework.

or they are pretentious as fuck, making everything into a pissing contest.

or they have not read anything.

there are those who are genuinely interested like you, but still art is tough to discuss. you'll still fall into superficial conversation. you'll be guilty of it yourself.

look at the vast majority of books and movies set in an artistic/intellectual community. it's all about hacks and failures. people then turn around and romanticize them as great inspiring environments. it's like when people read a war novel and are inspired to join the military for the experience. numb nuts got the exact opposite point the book was making.

i studied film. most of my friends were in science, economics, or political majors. it was really annoying sometimes that they couldn't sit through a classic film or read any good books. but there was some good intellectual conversation among the mostly superficial nonintellectual conversation. sometimes I really yearned to be around artistic minded people but i really couldn't stand being around liberal arts people. constant superficial intellectual conversation was much worse than only occasionally having good intellectual conversations with my normal friends.

>>4771686

yea i dont disagree that feminist, queer, and marxist theory have their value. but over-saturation of them in my classes was maddening. some of my favorite classes were in sociology and black studies, but studying these through film and literature just degraded their discussion. made things overly simplistic. forces us to praise mediocre works because they have "lofty" subjects and shit-talk great works because they display prejudice.

>>4771759

hispanic here.

[Anonymous No.4771912]

>>4771780
Not in Berlin by any chance?

[Anonymous No.4771941]

What is considered an elite university?

[Anonymous No.4771949]

>>4771876
I think that Nate is a normal person in a big city that gives you a lot of opportunities to meet people. Yeah he is selfish, he bases a lot of his life on silly generalizations on personal experience (but who doesn't?) but I really struggle to see him as a piece of shit.
I mean I can't take seriously the morality of dating. Not only because (dating, not love) is such a shallow fact of life but because our immoralities, sins and vices is what makes it interesting.

Waldman tries to tell us, and that probably is one of the best parts, that obsessing intellectually over one's morals won't make you a better person (on the contrary often is a way to exculpate yourself) because morals are a practical field, but from her tale also emerges a dream of human relationships dictated by perfect honesty and perfect transparency. That is the totalitarian vein that goes through the book. An approach to human relationship that wants them neat and proper like a clean and proper suburb. It's a mother's dream of love for her daughter: one without pain, dirt, guilt, shit, violence or death. But also one that is rosy and terribly kitsch.

[Anonymous No.4771957]

>>4771518

I don't really care. Nobody cares. I gave up a long time of having any serious discussion with literature with anybody, not that I'd have much to offer than what my limited parsing and rejoining could offer. I tried going to local poet clubs where they shared poems and works, but evidently, "dead white male" poems weren't welcome and the bitch was white herself in a brown country. Ironically, a lot of them identified as "beats". I could not contain myself and had to get out at the first chance.

Local library also sucks and needs rehauling. I don't visit it anymore.

[Anonymous No.4771964]

>>4771957
well at least we have /lit/

[Anonymous No.4771971]

>>4771518
The only people capable of actually discussing literature, in my experience, are graduate students. Everybody else has such a poor grasp of terminology and is so poorly read there's no basis for conversation. You either end up giving a lecture, checking off lists, or bubbling about likes and dislikes. Also some writers I've met, good ones, are able to discuss about it and even more so, discuss the experience of composition.

Besides, OP -- and this is poignant given you're image -- the point of reading isn't necessarily to be able to discuss works, but to be able to discuss life better. Your grasp of Lolita should be able to help you puncture your friend's romantic fantasias and reduce them to lust when they're Humbert-izing their crushes.

[Anonymous No.4771972]

>>4771964
It is both pain and solace.

[Anonymous No.4771974]

>>4771801
I would honestly prefer that to people mentioning venerable books, but conveniently only those major major talking points about them which everyone gleans from their gen ed / intro courses.

At least someone genuinely liking Tolkien or Twilight is fucking earnest. I am so tired of "ah hm yes quite hrm indeed whilst rather verily it is reminiscent of Nietzsche's genealogical method" garbage when the student is answering a question about something entirely unrelated.

[Anonymous No.4771980]

>>4771971
>Your grasp of Lolita should be able to help you puncture your friend's romantic fantasias and reduce them to lust when they're Humbert-izing their crushes.

wait, that's the whole point of lolita? glad i didn't read that shit, anyone who's over 25 doesn't need to be told that. sounds like lolita is just super edgy YA.

[Anonymous No.4771984]

>>4771980
No Lolita is about many things like the relationship between the mother tongue and your new acquire tongue, how you hurt others without realizing it, how beauty and memory and love intermingle, children having poor hygiene and making fun of freud.

[Anonymous No.4771989]

>>4771984
children are fucking gross, they always smell like shit, have snots and spit everywhere, usually crud under their fingernails, i think anyone who ever has to go out into a public knows this. are you like the buddha pre-freakout living in some royal palace with no snot-nosed brats in sight or something?

[Anonymous No.4771991]

>>4771980
You're very shallow intellectually and in your taste if you don't understand the value of nuance. Nuance is everything. It's what separates good philosophy from bad philosophy, and good art from competent art.

[Anonymous No.4771994]

>>4771991
yeah but being nuanced about a cliche or banality earns no points in my book

[Anonymous No.4772001]

>students pride themselves on their intellectualism
lel

[Anonymous No.4772043]

>>4771971

>The only people capable of actually discussing literature...
>Besides, OP -- and this is poignant given you're image

Jesus, get it together.

[Anonymous No.4772130]

>>4771625

thisisbiat.jpg

[Anonymous No.4772232]

>tfw no intellectual friends
a-at least i have /lit/, right?

[Anonymous No.4772249]

>>4772232

We're all friends here.

[Anonymous No.4772262]

>going to college

[Anonymous No.4772278]

>>4772232
>tfw friends all capable of intelligent conversation but don't read

This is worse

[Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ No.4772307]

>>4772262
Feminister?

[Anonymous No.4772320]

>>4771518
>pride themselves on their intellectualism
So, they're arrogant elitist fucks? Sounds like a blast, OP. I'm glad I study at a university where people have both feet on the ground, and can talk seriously about literature without ''priding themselves on being so smart'', and where we often make fun of supercilious faggots like the ones you are referring to.

[Anonymous No.4772337]

>>4771663

[Anonymous No.4772354]

>be me
>be starving poorfag
>avid reader
>fuck you I'm allowed say that keep reading
>surrounded by usual social detractions of lower class
>introduce fellow proletariat to literature early
>philosophy, classics, romantics, victorians, beats, symbolists, anything edgy, humorous, and canon
>create master group of dh lawrence reading bitches and nietzsche reading drug sellers seeking constant improvement
>no money worries, we're always going to be lower class
>spend more time talking about licking eyeballs with jailbait than in the library
>petit bourgeois OP with more debt than any of us will at most reenact 50 shades because still assailed by the slave morality of his class and paedophilia is still wrong
>none of them will call you daddy or any racist shit in bed
>probably sold him overpriced drugs last night
>which he does in moderation because he thinks he's doing something other than paying off a mortgage in his 50s
>everyone I know is going to die happy, living, and well read
>OP will be more and more middle class alone, privatised and wishing for a panopticon, as he gets older.
Please go to your area's worst library and acquire a copy of Cheever's The Swimmer and a homeless person to be friends with, ASAP, OP. I'm trying to save you from a slowly desiccating hell.

[Anonymous No.4772380]

>>4772320
>where we often make fun of supercilious faggots
sounds like the fun we autodidacts have when discussing the idiocy common to all those who are on their knees sucking the dick of institutionalised education

[Anonymous No.4772397]

I can talk to normal people about normal life because I am not a armchair intellectual who cant communicate with anyone who is not familiar with his useless technical vocabulary
If you cant understand the common man you have failed as a serious intellectual

[Anonymous No.4772414]

>>4772337

>Implying he doesn't have a metaphorical connection with every african american on account of other candidates not being african american

[Anonymous No.4772417]

>>4772380
As long as you're having fun, dear.

[Anonymous No.4772424]

Intellectual life is weary and supperficial. Most of the time is fake and filled with sophistry.
I love simple people who work hard for their loved ones and find pleasure on dancing.

[Anonymous No.4772442]

>>4772354
lmao, is this your shitty idea for a novel or something?

[Anonymous No.4772451]

>>4772442
nah man, i'm just a reader and drug user. drug users tend to read the more esoteric shit because what else do you do when tweaking besides disassemble your oven? maybe i should have added that OP's probably in possession of/desires to possess a prescription for speed. Legal speed of course. The safe kind. This thread's funny as shit to me, glad you're enjoying it, if for different reasons.

[Anonymous No.4772453]

>>4772442

love how writers make characters in their novels into intellectuals no matter what their background is than they call it breaking stereotypes. its really no imagination. planting their own personalities on some poor motherfucker.

dont doubt that there are poor intellectuals but it still tings untrue in novels written by writers not of that background.

[Anonymous No.4772473]

>>4772451
>mfw you think elite institutions like the one OP attends don't harbor many drug-addled proles like yourself
>mfw most peoples' conception of modern-day elite education is based off legally blond or the biography of george w. bush

[Anonymous No.4772482]

>>4772473
...i'm sure they do. i'm also sure those proles wind up worse off than we are because they'll become lumpen and inherit the worries of their new class, or they'll come back to us with dashed hopes. some do stay within their class and improve it, but a college education is one of the most round about ways to do that.

[Anonymous No.4772545]

>>4772354
>Cheever's The Swimmer

I think the rest of your post is bullshit but I'd still be friends with you because of this.

How do you like his novels? I'm unsure I want to try them. I'm afraid his light touch when it comes to character and moral judgement will buckle into didactic-ism and hollow psychology under the weight of a novel's length.

[Anonymous No.4772586]

>>4772545
I've only read a collection of his shorts because of that same fear, so I can't really help you. I think a lot of what his work survives on doesn't travel over a longer stretch, much like Saki gets somewhat more boring if you dedicate yourself to a recurring character for a stretch, though that's also a more cloying form. It is starting to worry me how much of /lit/ is seemingly convinced they can't get their friends enthused about reading literature.

[Anonymous No.4772787]

>>4771949
I don't view Nate as a piece of shit, just a grating, weirdly passive-aggressive guy. Maybe I'm just an odd one out with my lack of resistance to confrontation.

I do agree with Waldman being inadvertently conservative. I was going to preface that with "inadvertently," but something tells me deep down it might just be a yearning for old-school chivalrous behaviour.

[Anonymous No.4772797]

>>4771949
I forgot to mention, Ben Lerner's Leaving The Atocha Station deals with the neuroticism of obsessing over one's morals, at least somewhat, from what I remember. It probes Mariana Trench levels of the navel.

[Anonymous No.4772835]

>>4771625
Recent studies tends to show that it correlates much better with having parents who put emphasis on reading.
Typically the most well-read as children of serious teachers or of literature enthusiasts, not of hedge fund managers.

I know, "don't feed the..", etc, etc, but I think my point was worth being made nonetheless.

[Anonymous No.4773153]

>>4771902
>yea i dont disagree that feminist, queer, and marxist theory have their value. but over-saturation of them in my classes was maddening. some of my favorite classes were in sociology and black studies, but studying these through film and literature just degraded their discussion. made things overly simplistic. forces us to praise mediocre works because they have "lofty" subjects and shit-talk great works because they display prejudice.

>Go on to facebook
>Someone wrote "Nothing in this world matters!"

There is a relationship between my anecdote and your opinion.

[Anonymous No.4773317]

>>4772397
I understand the common man, I just think he is boring as fuck and a worthless piece of shit.

[Anonymous No.4773327]

>>4773317
the funny thing is, people will probably jump on this post and deride it for being edgy and supercilious as hell, but we all think the same thing to some degree

[Anonymous No.4773345]

>>4772787
I just think is the swindler's complex: being so rotten and egoistical to the point of not tolerating that anyone besides yourself can be dishonest, does demanding always absolute honesty (in the sense of proper acceptable behavior, not straightforwardness). It's a common petit bourgeois trait.

[Anonymous No.4773370]

>>4773327

What can you do, being a vapid egalitarian is now the cool thing to do. But we all know that deep down inside it's nothing more than saying "hey I'm so cool that I can allow myself to stay at the level of those poor miserable norms."

But it's all show, just the re-affermation of their difference, of how talented they are at building relations and integrating and reaping the benefits that follow that.

[Anonymous No.4773400]

>mfw I don't believe OP because having gone to an elite university and having visited a few others, I know that the few people who do talk about literature have discussions prompted by their professors (e.g., a study of so-and-so's book from a gender studies point of view) so nearly everything said is stale
>mfw I'd prefer not to discuss literature at all and instead just enjoy it myself

[Anonymous No.4773426]

>>4773327
I suspect most people think they are not the common man and the common man is dumb, while we are all actually the common man. It's a buzzword that doesn't mean much, and that's why prentending to "understand the common man" is a stupid patronizing stance.

[Anonymous No.4773792]

>>4771686
That is exactly what I think hell will be like, for me anyway, just a special little corner, kind of like /lit/

[Anonymous No.4773820]

>>4771622
>[acknowledgment], [rapid transition into stating new tangentially related trivia]

oh lawd, that's exactly it

[Anonymous No.4774015]

>Not going to an ivy league school

ishygddt

[Anonymous No.4774026]

>>4771518
>implying i care about literature.
son, i'm here to shitpost.

[Anonymous No.4774106]

>>4772337
Obama had affirmative action serve as his valuable connections.

[Anonymous No.4774268]

>>4771974
Sometimes in discussions I draw connections to or use as examples various books (obscure and well-known) just to fuck with people and professors. It's a very creative thing for me. One time, though, this developed into a pretty in-depth discussion about Lolita I had with my professor - while no one else in the room had read the book and couldn't even follow what we were saying. It was great.

>>4771912
No, it's not Berlin. I heard Berlin wasn't that great for philosophy, literature, and all that stuff you will never get a real job with.

[Anonymous No.4774319]

>>4771518
>so /lit/, what's it like...
...having money and a job? It's swell, you should try it sometime.

[Anonymous No.4774343]

>>4774268
>It's a very creative thing for me.
Pretty sure using examples from media in casual conversation a very natural thing.
It just depends on knowing your audience well enough to know when they're on the same page. With friends, esp the ones who are well read and watch movies, I'll constantly refer back to stuff I know they've either seen or at least somewhat aware of to help make a point. \Uusually a quick reference or summary is enough to the get idea across. Or even ideals or stereotypes, like implying a mythical 'fall of man' narrative or 'Arizona/desert dad wearing tevas and a Sobe shirt' aesthetic in order to describe a personality or setting, jokingly, obviously. It's not for the sake of namedropping, just to add color or imagery or humor. Maybe it's a cinematic mindset but I think most of my close friends do it without thinking about it.

What's awful are the kids who drag down classes with dumb questions that are just vehicles to drop in some entry level shit, like Lolita, clearly for the sake of announcing the fact they're aware of it to the class, even though it's obvious they still didn't even get it (maybe because they're only approaching it in order to brandish it against their peers). Like, do you actually think no one in your class knows Lolita, or were they just not as obligated as the professor to deal with your shit? Did you think they'll think you're cool and well read because you held a conversation about a Nabokov novel? It's literally Hum 1 reading.

[Anonymous No.4774446]

>>4771643
holy shit that's me. My dad was the first one to go to a real University my brother and my best mate as well.