Basically a repost pf things I said in the mega, but anecdotally I'm hearing that sales of fiction read by men are dropping precipitously, and English and literature classes in colleges are now dominated by women. It seems like young men are not being exposed to literature in the same way that they used to. Like, when I was in high school and college, you could be a "bro" kind of guy and read Chuck Palahniuk, or Hunter S. Thompson, or David Foster Wallace. For decades, authors like Hemmingway and Bukowski found receptive audiences in young men, not to mention all the crime fiction, horror, sci-fi, and fantasy that men have traditionally consumed. The "guy in your English class who loves David Foster Wallace" was a stereotype for a reason. I read in another thread that music is less culturally important to young men than it used to be. It seems like younger men just straight up see no value in reading literature or fiction, or exposing themselves or critically engaging with art and music, because the algorithms just railroad them into Alpha Gridset world.
Am I wrong about this? Am I being condescending and out of touch, or is this a real thing that's happening, where the whole "male" culture is turning into grindset podcasts and streamers?
Edit: Okay, so the impression I'm getting is that everything is worse but also kind of the same as it ever was, which sounds right.
yeah the only neurotypical young man I know of that reads outside of school is a libertarian weirdo who reads (or pretends to have read) libertarian shit, and maybe like marcus aurelius or something
And they misinterpret what they read to fit their ideals. They use stoicism to try to be rich (they will never be).
I was sad when one of my students stated how much they loved literature and then showed me their Terry Goodkind collection in their backpack.
I read almost all of those books when they came out and the author lived not far from me 😬
I'm jelly.
I wish I knew so long ago that Herbert dunked pretty hard on Joseph Campbell, who is like the patron saint of stilted gender essentialist lazy bullshit writing that bazingas around the world continue to revere as some kind of saintly authority on writing.
I read all the original Dune books plus Hero With A Thousand Faces (and I enjoyed all of it). I will face the wall now.
That's fine. I even read Ayn Rand trash.
As long as you don't declare that all stories must obey Campbell's so-called rules of a good story,
I like the use of the Community gif since it's creator, Dan Harmon, is a huge Campbell stan lol
I hate him less than Justin Roiland and I admit Harmonquest was funny for the most part.
He can be a devotee to a misogynistic asshole with petty dogmatic narration rules if he wishes.
I'm a pig for his slop for sure
Glad Roiland is facing some amount of justice
If Harmon wasn't such an anti-union "I worked hard and everyone else is lazy" bourgeoisie asshole, I'd feel less gross watching his shows.
I feel that 100%
I was a fan of his podcast but whenever he strayed into his own- or often fucking America's- myth-making, I wanted to breath fire at him. Also when he had people come on simping for Clinton.
Funny guy though and he did bring a DSA guys a few times