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.
No I’m in this age range and all my friends read at least to some degree. Some of us are very avid and occasionally do little book clubs
Not a man but I am in the age range. I mean it may be the case that more people are turning to parasocial relationships and falling into manosphere holes because of the internet. But also idk, maybe we've got to take stock of how misogyny plays a role into all this? Most men (and I truly mean, like 99% of them) don't want to unpack the way they hold privilege and power over women. In decades past in which men were reading books more, they also had legal control over their wives? Women were gatekept out of academia for centuries. We live in a patriarchy and that needs to factor into any analysis of men as a social class that happens.
I think there's an internalized misogyny that's getting worse at play as well, where it's feminine (and therefore weak and shameful) to explore feelings or one's inner life in a serious way. It seems like that kind of misogyny is increasing.
I think a good question to ask, is the misogyny increasing or are you just getting better at recognizing it and/or being exposed to more of it because of the internet?
(the misogyny has always been there and is incredibly widespread)
That's a good question. It's generally my view that the past four years have been a massive setback for the left and the general sentiment has become much more reactionary, including an increase in overall misogyny. But I don't know to what extent that's reality or my own perception of things.
I'm a little out of this age range but I feel like my friends kinda grew out of that mindset. Like I knew a guy who wanted to get into real estate a few years ago, but nowadays he's a firefighter and certified EMS. Maybe it's a little later than previous generations but most people get their shit together by their late 20s, seems like.
Younger people seem to read less novels and more stuff they find online like creepy pastas, fan fiction, smut, etc.
Now that you mention it, yeah. Of my school cohort, me and my best friend at school are the only guys in the year who went into the arts. It's actually kind of insane.
At my uni, I was one of 2 guys in my class. In the whole year, it was me and maybe like 2 other guys who had any sort of traditional male hobbies/ways of presenting. Otherwise it was camp gay men, and a couple of straight guys who were just like, idk, theatre kids.
I think it speaks to a socioeconomic thing too though. Most other guys I meet who are in the arts are living off daddy's money.
I'm in that age bracket and male and among the people I know reading literature is basically nonexistent. I constantly see people browse Instagram when randomly bored so a bunch of organizations use Instagram as their primary means of communication then I end up browsing Instagram to get updates from those organizations and get addicted to it like everyone else. Video games are social and also addicting so people prefer those over literature as well. Aside from that people have very limited time and want to spend the few moments of free time they have doing things that are more social, more engaging (which black marks on a white paper doesn't do a great job at, I can barely pay attention to them for like 2 minutes), or more relevant to their hobbies or future. With music on the other hand I've seen differently, a lot of people use Spotify frequently and I've met quite a few people who have strong interests in certain bands or genres. Also while the internet has caused all sorts of problems regarding addiction and misinformation and people not being as social, I think it has also caused people to be more connected and empathetic on a large scale since they see the struggles of people outside of their physical social bubble.
I think it has also caused people to be more connected and empathetic on a large scale
I have my doubts about this one, especially after the previous decade saw the rise of "lolcow" culture and widespread mass bullying of otherfied people organized on the internet, dehumanizing people more than before. And that's before the "NPC" concept that chuds like to use to dehumanize people they don't like.
Online dating also comes to mind, being (deliberately) harder to establish actual lasting connections with people because of "swiping" and other such normalized reductionism of lonely people trying to connect. I'm glad I'm married now because I would not want to be dating in such conditions.
But there's also situations like Israel genociding Palestine where if there wasn't a social media platform for footage to spread on a lot more people would probably be pro-Israel (right now Israel is extremely unpopular at my university because of the genocide and this is even one in Texas). Regarding social connections in real life though those have definitely taken a toll.
You both have a point, but I think there's something inherently alienating about social media interaction that means that whatever development of empathy or just social cohesion in general is very different, qualitatively, from the more "organic" ways that a young person would construct their sense of belonging in the social fabric. Just consider how different it is to talk over text compared to having a conversation in the real world. IRL you're a lot slower to lose your temper at someone because you're grounded in having their reaction and their body language to bounce off of, there's a connection and a level of commonality that just comes inherently from the way in which you're conversing. In contrast, online, I will literally go from 0-100 and hit someone with a
because their vibes were off. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you can often just not engage with something that makes you uneasy online, but in person if someone confronts you with an uncomfortable truth you have to actually engage with it. I can't imagine that the latter environment leads to the same type of empathy and sense of social responsibility as the former.
I can just tell you that, personally, as a 33 cishet dude, my attention span is shot to shit and I can barely watch a whole ass movie or listen to a new song let alone añbum. If anythibg, my capapcity for reading a book, fictional or otherwise is far more in tact.
18 year olds listen to me bitch about capitalism
You're welcome?.. I think?
I don't know if anyone has said this, cause there's a lot to read here, but I think you're just seeing all this online. Nobody posts on their social media that they just enjoyed X, Y, or Z literature or art. I won't say for sure that this is because the people who take the time to genuinely enjoy these things don't really give a fuck to tell everybody else about it, but that's what I think is happening.
I'm pretty sure there's a term for this phenomenon that I can't think of right now, but yeah you're just getting exposed to drivel that is not representative of actual people.
I'm older than this range, but still a "Zillenial" for context.
Survivorship Bias, basically. The presentation of data is filtered out by physical circumstances.
I'm not of that age, but imo it's more a technological thing than a generational thing. People, of any age, cannot put their phones down. I personally have to make the conscious decision to disconnect if I'm going to read something or watch a movie or whatever. I imagine that for people who grew up with smartphones, that's like cutting off a limb.
You may get a "kids were always like that"
response, but before that happens, I want to remind everyone reading this that material conditions do change and having a monetized distraction machine in almost everyone's pocket is a material difference from previous generations.People have been complaining that kids are constantly on their phone as long as kids have had phones, but, from the perspective of someone who was in high school when high schoolers first started getting cell phones, the most text messaging addicted person in my peer group back then would be about average from what I've seen now.
I remember when adults first got their cell phones on a wide scale and had to make a performative big deal of being on a cell phone in public, including holding up a line while there's people all the way out the door behind them, having to flex on the person being called.
"Oh hi. I'm at (place UlyssesT worked and was just trying to fucking survive). I'm on my cell phone. Where are you?"
Remember the wired earpiece guy? Guy holds up a finger and holds his other hand to his ear: "Yea sorry I gotta take this."
I still fucking hate those devices because some of the most insufferable douches that got me in trouble because they "had to take this" were distracted by them while waddling to the front of the line. I used to call them "ear fedoras" because of how obnoxious they were.
From 100 WPM on a T9 keyboard to grandma's addicted to FarmVille and candy crush in only a few years
Huh, I guess I'm really young but I always considered literature majority woman/femme presenting.
My guy friends that do read often read more helpful/confidence boosting works. Or they listen to audiobooks I suppose, both fiction and the helpful/confidence kind. By helpful I mean works like "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck", or "Stolen Focus".
Most of my guy friends are technical or nerd types, not sure if that means anything.
Weird, I know I'm not that old, but 'literature' other than like, Bell Hooks, was a nerd dude thing, while pop fiction was feminized. I read both because I just love reading whatever.
As a former educator that worked with teenagers for some time, I can tell you that it's possible to get kids interested in literature because they are still open to new ideas and can get downright habitual with their reading with the right encouragement, but unfortunately the Bill Gates-driven ruinous "reforms" that have dominated public schools for decades now have dictated that reading only matters as far as it teaches future workers to read and follow instructions, not how to think critically. Critical thinking was, and continues to be, something that a lot of parents outright abhor and see as some sort of evil influence.
Also, by default, most kids that cruise through school with apathetic teachers follow the defaults given to them, which are to aspire to escape peonage by becoming a parasocial parasite instead.
what reforms are you talking about comrade, never heard of this, is this a usian thing?
It's a nightmarish privatization and standardized testing business grift that started in the Dubya days but was made worse under Obama (fuck you Arneson, fuck you forever). Its most notorious propaganda product was called "Waiting for Superman" and it was used as the definitive media material across the US as a "and this is why we need to fuck over teachers and deliberately drill students on standardized tests at the expense of everything else and make the tests so gruelingly tedious that failing them is not only expected but a good thing for business because that means more privatization!
Little trivia tidbit: Bill Gates was one of the primary lobbyists and financiers of these so-called "reforms" and he was always an Epstein Island enjoyer, but Epstein himself was also granted an advisory role for these "reforms" and was even assigned his own classes to teach in a private campus, entirely unqualified, which basically served as yet another source of pedo adventures.
These ruling class ghouls wanted to screw children in more ways than one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_%22Superman%22
Critical thinking skills are not on the test, so they won't be needed!
Depending on the school district, critical thinking skills, called out in that exact terminology, are seen as rebellious and anti-parent by chuddy parent groups.
I don't know if it's attention spans or w/e but it does feel like fewer people of all generations are reading now, and when they do read, they just want slop. Anything that demands engagement or effort from the reader is denounced as 'badly written'. It drives me a bit mad tbh, because at the same time that people smugly reject good literature, you can see that they're unfulfilled reading the same old dreck for the millionth time.
A common thing I used to see on Book Twitter was people complaining at the lack of beautifully written prose that focuses on the interior life and I just want to scream THAT'S MODERNISM YOU'RE DESCRIBING MODERNISM, READ THE WAVES, PLEASE READ THE WAVES, IT WILL MOVE YOU SO DEEPLY, but the thing is that while they want that, they also only read YA dystopian fiction written in the past simple as an iron rule.
but philosophical letters by voltaire is basically slop as is candide which is also by him.
Is it a bad thing that Pangloss was what made me seriously question my own apathy and conformism? I can see why Candide is kinda slop but I think if everyone read Candide we'd have a lot more people interested in actually changing the world, IDK.
Anything that demands engagement or effort from the reader is denounced as 'badly written'.
I HATE CINEMASINS
I HATE CINEMASINS
ding 
It drives me a bit mad tbh, because at the same time that people smugly reject good literature, you can see that they're unfulfilled reading the same old dreck for the millionth time.
I think there is an unexamined craving for stimulating literature, the kind that actually provokes additional lasting thought about what is read, but that doesn't boost sales in the short term the way "My Boyfriend Is A Billionaire Navy SEAL Werewolf" or "Space Captain Murica Murderfucks The Cosmos" does.
lack of beautifully written prose that focuses on the interior life
From what I've seen, most people don't even know they might enjoy that and are just looking for some kind of perfect slop instead, sort of like a malnourished person that only has corn syrup options at a food desert might keep trying new food coloring varieties hoping to feel less sick.
Most conversations I have with people my age start with "I saw this Tiktok...". Very dire. Don't care if I sound like a cranky boomer.
Eh, this one is a funny point tbh, do you get the same reaction when someone says "I saw this YouTube video" or "I saw this on the news" etc?
Depends on the context really, but yeah, sometimes. I don't mind any of it if other things get discussed, but it gets tiresome after a while.
do you get the same reaction when someone says "I saw this YouTube video"
How could you not?
No one has ever been "i saw _____ on youtube" and it ever been anything morally good, very occasionally my IRL friend will reference a YT video essay or something, but otherwise it's usually something frivolous (not necessarily bad) or some heinous culture war shit.
No one has ever been "i saw _____ on youtube"
I guess, but it's usually "this video is cool" or something like that. But it's usually a YouTube link
If something isn't immediately understandable it's "badly made". This is true of software too. The term "user friendly" has come to mean "can a clueless new/prospective user pick this up and engage with it immediately?" less "Does this provide the experience existing users want to see?"
Oh man don't get me started. I'm so tired of Angry That The Terminal Even Exists Guy, and that's before we even get to the co-optation of the concept of 'accessibility'. NO, NOT BEING ARSED WITH LEARNING A DIFFERENT PARADIGM, WHILE UNDERSTANDABLE, IS NOT A DISABILITY
If something isn't immediately understandable it's "badly made".
Applying this standard to art is a bad idea
