Is it just me, or has 'discussion' rapidly died out online over the past 10 years? I used to be able to write a paragraph and then wake up to at least one new paragraph in reply the next day. These days I'm lucky if I get a single sentence as a response. And yeah I expect to get banned for this, but whatever. I've tried really hard to start up actual discussions, but nobody cares so it doesn't matter if I'm banned at this point
>>25575366we're all just shitposting in the civil war waiting room
10 years ago was merely 2016To my memory I don't think things have changed that much since then. I feel like it's mostly been a holding pattern with a very gradual decline.Now if we go back 20 years ago yes I think this is true. Roughly 20 years ago and before I genuinely believe people were different. Perhaps not fundamentally different but the surface behavior was different.
>>25575366k
a lot of the replies are bots now, not surprisingly the discussions have suffered
>>25575366they say brevity is the soul of wit
>>25575384When this aspect of the site began it attracted older posters, grad student-types, even some adjunct profs. Since then it's gone up and down (Winter/Spring of '21 was pretty good) with what's happening now though not so good definitely not the site's nadir: it's been worse than it is right nowSpring 2 yrs ago was pretty good, as well
It's honestly pathetic how 90% of Westerners were just 1-shot OHKO'd by either AI or Trump. Like, "Oh, I don't care about literature or life or the world anymore, because AI might take my job!!!"
>>25575366I post less and less the older I grow. I communicate less and less in general the older I grow. I rarely have anything worth saying or posting, and I have rarely heard or read anything worth knowing. All you have to do is be, much of existence is lost in its discussion.
>>25575403>grad student-types, even some adjunct profsI remember these types. I remember the long threads on Ellul etc. Sometimes I wonder if I'm a sane person in an insane world because I can never understand why these things just happen and end. Why would you put so much effort into this discussion if it's going to go nowhere? The only sound conclusion I can come up with is, "You gave up". It's just like the eco-hippies in the 1960's. It's not like the whole eco-friendly compound thing was a bad idea; you all just gave up. That's it. What basically every movement or ideology really lacks, is just a single person who really truly gives a shit. That's the whole thing. If you have that you win. If you don't have that you'll never get anywhere.
The death of dialectic and the rise of rhetoric. People no longer speak to each other, they appeal to the crowd. The age has grown progressively more feminine and embraces emotion over reason.
>>25575371>civil war waiting roomYou will go your entire life without this happening btw. >>25575408They want an excuse to quit.
>>25575366Name one literature topic you’d like to discuss.
Everything that could be discussed has already been discussed, we are entering the age of machines
>>25575460>You will go your entire life without this happening btw.it's happening and no amount of cope on your part will stop it
>>25575408>because AI might take my job!!!"AI didn't "maybe" take their jobs, AI DID take their jobs, anon. and those jobs aren't coming back. what do you want them to do?
uhh something something brown "people"
>>25575366The internet has become the mall. >>2557538420 years ago there was very little you could actually talk about on the internet to any depth and you might have to wait months to get a response.
I got a pair of Gohill's boots and I got fading roots
>>25575568it's not. that guy is right. i thought it would happen in 2020 with the stolen elections and riots but no one cared so it's never happening.
It's just not worth the effort on a site like this
>>25576321>a site like this*an internet like this
>>25576097ding ding ding3rd world scum are incapable of rational discoursewe need location flags here in order for their shame to return, these stinkoids are entirely too cocky when fully anonymous
>>25575384The internet used to be the preserve of the computer-literate elite. Then smartphones happened, and a wave of retards went online.
>>25575400This. 4chan is laconic as fuck. This is not a bad thing.If you feel resentful because you typed out a long paragraph and got no response ... try typing shorter paragraphs.
>>25575568It won't happen. You are mistaking keyboard warriors for actual warriors.
>>25575422Funny, I'm reading Ellul's book Propaganda right now (along with Quignard's The Roving Shadows)I think the point back then was to clarify your own thinking for work being done offline. What's weird is that when this site began lit departments were still reading 'great books' ftmp, which 'one, two, three/just like that' is no longer the case
>>25575371The era of the revolution is dead. Everyone wants to revolt without losing anything. + even if civil war happens you’d still be at home watching it online
>>25575366effort-posters are a rare breed. if a dozen or so type most of the good stuff it's no wonder you lose a board's character when years go by and some of them move on. appreciate the fleeting moments of good fun.
Reddit is stealing the posts and Reddits format inhibits actual discussion. You used to be able to kind of trick people into a discussion because they would talk to the nearest adjacent posts. On Reddit all they have to do is say the most obvious cliche and it rips to the top, destroying the chain of actual discussion.Why do people post on there then? Because most people don't want discussion, they want attention.
>>25575366I’m sure it has something to do with algorithmic nature of the internet compounded with the high population of regular users due to Covid. But what gets me specifically is when I put effort into a post by elucidating with details, sources, and proper grammar only to have someone accuse me of using AI. So another part of it is people becoming overly paranoid to the point they’ve forgotten that people used to put effort into their writing.
>>25577806nice slop, old bot
>>25575366Obviously there are still smart people on social media, but I feel like people who read (or watch movies, play an instrument, socialize irl, etc) and can control their own habits have steadily migrated off since the pandemic. The effect is noticeable. The decline of this board since 2020 is so visible. All the smart people abandoned ship when they saw the Internet become the slop factory it is now.
>>25577854Back in 2018-2020 I used to look down on the idea of joining academia, but now I'm more and more thinking of biting the bullet and just going back to school because it's literally the only way to get access to intellectual people left
>>25577780Rarer still is the person who will put in the fraction of effort required to read and formulate an intelligent question in response to an effort post, which are a requirement to have effort posters.
>>25575366it's been 10 years, how can you not be tired of 'discussing'? tf is there even to discuss anymore? are you a woman or a homosexual?>le profound realism painting>le get banned victimizationhomosexual it is
>>25578281The first 10 years you discuss Dostoevski. The following 10 years you discuss the translations of Dostoevski.
>>25575366Internet is dying
>>25580679In just 3 years AI rendered the internet borderline unusable. Imagine 10 years from now what it’ll be like. Everyone who isn’t already lobotomized needs to be thinking of an exit strategy from the internet. It’s genuinely just worse for you to use it nowadays
We need NEW great literature but it keeps not being produced. Laurus is basically the last truly great book I can think of having come out, and that was back in 2012.As a writer myself I'm trying to produce a great work of art, maybe if I can get people reading it I can scratch /lit/'s itch.
>>25575366There is nothing to talk about. This place is a bathhouse of bondage and badinage. Treat it as such.
>>25575371>>25575460>>25575568>>25576234>>25576971>>25577075What we are waiting for at this point is to see if Trump will try to stay in power past 2028. That will be a big test of "Nothing Ever Happens." Trump going full Napoleon III would be something that legitimately altered the nature of things in the West. And don't forget, he's tried to do it before. When he had far less control of the US government than he does now.
>>25580719Trump is finished. His support is blown, and he'll get destroyed in the Midterms.
>>25580719even if he stayed in power you'd still think nothing ever happensnothing ever happens is a pervasive phenomena for those who rarely ever leave their roomof course "nothing ever happens" if your physical reality barely ever changes, the information you get fed through your screen is irrelevant by contrasta nuclear bomb going off or some people being genocided hardly counts as a happening compared to you getting a girlfriend
>>25575366Reminds me of when I first found /r9k/ around 2008. I remember scrolling the front page and realizing that MOST replies were several paragraphs, and I kept scrolling and scrolling lol fucking miss that board. It was the best before the board split here + /sci/ + /adv/.>>25580719It doesn't matter who sits on any nation's throne as long as (((they))) continue exerting full and complete control.
>>25581981>of course "nothing ever happens" if your physical reality barely ever changesName one single way your physical reality has changed due to anything in the news over the course of the past decade.
>>25580719Generally, I fall on the side of thinking rightoids are gibbering retards, but posts like this remind me that the majority of liberals are ridiculously hysterical
>>25582186>what is 2019>what the fuck is a gas stationnigger please
>>25582186covid for a year or sogas prices because of trumpsome mexican laborers have disappeared from the corner after ICE
>>25582186can't buy a gayman pc because ram is a billion dollars because boomers think chatgpt is sentient
>>25582214>>25582216>>25582221None of these are a changing of your physical reality. Things becoming more expensive is a constant, prices of anything and everything have only ever gone up for the last 100 years. Things being more expensive has not changed the nature of said things. Mexicans being or not being on a street corner is again a constantly ebbing and flowing variable. Gasoline’s price in the same manner rises and falls like the tides. The gas still comes out of the pump. The closest thing to a real happening stated in any of these posts is covid, and again, the physical reality you live in both before and after covid are nearly exactly the same. Your day to day life both before and after covid are nearly exactly the same. You still go to work, you still doomscroll, etc.. The produce is still in the grocery store. You continue to pay your taxes. The reality you live in has not changed. You mistake your perception of reality changing for the reality itself having changed. Almost every perceived happening takes place entirely within human narrative rather than within reality itself. Nothing ever actually happens.
>>25582299You don't want to live in a culture where "Nothing ever happens" is something people actually believe. It sucks, it's really boring and soulless
the west was already diagnosed dead long ago. post-1945 is a zombie
>>25580679I barely use the internet as it is. Digital minimalism has been teh way to go for a while now. Hell, the only use 4chan could have now is as an anti-internet support group/launching pad
>>25580685I swear this is one of the reasons ahy the internet feels day. There is no good new art/media/content whatever. Its hard to have a literature board when no one is excited by the current lit world. Same with tv. Same with vidya. Same with most everything.
>>25582363Modernity is slowing down and entering a period of extreme stagnation. This is the explicit intention of the AI companies set to rule over us in the coming years, to freeze society in place and then let AI assume all agency. They are genuinely watching The Matrix as an instruction manual. In order to revive a sense of culture and movement, we need to be aware of this problem in the first place, and most people aren't. There really needs to be some sort of movement or broad awareness of the period of decline we've entered that isn't political (because they're all bullshitters like Trump and his tribe of neocons that sells you fantasies of glory while fucking up the country). It needs to be philosophical, it needs to be artistic. Our art and ideas MUST contend with this crisis -- the crisis being that our imagination for society has totally been extinct for decades and all we can do is keep the machine running, the machine that creates all the issues that disturbs us in the first place. Because otherwise we're entering a future that is regressing towards illiteracy, population decline, cultural exhaustion, unemployment and boredom, and no one will exist among us to resist it. And they don't resist it because they're distracted by our fake capeshit politics or technological algorithms that have already eviscerated much human activity and intellect in the past decade. I implore everyone on this board who agrees that humans need to retake control of our destiny and find an alternative to this system to please take up the mantle of creating art and intellectual work that warns the world about this. I don't fucking want to be a pod person from WALL-E in 20 years.
>>25582363Most people in creative fields only have a second-hand experience of life. Writing in all forms is increasingly incestuously lifted from lower and lower tiers of fiction, not reality. Can't expect anything revolutionary when the writers' social understandings come from anime and video games written by people with the same issues.
>>25583169People who are actually living feel less inclination to write about it too. Some just do selfie narratives. People naturally inclined to write are also inclined to get sucked into how easy it is to just stay at home and do nothing.
Great literature discussion you guys got going here. What do y'all think of Breece DJ Pancake? I feel like he's a 27 club of the late 20th century short story authors. If he hadn't gotten wasted and blown his brains out he would've been writing great novels 30 years later. I guess it's a little sad to see the best of us get bogged down and quit when there is so much potential. Any other recs for heros in the last 50 years, or failed ones?
>>25575366just ask the AI it knows more than anyone here
>>25585500The point is discussion with humans, not the accumulation of information, you soulless vermin.
>>25575366Everything online is fake and gay now. Congratulations you're a fag.
>>25575366I used to be much more willing to get into lengthy discussions online, but I just don't see the point anymore.
>>25582394this, there seems to be some opposition to this in the internet but that just an algorithmic bubble I've found myself inAll the people I meet are completely unaware or complicit, the culture is dying. I think only some kind of major change to quality of life can induce any change (like impending climate disaster)>>25583169everyone is a manchild now who only consumes pop culture which standards plumetted in last 20 years, any critique of it is faux pas because toxic positivity culture from social media
>>25582394This is the kind of post I want to read. Thank you buddy. I'll need to chew on this.
>>25575366There isn't anything to really discuss any more. For me, it's the lose of internet subcultures that has made the net boring.
>>25576124Usenet was still big 20 years ago - though only just - and was still routinely used for that. Some of those most in depth, intellectually stimulating conversations I had there.
>>25577792A Reddit threaded style forum is superior to 4chan (which remains an objectively shit platfrom from forum software perspective) in that aspect, its the groupthink and voting that are a big part of the problem.
>>25578281>yer gay>le le le heckinerinoWhat a flawless example of a useless post by someone wholly incapable of though. Just a gormless reflexive bot you are.
>>25575366My effortposts get ignored too anon. There just isn't enough of people like us left.
>>25576961This
>>25575400Then twitter must be THE social media site to use. Perhaps you should try reading longer paragraphs to rid your dopamine riddled brain of bad habits.
>>25576124Not true at all.
>>25581938No, he still has support. He's just old and talk of him becoming dictator has never been anything but leftoid fever dreams and aren't based in reality.
>>25587852>Then twitter must be THE social media site to use.It honestly is. Every website now is just twitter with extra steps. Nearly all content now comes from twitter, and the format that content is presented in is, "Guy posts a really attention-getting image/video/text, and everyone else just reacts to it". This is true even on the more "intellectual" and educated side of the internet with your scott aaronson/lesswrong types. In the original generation of blogs, the comments were equal to if not more important than the blog itself. In the current "blog revival" the comments are complete shit filled with 80 IQ indians so nobody reads them.There is no such thing as discussion online anymore. It's a false god people stopped believing in. Words don't matter, actions do.
