Congratulations, my autodidactical friends.We have become the new intellectual elite.https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2025/01/how-4chan-became-the-home-of-the-elite-reader>A reading revolution is taking place on this notorious message board, most famous for alt-right memes, anything-goes chatter, and large-scale coordinated pranks>The members of /lit/, 4chan’s literary subforum, love Dostoyevsky, Joyce and Nabokov. >They abhor the gatekeepers of traditional publishing and the moral pieties that beset academia in the 2010s. >They’ve created their own recommendation ecosystem in the form of homemade charts, huge Jpegs which serve as visual reading guides. “Start with the Greeks,” the most famous one says,>“I will not start with the Greeks,” says a gun-toting civilian in one image, as soldiers surround his house and order him to read Plato.
/lit/ hasn't had "elite readers" in years now it's mostly generic genre shit
>>24140909Read Reverend Insanity.
>>24140909Kind of pathetic, honestly.
>>24140909wow you got mentioned on a blog no one reads?
>>24140909this old niggamove on with yo life
>>24140909>talking about the same five or six books is "elite"
You start reading with the Greeksbut you start READING with Ryukishi07
>>24140909Bros... we won.
I like you guys. You're cool. I'm glad you are here to read with me.
>>24140925>january 6 was 20 days agodamn life flies by man
>>24140935Joke's on you, I can't even read
>>24140909This is because we lost Butterfly.
>>24140909elite retards maybe
I haven't read a book since 2007
>>24140909Yet, not one of us can write a single book
>>24140926It actually is. Most “intellectuals” just discuss the same handful of novels over and over again. They barely even talk about poetry anymore.
>The members of /lit/, 4chan’s literary subforum, love DostoyevskyThat’s where you’re wrong
>>24141007Poetry more like Pooetry
>>24140977I'm 2x tradpubbed and a short story of mine won a literary prize
>>24140909>>“I will not start with the Greeks,” says a gun-toting civilian in one image, as soldiers surround his house and order him to read Plato.Lel.
>>24140977Self published but I have two and third in the way. A poem of mine was published in a passage prize collection
>>24140977I got to the cusp of representation by a literary agent, does that count?
>>24140949The very worst tripfaggot in the entire history of this website. The most massive improvement to this board consists precisely in the fact that she no longer appears to post here with any regularity, or if she does, no one has registered her obliviousness (ironically her greatest strength, the central thing that kept her posting for so long in a space where she was clearly so rightly hated by so many), her stupidity, her usual dull talking points in recent anonymous comments, to the point of identifying her by way of stylometry.Her very apparent absence is more than enough to counter the (largely baseless) complaints that board quality has declined of late, a perpetual complaint limited neither to /lit/ nor to the last half-decade.t. on the website since early 2004, regular here for about a decade
>>24141043Substanceless post.You're no doubt one of the reasons the board has suffered all these years.
>>24140909>Congratulations, my autodidactical friends.>We have become the new intellectual elite.AK47 is the tool. Don't make me act the motherfucking fool./lit/ is a fight between praxis autonomists and tankies.
>>24141046you typed "substanceless", a very ungainly, clumsy sort of thing. Therefore, I win by default.
>>24141066>Failing to capitalize the first word of your sentence.I accept your concession of defeat.
We had this thread already.
>>24141068The thread will be repeated until morale improves.
>>24140909We've been reading for years though. They just finally noticed us?
>>24141071>We've been reading for years though.Speak for yourself, I will never read a "book"
>>24141067If it makes you feel better. What I know is that she no longer posts her with any noticeable regularity, Trump is back in, everyone I care about is doing well, and I am free to read the classics on my own terms. For those who count, things are going about as well as can be expected.
>>24140916>now it's mostly generic genre shitLook at what people who call themselves fans of fantasy/SF actually read and compare it to SFFG thread. This place is definitely a notch above.
They should have mentioned this thread >>24131885
>>24141071He rapes his sister, Phoebe.
kek did blood meridian get mentioned in the article at all?
lmao
I rarely check in here, isn't this a Christianity board?
>>24141116No but they do mention Moby-Dick (voted /lit/’s favourite book in 2023)
>>24140909All I do is read Leaves of Grass on repeat
>>24141066Kek
>>24141119Anything extreme or esoteric is lauded, as long as it isn't the mainstream, paradigmatic, actually-good (neo)liberalism from which every human being posting to this site routinely benefits (yes, you do, so). So, commies and commie lit are discussed, nazis and nazi lit are discussed, Hegel and Hegel nonsense is discussed, and the various religious claptrap is exercised. And there is some point to this, famous old books were written, less famous newer books were written, it's an honest curiosity what these people actually had to say. But if there is the least sincereity in the human posts, the board consists largely of those who have been duped one way or another, trapped in various adolescent impulses.Some other commentator, some blogging grad student or similar, once likened /lit/ to some pre-war, 1920s Italian book shop in which various edgy titles might be purchased and discussed by the patrons, one way or another. A sort of infoshop that isn't quite sure what side it wants to take just yet. And this comparison is apt, because the Italians have a special talent for always forming evil social and political organizations, and always trying whatever extreme happens to be available, so long as it isn't a hateful, sensible liberal government which endures longer than six months.The deficiency of /lit/'s acumen is also revealed in its disdain not only for Ayn Rand (which I can understand, despite the fact that the pillars of her worldview are fundamentally correct), but also of Bertrand Russell.
>>24141141This but House of Leaves
>>24140909Amusing that they keep talking about the alt right when there are tons of lefties on this board too. But I guess they’re just not the right kind of lefty.
>>24140916You don’t understand how far the bar has fallen. Last generations basic bitch is this generations ‘elite reader’
>>24140916diamonds are best hidden within a lot of rough.
>>24140909>The members of /lit/, 4chan’s literary subforum, love Dostoyevsky, Joyce and Nabokov.Fuck she's making us look like pleb faggots.
>>24141239We are faggots but not plebs surely
>>24141156>The deficiency of /lit/'s acumen is also revealed in its disdain not only for Ayn Rand (which I can understand, despite the fact that the pillars of her worldview are fundamentally correct), but also of Bertrand Russell.Yeah I'll stay with the cappucino fartsniffers
>mfw I realize I've been right wing radicalizing teenagers for 10+ years by shitposting
>>24140909I mean a lot of the figures on new right twitter with actually interesting and/or new ideas were unironic 4chan users or were in the same cultural and intellectual current. And a disproportionate amount of modern internet culture, slang, memes, etc. is from 4chan, derivative of it, or from the online cultural milieu from when it was most relevant.
>>24140909>most famous for alt-right memesWhoever wrote that understands all 4chan is /pol/.
>>24141259The Vice President was probably on 4chan in the early days.
>>24141259Twitterniggers are usually unaware of this in my experience. They'll come up to you and say ten 4chan slang terms you watched be born on /v/ or /r9k/ in 2012 and then act like their faggot containment website created them or they were spontaneously generated by some "influencer." Every time Twitterniggers do come up with their own ideas they're shitty and gay. Thank you God for not making me a Tw*tter user.
>The inhabitants of /lit/ see themselves as the victim of anti-canon efforts,Seriously? You guys need therapy
>>24141263I don't think anyone even remembers boomer and zoomer came from some guy spamming /fit/ with shitty brainlet wojaks. Nobody says brainlet anymore.
>>24141265The rapy is administered by a the rapist.
>>24140909Honestly I'm not surprised because literally NO ONE READS SHIT. Even in every space that's somehow book-related, it's only women reading thinly veiled porn. And whenever I mention any book that's not fiction everyone looks at me like I'm completely insane.
>>24141270>a the
>>24141273You're not an intellectual elite, you wouldn't get it.
4chan might have become the home of the midwits obsessed with being capable to give the longest list of SparkNotes on 100+ year old books but nobody on this board seriously engages with contemporary literature which makes it entirely irrelevant in the modern landscape, like the Japanese soldiers stuck in their own trenches decades after WW2 ended.
Do people actually think this is a right leaning board? lmao
>>24141263I’m taking here about Twitter “””””influencers””””” in addition to actual educated people who have written books and/or run businesses.
>>24141289Yes because the normalfags are so brainwashed that if you dare to read a book you're literally Hitler.
>>24141288Nobody cares about your culturally irrelevant lesbian books
>>24141288>contemporary literatureWhat the fuck is there? I've read Laurus by Vodolazkin, that's the most recently-published book I've read. Saunders? Lincolin In The Bardo? Knausgaard? Min Kampf? Ishiguro?What, exactly, is worth reading out of contemporary literature? The guys I've mentioned are the only ones I can think of worth delving into. The modern state of literature in the West is kind of barren.
>>24140909Any well read person outgrows /lit/ very quickly. It’s a beginner’s place and often not even that
>>24140916Speak for yourself, muggle
>>24141288>seriously engages with contemporary literatureironically the best place for that is facebook
>>24141010there are like three dostoevskij novels in /lit/'s top 10
>>24141318Sad!
>>24140916But that's precisely what "elite reader" means if you ask a normgroid in 2025
>>24141288How much of the intellectual minutiae of the past is actually useful for enabling meaningful action in the world?
>>24140977I'm actually the ghost of David Foster Wallace
>>24140920I was half way though but my kobo fell out of if my bag months ago on the way home from nightshift...
>>24141318That's just the /lit/ equivalent of the /a/ 3x3s with the usual suspects like Ergo Proxy, Lain, Texhnolyze, Monster, and so on. Nobody actually likes those like nobody actually likes Dostoyevsky.
>>24140916This. Sometimes I get the impression some anons don’t take an unbiased look at the board. There is very little here that you couldn’t easily find elsewhere. Most of the well read anons have abandoned ship. It still kinda sucked back in the day but it was still notches better than the putridness now. I mostly see genre readers and newbies who have an overinflated sense of their abilities and ego
>>24141288>contemporary literature'cuz there ain't any dawg
>>24141319I guarantee Dostoevsky btfo’s whatever slop you think is good so hard. Dosto aloggers are the biggest slop merchants here. If a person reads Dostoevsky they’re going to come away with a clear view of what classic literature is and why people wrote those books, not whatever political ideology you’re shilling
>>24140922Right? It's more telling of how little the rest of the world reads.
>>24140909Good golly is that a newspaper pandering to us?
>>24141451If there was a literal world war then my response would be to advocate my state seceding from the Union. A global conflict is the perfect time to stab Washington in the back. No loyalty to ZOG whatsoever.
>>24141283>the a-rapistBetter
>>24141459What if it's not a war thoigh?What if they just need you to marry a roasty, get a job, have 1.3 kids and pay taxes?You ever look at boomers and gen Xers' falling for obvious psyops, who then turn around and act like it was a huge cultural win and an act of unmitigated rebellion on their part? "Yep kid, I spent my youth smoking weed and following the greatful dead around on tour, we fought the system and won."This is what we are all going to look like in ten-twenty years.
>>24141451Is this the latest schizophrenia episode /pol/ is having. I like the original meme better
>>24141470if that's what they needed, then they created an incentive structure antithetical to itbang-up job making more than half of women mentally ill
>>24141327Terrible
>>24140977Tons of us write books. https://lampbylit.com/magazine/authors/
>>24141066>>24141067
>>24141588>A bunch of literal whos
>>24141594>moving the goal post
>>24140909>The members of /lit/, 4chan’s literary subforum, love Dostoyevsky,We're being defamed
>>24141594You could change that any time you like. You could read the "look inside" portions on Amazon, buy what turns you on, and leave reviews. But instead you sit in your little room and seethe pointlessly, waiting for the cold release of death. I question your life choices.
>>24140909We're putting this place on the map!
>>24141607the only self-published shit from some /lit/ guy i wanted to read is that shitkickers book by that canadian boomer. everyone here universally hated on it probably because it's the only thing that was actually good.
does anyone really believe a roastie comes to /lit/ and then writes an ''article'' about it?
>>24141624it's probably a dude who pretends to be a chick for affirmative action purposes which is the case for most "girls who code" and "gamer girls"
>>24141046There is no upside to have the whore Butterfly on /lit/.
4chan, in all its chaotic glory, has somehow managed to stumble onto the truth of existence better than most philosophers ever could. Memes like "nothing ever happens" cut right to the core of reality: everything we think is a big deal is just pointless noise in the void. News cycle? Fake and gay. Global crises? Temporary drama. It’s all just the same recycled suffering, endlessly looping while everyone pretends it matters. This is basically Buddhism 101—samsara is a treadmill of meaningless bullshit, and the only way out is to stop caring about the illusion. 4chan’s collective shrug at "important events" is like reaching enlightenment, but instead of meditating under a tree, you're shitposting about anime and geopolitics.There’s a strange beauty in the chaos, a freedom that comes from letting go. Memes like "Not My Problem" embody a kind of defiant detachment, a refusal to be dragged into the illusion of responsibility. Dumping oil down the sink isn’t just apathy; it’s a ritual—an absurd rejection of a world that demands you care for its endless problems while offering nothing in return. There’s despair here, yes, but also liberation. It’s the raw, unvarnished truth that the Buddha himself sought: the world is suffering, and the only way out is to stop clinging to it. For those who’ve seen through the illusion, 4chan isn’t just chaos—it’s a sanctuary filled with the kind of bittersweet clarity that comes from accepting the cosmic joke and laughing anyway.Where monks sit in silence, 4chan howls into the void, finding in its chaos a truth that is raw, relentless, and profoundly Buddhist at heart.
>>24141637that dude was wasn't even close to passable but there are still simps who think he was a chick. he get molested by his protestant cult family and "became" a chick to cope. sad case but good riddance.
>>24141641>it's one of those "i'm not wasting my time on 4chan, this place is actually valuable and important" postsno
>>24141288>nobody on this board seriously engages with contemporary literaturegood
>>24141646it's pasta
>>24141658>guy thinks his post is so good he reposts it>when he gets called out for writing cringe claims it's pastawell that's a yikes and you are a bad writer
>>24141694retard
>>24141619And, somehow, you know none of them are any good without actually having read any of them. You're either the most brilliant human being that has ever lived, or you're a hopelessly average arrogant ass. And people hated on Jason Bryan because he was a spam-shilling arrogant ass.
>>24141619People were just jealous of him because he drove cool cars and had way more sex than them. Sad really. This place is a bunch of crabs in a bucket.
>>24140916Most people who read these days on popular forums read current trends- right now it's "romantasy".Also, /lit/ is one of the few places with consistent discussion of non-fiction and philosophy in any real depth. Outside 4chan on general book forums/chatrooms, you will struggle to find anyone using these as anything more than 'intellectual setdressing'.
>>24140977I am Lewis Woolston.
>>24141709>>24141709If their books were any good they'd shill them here more often. When's the last time any of these goobers hyped their shit up on here? When's the last time they made an >obvious bait thread with a screenshot of their twitter handle?Most of the people mentioned are a bunch of hacks who couldn't hack it. >>24141737King
>>24141737literally who
>>24141588>>24141594I've seen these posts before
>>24141755We have the same conversation every week between the same five or so people. It's all anonymous so it never gets old.Just part and parcel of being an elite reader.
>>24140926Correct
Submit to Unreal Press. New Tales of the Unreal coming soon
>>24140909Why did you make this thread again?
>>24141288For the average person who reads like a dozen books a year, it would be a tremendous waste of their time to read anything contemporary. Every mediocre contemporary book you read is one great masterpiece you didn't have time to read.
>>24140909the author is a newfag. this place is dumb as bricks
>>24141288And I never will. You will never see a PENNY from me or merit even a single brain cell of my attention.
Vast majority of lit engages with literature on, at most, an aesthetic level. They are better than booktok etc. only insofar as they are aware of the canon. The fact that you regularly see McCarthy elevated to the level of Faulkner and Melville in non-bait threads/posts and with no pushback from the community tells you everything you should need to know. It's the equivalent of the "film buff" who considers himself superior to people who watch box office slop and sees the pinnacle of film as: Tarantino (McCarthy), Lynch (Pynchon), and foreign films (always ALWAYS ALWAYS east asian trash: lit equivalent being The Russians)
>>24142014I really don't think you can pretend to be someone that has superior knowledge, understanding and taste in classic literature and then at the same time look down on "the russians". It just makes you look like a fool.
>>24140909/lit/ is shockingly unaware of Shakespeare, which is something I find interesting. >>24142029For western readers "The Russians" just means Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.
>>24142029There is nothing wrong with appreciating the Russians in proper context. People in this board tend to have an obscenely slavophilic view of literature, especially concerning Dostoevsky, and also, oddly, that irredeemable hack Bulgakov.
>>24142055>For western readers "The Russians" just means Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy.Both great authors who wrote seminal works of literature that occupy the highest echelon of the western canon. I would put Tolstoy above Melville and Faulkner without a fucking question. Dostojevsky, I might put slightly below Melville, but easily above Faulkner.
>>24140916We may be elite in relative terms.
>>24141288based + correct + checked
>>24142055/lit/ is an Earl of Oxford board.
>>24142060Really? I would have assumed that people like you are in the vast majority on /lit/, with very negative and uneducated opinions about Dostojevski.
>>24142075I thought Notes was great but a little bit boring, and House of the Dead so boring I couldn't finish it, meandering and stagnant. Are the other books better?
>>24142098Depends on your tolerance for claptrap journalese, slapdash comedy and ghastly rigamarole.
/lit/ is shit but what other places with a similar level of activity and breadth are better?
I'm not guillible. The journalists who write these articles and bring attention to them have posted or post on /lit/. 4channers are everywhere.
>>24142128I agree.
>>24142131Thats starting to really interest me. Now that the Millennial generation is taking more prominent position in society, I swear I can spot anons everywhere. Or maybe it is just the larger influence this board has had over the past few decades.
>>24140909We are literally the shithole of the internet. If this is where "elite readers" hang out then that should reflect back on the current state of literature
>>24142098>Are the other books better?Yes, unironically you chose the worst ones to start with barely any heroines. That is NOT how you read JewskiIgnore the chart. The Dosto /lit/ cannon is Poor FolkInjured and Insulted DemonsThe Adolescent Bonus short story: A Gentle Creature, Bobok That's the actual /lit/ worldview being expressed in his works in a way that's a bit too keen for the generalized reader. If you wanted to mainline all of that read The Idiot/The Eternal Husband as companion pieces
>>24140909>Soon, they will know about Him, Our Guy, as well.
As an author I love this board. You will never hear real criticism like you will here. If you have thick enough skin and a little bit of confidence to sort through the bait and posts that are meant to just be meanspirited you can really become a better writer.
>>24142167Fuck you and your stupid post
Elite reader here. How do I read? Why, one word at a time, of course.
Tbh, i think if you put any decent amount of effort into any subject you can become more proficient than 90% of the population.
>>24141288Classics are classics exactly because they are news that stay news. Classic literature is contemporary literature.
>>24141043>"blah blah blah John Updike">"What's up, dyke?">never posts againAh, shit will never not be funny.
>>24141331You're autistic and retarded
>>24142160>the actual /lit/ worldviewQRD?
Don't want to get all sappy but this place really was magical once upon a time in the sense that there was nowhere else to my knowledge on the internet or IRL which blended intellectual freedom, a healthy contempt for normies, norms, and poshlost in general, and also an appreciation for the classics quite like this board did back then. Can't say whether anything great will come of this board but it's probably safe to say that if any great writer will appear in the future he would have to come from a place like here, not from reddit or any other straitjacketed conformist den of midwits.
>>24142239I'm generally pretty negative bout this place, but I do have to imagine what it would be like to discover it for the first time again.
>>24142239>>24142264you would be welcome at petrarchan.com
>>24140909>/lit/>"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""elite reader"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""95% of the discussions here are people who don't read, but want to read, but haven't actually readThe other 4% is just your standard genre fiction stuff that you can find on literally any other communityThe last 1% actually involves discussion about books other than the genre fiction ones I mentioned, but only 50% of that 1% actually discusses those books in a meaningful way>newstatesmanYeah that explains a lot
>>24142239>>24142264/lit/ was good before 2016. (there was no intention to press or insert on any political change that happened after 2016 with this opinion.i just think /lit/ before 2016 was more literate and a better community than today.)
>>24140909I mean, when the left says they are more educated they mean they have a meme degree in humanities, something like post-contemporary chicanx studies or trans queer black story of color.
>>24142167In the years of criticism I have looked at from this board I can say most of it is unconstructive tripe from pseudo-intellectual burnouts. If there are redeeming qualities to /lit/, and I believe there are, criticism is not one of them.
>>24141043>The very worst tripfaggot in the entire history of this website"she" was fine. it was stagolee who was an annoying little bitch.
>>24141289compared to pre-normification (reddit finds a best book chart, fappening, first trump campaign) this is board is absolutely right-leaning.
Post2016 /lit/ sux
>>24141305>What the fuck is there?
>>24141987>For the average person who reads like a dozen books a year>the average person […] reads like a dozen books a yearThe average person can barely fucking spell.
>>24142410Is this the woman who did that podcast where she sat on a couch with her enormous ass facing the camera?
>>24141326I’m actually the Cybernetic Ghost of Christmas Past From the Future
>>24140920>Read Reverend InsanityYou have to be 18+ years old to post on this board.
>>24141697
>>24142416The one and the same.
>>24140909I'm not convinced people here read they seem like posers consuming wiki pages and YouTube vids. There's maybe 1-3 threads at any given time which indicate some kind of evidence that an anonymouse has read something either casually, in a drunken stupor or above that. I think that's it
>>24141658It's not pasta, it's GPT.
>>24142458This is especially true for the philosophy/religion/politics stuff. I’d wager that the average post is made by someone in their teens or early twenties and they’ve read less than 100 books in their life. Hardly elite readers.
>>24141273trolling is a art
>>24141270Isn't it funny that "therapist" and "the rapist" differ only in space? What does that say about us?
>>24141259>new right twitter with actually interesting and/or new ideaslol might as well go look for the boogyman
>>24142500We live a society that listens to gangster rapists on the MTV
>>24140909Glowies having a field day after reading that
>>24142500"theos" = divine/god/spiritualitytherapists rape your mindyou think you paid a 37 yr old stacy that voted for biden to change your belief system willingly?
>>24140909Crazy how academia fell so far
>>24142543stacys dont work. that's for plebeian women.
>>24140909Emotional. Sisters...glory to us.
>>24142533As if Kirk Douglas wasn’t on screen back in the day
>>24142160How can you not include Crime and Punishment when it has his best most world shaking heroine by FAR. But I will agree that The Adolescent is basically a better version of the story with a more improved and fleshed out protagonist but a lot is lost without being able to compare the relationships of Arkady/Versilov and Raskolnikov/Svidrigalov. They’re a development of the same character types but Dosto makes Svidrigalov and Raskolnikov father and son
>>24142609Remember when he died and the the popular line was that we could look past him raping a bunch of shiks—er, women, because he also helped communists get back out of the closet in Hollywood? Lol
>>24142429Phoneposters get the goofballs
>>24140909so this is where that influx of filth is coming fromfilthy smell of shitscum gushing out of a leftist drainage hole
>>24142422Ur mom says hi
>>24141619I am warning you. The Shitkickers is an awful read. It's simply written bad. Jason Bryan is a funny character but I can't say much for his writing.
>>24140909Elite readerbros….. Is this my home?
I'm an elite readerI've taught myself to read in a foreign language without any classesI've read most major romanticist, modernist, realist and naturalist authorsI've studied Ancient and Medieval literature and I've extensively read folk stories That said I'm a fairly mediocre reader in reality, it's just that I happen to find myself interested when I read these authorsI'm incapable of noticing anything but the most surface level themes, I have no deep insights into anything I read
>>24141619Wing's a Beautiful kingdom was pretty good.
From the article it's obvious she needs to lurk moar.
>>24143020she looks like the kind that would stalk an author
>>24143020She looks like she’s on Jeopardy
>>24142973That’s not that bad, I can’t remember anything. I’ve read Thackeray’s Vanity Fair three times and enjoyed it but could only give you a vague summary of the plot. Many books I only remember the title and a vague impression of whether I “liked it”. Sufficient for shitposting purposes though.
>>24140909Finally something for my resume
>>24140909idiocracy is when 4chan unironically is the reading "elite"
>>24143069lol I thought the same thing
>>24140909Ok, I’ll bite. What is an elite reader? Reckon the chans don’t have many of them. All the grad students left. It’s hard to shake the impression that /lit/ isn’t often lying about reading. There seems to be very little meat per post that shows an anon has read a book, understands it, and can think critically about it. It’s more like a blueboard /b/ with its bending of the rules
She very obviously never comes here.
>>24140909>>>“I will not start with the Greeks,” says a gun-toting civilian in one image, as soldiers surround his house and order him to read Plato.lmao
>>24143153>Ok, I’ll bite. What is an elite reader?How about you bite the article and read it
>>24140909I'm sorry to say it, but if I'm a member of the intellectual elite then the world is doomed.I am very aware how achingly short I measure up against the intellects of even a century ago.
>>24143164How do you know they weren't just a bunch of larping faggots back then?
>>24143178Vocabulary alone puts them above and beyond modern men.
>>24143181True that they know and use more words, but they also learn Latin almost as a status symbol back then. That stuff was definitely a larp. They also dress up and address people formally.I don't think they were necessarily more intellectual, but more "refine."
>>24143195LARP or no, learning multiple languages and mastering a wide vocabulary both improve ones capacity for high level thinking.
>>24143208Maybe verbally, but isn't there a performant part of intelligence? I'm just basing that off of the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale. Stuff like spatial reasoning.
>>24140909most of op's repliers seem to have very little respect for /lit/, so why are they still here posting? trying to signal 'fuck off we're full'?
>>24143020>She doesn't know Eliot's Four Quartets>Neither did the rest of her teamperhaps they were distracted from distraction by distraction
>>24143225Sure, but there is no demonstrable failing in that regard, just look at gothic architecture and compare it to the pathetic displays of modern engineering/construction.
>>24143246I chalk that up to mass production and the decline of craftsmen.Do you know how complicated semiconductor manufacturing is? Or just have much thought and research goes into something like a smartphone?I think the real issue is that the current zeitgeist is casualization of every faucet of life.
itt: russiaboos circlejerking. sofia wrote tolstoy's shit btw and mileva maric was the basis for einstein. 'the kreutzer sonata' was proto-incel garbage that deserved to be censored.
>>24143271>>24143246can you guys not figure out that everything has value yet or are you still fucking fighting over whether le epic modernism or ze grande jubilee is better. it's neither. wtf is the future. let's try afro space retrofuturism or something else we literally haven't thought of yet (and we already have with that one)
>>24142164Bakker is king.
>>24143295>everything has valueUnless you mean as a bad example and object lessons in abject failure, then no, not everything has value.Ice cream has value, ice cream mixed with horse shit does not.
>>24142164Truth shines!
>>24143296>>24143317Samefagging
>>24143315ice cream mixed with horse shit teaches you not to mix food with literal shit and if you do you get a darwin award. wow it's almost like i just said everything has value and you decided to not be able to read for a second thus teaching me not to become enraged by argumentative people on the internet and instead schizo post realizations in real time. boom.
>>24141156Russell is a fucking retard
>>24143328Needing that lesson is a fucking darwin, shit-for-brains.
>>24141212>diamonds are best hidden within a lot of rough.You do realise that rough is slang for young homosexual prostitutes.
>>24141726>defends Jason Bryanhello Jason>cool carsno evidence they were actually yours>>24141737t. another shill-spammer>>24141739>shill spamming is goodliterally a reportable offense>>24142651>no character development, no larger story arcs, hurr durr the toilet exploded
>>24140926Unironically yes. One only has to read the greatest of the greatest and think about it really hard. You don't have to fill your mind with mindless slop. Afterwards you achieve inner peace and killyourself
>>24141010Every thread where people post their favorite novel or what they are currently reading, out of 10 4 or 3 mention Dostoevsky.
>>24143355Diamond is also slang for my dick
>>24143367Because it's tiny, brittle, and transparent?
>>24143041>looks like she’s on JeopardyClose, she's on University Challenge. I'm too lazy to find her episode(s) but they're probably on YouTube.
>>24141239>the meme-bers
>>24143241Post the episode.
>>24141641>beauty
>>24143441>>24143443https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjFxN8IhetY
>>24143448Thank you, sir.
>>24143448>"School of Oriental and African Studies...it places a strong emphasis on decolonizing curricula and decentering Western perspectives">"Hi, I'm Ella Dorn and and I'm studying for a B.A. in Chinese and Linguistics"Lol, she never stood a chance on this board.
>>24143457>she never stood a chance on this board.You do realise that she's treating us as a subalternaity and imperialistically colonising us using her Masculine gender power as a woman police officer representative of the patriarchy.
>>24143463
>>24143463Elite reader here. Allow me to translate this post.She does butt stuff
>>24143448Holy fuck, Liu is a man?! Would never have guessed by the face. Elkington needs to embrace the bald btw, looks creepy as fuck trying to hang onto that pathetic wisp.>>24143457Everyone attending that institution is purposefully dousing their money in gasoline and lighting it on fire.
>>24143497>Everyone attending that institution is purposefully dousing their money in gasoline and lighting it on fire.SOAS are normally rich kids with guaranteed work in charities, buisnesses and government departments that fuck the living shit out of African and Asian countries. SOAS trains modern imperalists to pretend to not be imperialists in public while they kill children.Are you new to how the academy works?
>>24143497>Holy fuck, Liu is a man?!Same reaction. I also knew Ella's team was likely fucked as soon as I saw a female mature student on it. They're almost always dead weight.
>>24143291>Sofia Tolstaya wrote proto-incel Kreutzer SonataWeird flex but ok
>>24143503You're probably a stinking leftist but when you're right you're right.
>>24143503Buddy I'm a highschool dropout farmhand.
>>24140949>>24141043>ButterflyLiterally who?
>>24143525Okay, so let me describe it in a way that will make sense to you, and which you can use in every day life: When people are earnestly signalling that they are good people, they are almost certainly evil fucks. Now apply this to bourgeois progressive liberalism: their chief function is to fuck workers up.
>>24143534Yeah no shit, that's why I despise politeness and sjw's.Dropout doesn't mean I'm stupid, ass-hat.
>>24143550>I hate politeness
>>24143534>the school was started to train wealthy elites on how to maintain the British Empire >people attending the school are still the same wealthy elites but instead of being trained with stiff upper lip superiority they're being taught that they have the natives best wishes at heart (which somehow always align with their own neoliberal interests) Got it.
>>24143556Yes because it is the root of politics (both literally and linguistically) "polite" is a facade put on when one forces themselves to cover what they really feel, the sincere and guenyine article is called Kindness, and it is easily distinguished by a keen observer.
>>24143577A cashier can’t practice kindness. They can practice politeness. If you’re not polite you’re rude. There is unspoken etiquette that holds society together. There are intangibles in interaction that people pick up on. If you don’t want people being polite, okay, but kek
>>24143617Anyone who has ever worked any kind of customer facing job would never fault a cashier/etc... for not pretending. that doesn't necessitate rudeness either, a cashier who doesn't smile and only asks if you'd like a bag and/or simply states your total, is perfectly acceptable and if it were the norm it'd make such persons far more likely to actually enjoy their work and show it with sincerity.requiring such workers to pretend or lose their job is psychologically cruel and near akin to prostitution.
>>24142205One of the greatest threads in the history of this board. I honestly miss her though.
>>24143661>Anyone who has ever worked any kind of customer facing job would never fault a cashier/etc... for not pretendingYeah they would. That's called being unprofessional and comes from taking things personally when you shouldn't.
>>24143673If you need someone to do something with their mouth to make you happy, you can spend $300/hr for it.
>>24143691I can buy a theologian for $300 an hour?
>>24140977what about my diary desu?
>>24143661Not sure if you’ve ever had a job but when dealing with customers or clients there is a standard you need to follow with a certain amount of professionalism. Shit, even in a more personal setting you will rub people the wrong way if you don’t do bare minimums and conduct yourself in a certain way.
>>24143726I tended bar for years, and smiling isn't necessary if you can do the job well.No amount of smiles, tits or ass could ever make up for waitresses not being able to bring a guy the right kind of beer or an inability to mix a drink properly.
>>24143691>t. thinks the stripper actually likes him Lol
>>24143738That's some sad reading comprehension.
>>24143731There’s more to politeness than smiling but you’ll probably tell me that if you were introduced to someone you wouldn’t shake their hand. Not sure if you’re the original guy who doesn’t know the difference between kindness and being polite
>>24143761>whooshRead the last few posts in this chain, apologize, and don't lecture anyone about their reading comprehension for at least 6 months.
>>241433653 out of 4 people on this board are retarded pseuds going through a youtube essay-induced personality reconfiguration, what's your point
>>24142533Who's your favourite rapist? mine is P Diddy
>>24140909I suspected I was already there back in 2015 when I heard a professor telling us that people called him a cuck online. Every year it becomes more obvious that culture is around 2 to 4 years behind /pol/'s zeitgeist (and you're deluding yourself if you think it's anything other than /pol/).What alarmed me was how fast it happened once TikTok arrived. Guys were always talking about how to radicalize young people and then they just did it to themselves.
>>24140916I haven't posted here in ages but I usually still find people who have read on niche topics when I do visit here. There was basically nowhere else to seriously discuss the philosophy of religion in the 2010s, though a lot of that has moved back to YouTube as the New Atheist movement has finally died out there.
>>24141043>she >her
>>24141332This is just you trying to pretend like you've been here long enough to have some imaginary status that no one cares about. It was a cut above anything else back then and it still is now.>overinflated sense of their abilities and egoYou aren't even speaking properly here and you're lamenting that other people like to read genre fiction?
>>24141332>There is very little here that you couldn’t easily find elsewhereWhy are you here?
>>24141263Everyone on Frog Twitter knew about 4chan and posted here. They were the only game in town back in the late 2010s after the boomers found /pol/. Shame that most of them sold their souls to Thiel.
>>24141289It leaned left in the mid-2010s but it has been predominantly right-leaning since 2016 and never really went back.
Normcore authors have been lurking here for years. I remember Hari Kunzru openly admitting to lurking in the promotional interviews for his novel Red Pill, back when 4chan was just entering the mainstream conscience as a “radical alt-right white supremacist website”.
>>24142407>>24142407I've been posting since 2013. I was always a desktop guy but after they started limiting post lengths and the site volume picked up the threads started moving too fast to bother with keeping them open all day. Volume has been the main thing killing the site. Users before weren't really any better than they are today, but there's so many of them that the thread will 404 on most boards in less than an hour.
>>24142458I haven't read a book in years (though I also haven't posted here in a few years), but I love watching lectures on works of canonical fiction. Michael Sugrue's channel is my favorite. I often wonder if I should just give up and get an audible subscription.
>>24143497Elkinghorn and Bursey look like the first run through of a science experiment. Like they're clones from the same zygote but someone didn't turn the oven up high enough while baking so, aside from the their soulless clone eyes, their faces are a little droopy.
>>24143884>I love watching lectures on works of canonical fictionCheck out Nick Mount. He doesn't post his course lectures but there are some public ones on his channel that are decent. https://youtu.be/ULFotqofhNkhttps://youtu.be/yEZ6pCrDq7s
>>24143715A lot less than that, most theologians are poor.
>>24143892Cheers, anon.
>>24140909/hmofa/ fics are certainly the most elite works of modern times so this doesn't surprise me.
>>24143880Musicians too, my favourite was the guy who would go to /mu/ for creative exercise and ask people to name 2 genres and he'd jam a combination of them. He later said in an interview that his new band Zeal & Ardour started cause someone told him to combine black metal + nigger music (verbatim), he combined gospel and bm and realised it didn't sound that bad and ran with it
>>24140916Elite is relative.
>>24143382not transparent, no. besides, it's like a big, hard diamond. as in, really big, like the Cullinan.
>>24141156You're either fat, bald, a woman, or some combination of the three.
>>24141156Rand's assumptions and explorations are correct but her conclusions are retarded.Humans should clearly be exterminated and replaced by cute robot girls built to conquer the universe. It's obvious.
>>24143382Because it was made in a lab for the purpose of industrial drilling.
>>24144188Finally, a good comeback. You truly are a jewel in the rough.
>>24143854The thing that gets me is how that pre-2015 dark enlightenment moldbug stuff has entered the mainstream. We were just having a laugh reading old book and look whats happened.
>>24140916And yet everywhere else is somehow worse
>>24142098Notes is a response to Vital Question which is a response to Fathers and Sons.
>>24140916compared to the femoids and their addiction to romance novels and the half wits in academia, we're as elite as it gets
>>24140909>the left is losing its grip on the literary realmThis will not be true until books are published for the male audience in equal proportion to the female audience
>>24144796Steamy romance novels are all secretly right wing coded.
>>24143163>How about you bite the article and read itAbsolutely not
>>24143153>Ok, I’ll bite. What is an elite reader? It means you can read upside down
>>24144796>the left is losing its grip on the literary realmit's an attempt at reflexivityclaim something is true, get others to repeat it and act as though it is true, until it becomes trueobviously, in present actuality it's preposterous; wake me up when I won't be systematically discriminated against
>>24144924Aww, poor little white guy.
>>24144924>wake me up when I won't be systematically discriminated againstridiculous child. sick of you motherfuckers moaning and groaning on every site on the internet. can't even escape this shit in the yify comments
>>24140909Rightoids continue to get more retarded by the day…
>>24144924Trump's gonna fix it. If he doesn't get assassinated by the danish.
god i hope they read /lit/'s moby dick
>>24140909Not me, I don't actually read.
>>24144997This. I am currently posting using Alexa. I am utterly illiterate.
>>24141197God... you are correct.
>>24141245Speak for yourself, I might be a pleb but I am no faggot. Together we are stronger.
This place is going down the drain, I got warned for "Racism" recently. All the hotpockets got to the jannies heads.
>>24143774>doubling downOkay kiddo, I'll stoop to your intellectA) wasn't talking about a stripperB) the profession I meant doesn't care about their own pleasure, that's not what they sell
>>24143762Duh, and>wouldn't shake their handDepends on the hand, but largely I've got no innterest in being introduced to new people and do brush off most attempts at such. My motto is:"I've got friends enough to count on both hands, with fingers spare to flip you a pair of birds"
>>24143889I would wife Bursey, so I don't see what you see.
4chan became "elite" due to relentless cancelling of all but the most bland, boring impulses.
lol lit sucks. its a bunch of larpers, incels, alt right, far right or trad anons who cant really make a good post about what they are reading if they read at all. but mostly its the zoomer that has ruined lit. they are blight
>>24145761>but mostly its the zoomer that has ruined lit. they are blightill outlive you lol
>>241438542015 /pol/ wasn't the same as post trump /pol/. Modern pol isn't leading in anything.
>>24145794Not even close, 2011 to 2015 /pol/ was not perfect but had some good discussion and was not filled with schizos bisexual thirdies
>>241409094chan is based and powerful it basically decides american politics and internet culture
>>24145800kek
>>24140909Just wake up and realize that I'm elite and intelligent. What a great day to be alive
>>24141038Congrats anon. How do you habdle marketing? Do you handle business side as well?
>>24143163I can't read.
>>24141305Jon Fosse is alright
>>24141451This is retarded, If "they" want west filled with subhuman mutts with no whites in sight, what's stopping the eternal chink and russkies from steamrolling them?>inb4 nukesThey wouldn't be so stupid, then again why would they be stupid enough to replace a hard-working servants with disloyal and rebellious idiots?
