Yeah I think it’s over. Not just literature but art in general. Just being realistic here, I don’t see how it survives this century with the forces of technology and the sloppification of culture
How would you convince a teenybopper to read more fiction?
>>24774439I mean the graph is of teenagers, when I was a teen I never even read the books assigned to me. I only developed a liking to reading after high school
It's probably even lower than that, some people probably just lie that they do to feel smart (like me).
>>24774459by making it more accessible (worse)
>>24774475I blame it on the education system mainly. I also think that willpower and sentience fluctuates per generational cohort. some generations are more predisposed to have higher instances of willpower and others are not. it will probably recover but not in our lifetime.
>>24774439I like it, gives me time to really soak the history.
>>24774439why do you need literature to be a form of mass entertainment? why do you need mass literacy at all? shakespeare wrote for the illiterate.
>>24774544The modern understanding of generations literally come from marketing generalizations, and you drooling retards ascribe some kind of higher power to them.
>>24774591>Why would you use practically generalizations adopted for their practical usefulness??? I am very intelligent.
>>24774439The graph coincides nicely with the mainstreaming of rap music and basketball american culture
>>24774611Post it
>>24774591Those concepts existed still prior to the modern concept, nitwit. Oftentimes they were prescribed to members of an intellectual class and not average people, though.
>>24774611yes. they all hold weekly meetings to discuss how to torment online losers
>>24774439I wonder what happened in 2005?
>>24774627I don't think you're gonna agree with what you're implying there even if you're being sarcastic.
All of these studies (at least the ones I've seen) are usually flawed because they don't count online reading.If you read a web novel, internet news, etc. it does not count that, but if you read a print novel, print news, etc. it does.At least that was the flaw with the other major study, they do time of day allotment studies, and most people now (teens and early college age who read, I know many), read things like web novels while doing something else like working out.
>>24774630world of warcraft
The Amish are rapidly outbreeding us and ready the Bible daily.
>>24774639Yah, I get what you mean. Also, it would be an interesting study to go the opposite, and specify deep reading for at least 30 minutes continuous. So take out skimming etc.
>>24774583Who says art is inherently just entertainment?
>>24774475>>24774439The graph is of two extremes: one every day, the other hardly ever. So what are we really learning from it?
>>24774661THere are only 400,000 of htem in the whole country
Yes, AI and social media have absolutely destroyed literature. I'm very close to moving inna woods and just reading peaceful until the apocalypse now. This society is doomed in ways i never thought possible. I've done my part and no longer desire to have anything to do with these barbarians
>>24775567That's really all it's been since the enlightenment and now we just have better forms of entertainment
>>24774459Ban interacting online for anyone under 18 Only allow them to access the news and Wikipedia and educational content in general
>>24774439>that weird aberration in 1992 and 1993What am I missing here? I can’t think of a book that was that big in 93. I’d have expected the aberration around 2000-2003 at the height of pottershit.
>>24776148Goosebumps? Seems young for teenagers.
>>24774459There are possibilities:Tell them that literature helps with thinking, and if they're able to think properly, they won't get reeled in by motherfuckers who want to control themTell them literature will bag them mad pussy (unironically) and show examples of bookworms getting mad pussyTell them that literature, over time, will help them get over dopamine addiction from their phoneThese are just possibilities, though. Of course, someone would have to test these (and it's likely none of them will work but hey)
>>24774459Have them go to the gym first. Dissatisfaction with mediocrity in the fundamental physical aspects of life will be more successful than elsewise policy in making them dissatisfied with mediocrity in the mental and spiritual spheres.
>>24774459Gun to their head
>>24774459wuxia
>>24774459ban it outright
>>24776262
>>24776306nta but this is a classic
>>24774439Hmmmm, women come to dominate publishing, reading goes down. Maybe it’s just a coincidence.
>>24775624Nearly 50% are at the extreme of "hardly ever"
not my problem
>>24776390The two extremes together add up to about 60% just by eyeballing the chart. So about 40% read occasionally, which isn't that dire in my book.
>>24776420And HALF read basically never. In 40 years it went from 1 in 7 non-readers to 1 in 2.
>>24775629Ah yes because you counted them by hand
>>24774459BookTok
>>24776523are they exempt from the census?
>>24776515>HALF read basically neverThe survey says "leisure time." When I was a teen I also didn't read much in leisure time because it was already a struggle just to keep up with required reading.
>>24776558And yet, 6/7 managed to do it in 1985.
/lit/ is as guilty as anywhere else for the sloppification of culture. every book is either 'jewish lies', an exemplar of the white man's greatness, a treatise on the wiley ways of foids, a bearer of metaphysical gnosis, a Wow Great Prose masterpiece, or a bunch of pretentious fart-sniffing. you figure out which cliche applies and then make the books fight it out action-figure style. i can't remember the last time i felt like i was reading someone's original aesthetic response to the specific words on the page.
>>24774600>retarded jeet in charge of knowing what 'practical' meansbrowns OUT
>>24776230Unironically this.Chad Xi can just wake up one day and think, “I want parents to read to their children more” and then marshal his vast surveillance and social credit state to just… make that happen. Whereas we (small r) republican retards debate it for years before ultimately doing whatever the corpos want.I’m blackpilled on democracy bros
>>24777459>I’m blackpilled on democracy bros'Do we want our children to stop reading' is not a question that was posed in any kind of meaningful mass-participation public forum. And even if it had been, the answer would come not from a free, cultured populace who know the good things in life, but from an antagonistic agglomeration of individual consumers and capitalists who know only work and empty leisure. And even if they had collectively decided that reading is important, there's no mechanism to implement that will in the face of corporate interests (as you identified). So I don't see how democracy is to blame. Where was the democracy? Democracy requires much more than a free market and quadrennial election campaigns.
>>24777442trvke alert, but i'd like to add that prose bros and fart-sniffers have pretty much disappeared. the last pynchon thread (about his new novel, which would've been a board-wide event in 2015) turned into the same old shitshow routine about feminazis, tranners, the holocaust, etc. it's like you could see the boxes being ticked in real time. thread ended with a neurotic homo making multiple posts about how he'd have to plan his entire day around the purchase and take the bus to another town because the bookstores in his area were all staffed by "libs"
>>24777429What were teens even reading then? Mad Magazine? Back in the 80s and 90s, teens were watching a shitload of television and maybe reading a few comic books (it wasn't exactly the golden age of Young Adult fiction), so I kind of doubt the stats that claim they were big readers in the past. Surveys in general are not that great for recording actual patterns of behavior as they depend on self-reporting and self-definitions of terms like "hardly ever."
>>24777806>Back in the 80s and 90s, teens were watching a shitload of television and maybe reading a few comic books (it wasn't exactly the golden age of Young Adult fiction)Where was this, Uganda?
>>24777856Why do you say that, fren?
Mass literacy was a mistake in the first place, society is healing itself. The Pleb was never meant to read, extra thoughts confuse and anger him. Civilization progressed at its fastest rate when <1% of the population were educated.
>>24778085>extra thoughts confuse and anger himTo be fair, this is arguably also true of aristocrats...
I'm a zoomer and I feel pretty done with all forms of art and entertainment nowadays. I don't partake in any of it. With AI existing I can't even trust anything that's new anyway
>>24774439Brownoids cannot read, not sure what you expected
>>24778692what do you do then?>>24779103you think the teens of today are demographically different than the teens of 1985?
>>24779111>you think the teens of today are demographically different than the teens of 1985?They objectively are and significantly so, my retarded anon friend
>>24779161Ok we may have to concede on that one. But if you did a survey of just white kids do you think the results would be very different?
>>24777459The United States was a successful democracy probably because out of all the democratic experiments that were going on at the time of its founding it had the most literate population as a product of the various fundamentalist leanings of those who initially settled it
Videogames and movies/media replaced literature and other quaint forms of entertainment and personal development, they're more immersive experiences and often have more to offer.
>>24777806As a Millennial, I think it is over stated how much we read in the past. We had tv/movies and video games. Even my parents read a bit, but not that much. I do find these studies interesting because I literally know no one who reads any more. Even people who consider themselves intellectuals do not read. I have some family that are high level civil service, and fancy themselves the intellectual elite (for some reason), and ask them how many books they read last year? 15-20 they say. As them what titles? They cannot remember a single one because, they will later admit, they did not read a single book. Everyone is a little screen-addict.
>>24774630Are you serious? That data point is at 2008, the year of the iPhone, and the release of next gen consoles.
>>24779316Yes but the trend is still there. If you only survey white women the trend may be reversed.
>>24774439My sister borrowed Brothers Karamazov a few months ago and I doubt she's reading it.
I feel awful because I’m putting so much effort into writing a short novel that’s informed by our current zeitgeist of cultural decline, illiteracy, loss of creativity etc but at the same time it still feels useless. I’m doing everything I can to ensure it will have mass appeal among today’s readers (mostly women who like romance and men who like dosto) but in the end I just feel like I’m wasting my time and no one will read it anyways, even if miraculously it gets picked up by a publisher
>>24779697I’m a huge FromSoft fan but those games certainly do not have “more to offer” as art than literature. Good books are literally life-changing.
>>24780011Console fags are pathetic
>>24776418This pretty much
>>24776542Possibly
>>24774459I was an ESL teacher and got kids to read stuff beyond their level by appealing to stuff that actually interests teenagers. Most teachers these days are millennial or zoomer losers who want a second chance to be the cool kids at school and so force kids to read shit that isn't interesting or challenging at all, but rather makes the teacher feel "cool" for exposing it to them.When I gave out readings, the favourites were always old school shit like edited short stories about King Arthur & the knights of the round table, Robin Hood & Maid Marianne. I even got some classes to follow Caesar's De Bello Gallico edited by myself for their level and a lot of them thought it was very fun. I had them make little maps of the tribes in Gaul or draw pictures of how big the Roman field fortifications are based on Caesar's descriptions. The boys liked that one but both genders preferred Robin Hood stories.
>>24774439when I was a teen, I wasn't reading either. Books are something you appreciate with age; that's pretty common. Now that I'm a grown-up, I'm reading around 3 hours a day
>>24780734You should write about something you care about and in the way you have to write (in other words, your own voice) instead of trying to appeal to some marketing demoraphic. If you do that, then you will not consider it a waste of time.
>>24779685>out of all the democratic experiments that were going on at the time of its foundingWhich were what? Besides which the US was a backwater until it did a whole lotta war profiteering in the early 20th century so I‘m unconvinced that more Virginians than, I guess, Northeastern Frenchmen reading a home bible was a factor.
>>24780871I have to consider the interests of the masses otherwise no one will read it. And there's no reason to write or be an artist if your art won't make an impact, at least in my opinion
>>24774591Kek
>>24774439The fact that people have stopped watching movies is the scariest sign
>>24783738There's barely been any watchable movies in 20 years. Trying to read recent, popular books tends to make me nauseous in the first few pages. Everything is saturated in retardation and actual malicious evil.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Phb-jdM4WyQ
