What happened to mass literacy culture? I remember books, magazines and newspapers used to be in every grocery store and even most gas stations and convenience stores. Now that's all gone. Most newspapers are dead or bought out by USA today, I have no idea where to even buy magazines anymore besides Barnes and Noble, and so many small bookstores have gone out of business. I feel like the absence of mass paperbacks in grocery stores has been a huge loss.
>>25262639Who tf cares about newspapers in the internet age
>>25262639>magazines and newspapers used to be in every grocery store and even most gas stationsI've seen this vanish the last 10 years. We used to have legit 5 shelves of magazines and newspapers at the store, now it's one shelf, and nothing sells. Open a newspaper and it's full of ads for adult diapers, dementia medication, reverse mortgages and other dying old people stuff. Why? They're the only fucking people buying the newspapers of course, the ad goblins know this.>>25262647>Who tf cares about newspapers in the internet ageThis is the problem, and it's been a long time coming. The internet made them compete with free, plus 24/7 updates. This killed the market. For certain things like all the hobby magazines and the local news it was both advertising and local interest that was unique and could compete with the net for a while, even during the ebay era, but local markets like facebook marketplace ultimately killed it too. >>25262639>absence of mass paperbacks in grocery stores has been a huge loss.Zoomies won't know this but there used to be like 2-10 shelves of paperbacks in fucking gas stations (90s-00s). What sales there are have shifted to online purchases and a good chunk of those are ebooks and audiobooks. It's so bad many paperback publishers have bit the dust, others compromise and make the books even shittier, and costs are pretty ridiculous now hitting what used to be hardcover prices. But that's the reality of a dying business model. The effects will mimic the death of the long tail of VHS/DVD for movies.
>>25262647People like OP who have to disconnect to read or they will start a thread on the first thought that pops into their head and then be too distracted to read because have to monitor their thread which no one is responding to resulting in seethe and making it impossible to read even if they were not distracted. So they have no choice but to go to /gif/ and find something to jerk to in an attempt to relieve the pressure or atleast replace the pressure with shame by spending an hour gooning to trannies getting fucked by black men which is easier to deal with than being distracted by the thread they made or the seethe about no one responding to it, just spend a while seething about blacks and trannies on /lit/ and problem solved and look, someone replied to my thread!>op is a fagThe seethe and the shame return as a tag team. Off to /gif/ to watch some gore and have confusing erections until bed time.
>>25262639They stopped selling, and those paperbacks were always shit. It was kids books and womanslop. It's not like university press books were ever in ordinary shops, not even ordinary book shops.
