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.
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_"Superman"
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.
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