Young men, like 18-24 year old males on Hexbear: Is the culture for your age group completely fucked, or am I out of touch?
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.
Still can't believe that book was not only a bestseller, but also got made into a movie. I get it, not everyone wants to trudge their way through obscure 18th. century literature or avant-garde meta commentary on English academia. But like..."The idea hit me like an anvil on the top of my head." Really? 300 pages of that? Why would you do that to yourself?
Okay but Heinlein is kinda mid so that tracks lmao
At least your chud reads. My chuddiest chud relatives think reading is for dorks and I'm pretty sure one of them hasn't picked up a book since high school (despite being almost 50).
from me considering how open the director and cast have been about the movie being satire. These last few years have convinced me you have to be explicitly and vocally anti-fascist in storytelling because these brainlets don't realize when they aren't welcome.