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.
I’m in that age bracket and male and among the people I know reading literature is basically nonexistent. I constantly see people browse Instagram when randomly bored so a bunch of organizations use Instagram as their primary means of communication then I end up browsing Instagram to get updates from those organizations and get addicted to it like everyone else. Video games are social and also addicting so people prefer those over literature as well. Aside from that people have very limited time and want to spend the few moments of free time they have doing things that are more social, more engaging (which black marks on a white paper doesn’t do a great job at, I can barely pay attention to them for like 2 minutes), or more relevant to their hobbies or future. With music on the other hand I’ve seen differently, a lot of people use Spotify frequently and I’ve met quite a few people who have strong interests in certain bands or genres. Also while the internet has caused all sorts of problems regarding addiction and misinformation and people not being as social, I think it has also caused people to be more connected and empathetic on a large scale since they see the struggles of people outside of their physical social bubble.
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But there’s also situations like Israel genociding Palestine where if there wasn’t a social media platform for footage to spread on a lot more people would probably be pro-Israel (right now Israel is extremely unpopular at my university because of the genocide and this is even one in Texas). Regarding social connections in real life though those have definitely taken a toll.
You both have a point, but I think there’s something inherently alienating about social media interaction that means that whatever development of empathy or just social cohesion in general is very different, qualitatively, from the more “organic” ways that a young person would construct their sense of belonging in the social fabric. Just consider how different it is to talk over text compared to having a conversation in the real world. IRL you’re a lot slower to lose your temper at someone because you’re grounded in having their reaction and their body language to bounce off of, there’s a connection and a level of commonality that just comes inherently from the way in which you’re conversing. In contrast, online, I will literally go from 0-100 and hit someone with a
because their vibes were off. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you can often just not engage with something that makes you uneasy online, but in person if someone confronts you with an uncomfortable truth you have to actually engage with it. I can’t imagine that the latter environment leads to the same type of empathy and sense of social responsibility as the former.