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.
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.