While there will always be a niche for ideas printed in a narrative format, that role is shrinking every year. The novel is a dying medium, and every year that passes in our post-truth world makes it more irrelevant. The world wide weeb, and the internet infrastructure especially, allow untold numbers of people to exchange ideas in a way with much less overhead. The readers have also become creators. Strong cryptography and pseudo-anonymity lets them publish literally whatever they want. The dialectic that changed the zeitgeist over the course of decades now happens in a season. Literally the only thing books still have going for them is prestige. The prestige that comes with being a selected work, something economically viable. And that prestige is already passing away in our generation as publishers adjust to meet the new dumb species we are becoming: witness Rupi Kaur or John Green.
Time compression doesn't change greatness, does it? Is there a time interval required for greatness or can someone be instantaneously great than fall from grace?
Aiden Johnson
>Time compression doesn't change greatness, does it?
It absolutely does. Humans have only so-much greatness in them. Go ask any Olympian how much time and effort it took to get to their level. They'll tell you: years. From childhood, even. So it is with authors and artists.
Jose Reed
>How will great authors ever adapt? By writing shitposting books.
Luis Reyes
A little late bud, we've known about this since at least the 1960's with Mcluhan.
John Howard
>he thinks meme fads and trendy buzzwords define zeitgeist
Isaiah Allen
...
Leo James
>literature is over just because nothing new is being produced that's worthwhile That doesn't just make 5000 years of literature blink out of existence, nerd
Angel Moore
If that's the case, that should mean the end of greatness as we know it. Not even money can buy you time nowadays: just watch Elon Musk literally failing big projects until something goes right, all short term, all quickly and barely planned. I concede it takes a lifetime to become Olympian, but is it worth it? Not today it's not I guess.
So there's a better question, can we or should we adapt to a world without greatness?
Bentley Butler
Correct, however there's a growing distrust of linear narratives.
Daniel Rivera
>he thinks rupi kaur and john green are proof that literature is dying
I've always hated people who make this argument. People like you are no different than the idiots who look at Billboard Top 40 music and decide that music is dead.
Fuck off.
There has always been trendy garbage that gets its five seconds of fame and the great sieve of history has always existed to make those things irrelevant so that morons like you will think that they've never existed and you were born in "le wrong generation xD"
Who fucking cares what the general populace is into? You and I still read literature and as long as we do there will be a market for it, why would you give a fuck whether or not a bunch of other people enjoy reading the same kinds of things that you do.
I actually agree with you that the corporate, internet-based zeitgeist we're living in may have some deleterious effect on how many new writers are able to break into the industry (just like with film) but that single good point is buried around a bunch of shit arguments that 14 year olds spam in youtube comments.
Just fucking read the things that you enjoy and stop trying to sound edgy and nihilistic for imaginary internet points.
Jose Cruz
I bet you think bad music was invented in 2000 as well
Austin Thomas
this is the first time this meme has called me a chad
Sebastian Jenkins
as long as we keep having languages literature is probably still going to be around, perhaps change, but not disappear
it's like saying we'll eventually run out of music, i mean yeah theres a limit, but we probably'll never live to see it
Adrian Murphy
Literature becoming a niche interest rather than yet another medium for mass consumption by 100 IQ brown hordes is a very, very good thing
Mass literacy was a mistake; here is a chance for literature to redeem itself
Dylan Nelson
Writing is a bit different. We all practice writing, even writing fictional narrative from a young age. It gives each of us a basis to begin with. We also are made to consume literature and other media. That's not analogous to the Olympian pursuit which we have very little exposure to. It's more like that guy you hear about who managed to play a sport at a competitive level after only discovering it in high school. They had the foundation so it was possible to make significant leaps in short amounts of time.
Adrian Long
Who is Nick Land anyway?
Caleb Thomas
Far-right Deleuzian philosopher
Juan Fisher
>The world wide weeb lol
Aiden Lopez
This. It's "death" is truly what will restore life to it.
Ethan James
>Recognizes the limits of the epistemologies and moral philosophies that we take for granted
>Recognizes that Islam is terrible
/pol/ really destroys everything.
I'll spell it out because people who believe this are probably inbreds, how can you criticize islam if your first two axioms are openness to moral philosophies and epistemologies.
I'll go a level deeper, if epistemology can't disprove an existence of god, and you are "open" to moral philosophy, you're open to moral aestheticism, meaning how can you criticize any of the strong claims of islam.
Logan Martinez
SOmeome post that article which includes newspaper headlines since the beginning of print it self in which some faggot writes this exact same complaint
Jace Gonzalez
>reading anything published after 1920 Kek. Everyone knows average IQ has declined heavily since the Victorian era b/c dysgenic selection (inb4 muh flynn effect). Therefore you would be stupid to even think that modern literature could be viable.
More people read now than at any other time in history. You are wrong.
Adrian Roberts
yeah, usually books older than 20 years, or web pages
Lincoln Ross
It's difficult to say just what people are reading but it's a simple fact that both literacy and publishing are at an all time high.
Hunter Hughes
>but it's a simple fact that both literacy and publishing are at an all time high.
I think OP is discussing the death of the novel as a high art, I mean what was the last "big novel", Infinite Jest? That came out literally 21 years ago and it's a novel about a television and computer culture.
The biggest impediment to physical literature being a worthwhile medium is that printed language is a poor compression of the language required for introducing ideas relevant to our times in an aesthetic way that merits publication as anything other than an essay or a blog post, you can't put working hyperlinks in a hardcover.
Carson Johnson
No there isn't.
Jaxon Perez
dude's like center-left
Leo Taylor
no, (bad) music started in 1910 you pleb
Adam Reed
is this bait? being open minded doesn't stop you from recognizing harmful or backwards ideologies. just because you can't disproof the claims of islam doesn't mean you can't morally object to it's actions.
Luke Taylor
A man who was briefly ahead of his time, in 1993.
Cooper Gray
The great writers of the current age won't be known for at least another century.
Wyatt Robinson
>correctly executed Virgin Vs Chad god yes, this truly is the life of pomegranates and warm rain in the olive groves
Asher Rivera
I remember reading your rant about people doing it wrong. Is that supposed to be the Perhonen?
Christopher Davis
>widely available, universally accepted evidence of a phenomenon that directly contradicts my hypothesis doesn't count because I said "muh"
Even if we accept your dumbshit premise, the number of geniuses with the time, resources, and motivation to write books is far higher today, because your average Person of High IQ doesn't have to spend half their time copying out (((Catholic))) heresies and the other half dying of dysentery.
If we imagine (absurdly) that the average modern human is only one fifth as intelligent as a genetically perfect Hellenic poet (imagine a bell curve, squished), then the fact that the population is seven times higher means that the total number of potential genius novel writers is higher.
William Clark
nice post but I think the point is there is no one left to read them. yes, literacy is at an all time high, and yes people have more leisure than ever, but the book is an outdated medium for serving up narratives. who wants to stare at letters for fun when there's netflix, youtube, amazon, hulu, crackle, every kind of porn, etc etc
Camden Ramirez
and video games on top of all that.
just a couple of decades ago video games were for losers, products made by struggling studios pushing shareware. now it's a billion dollar industry and playing is perfectly acceptable, in moderation.
