Hi guys. I haven't been of Veeky Forums since pic related. I've just seen that /tv/ have a new word, 'Kino,' to describe a film of high aesthetic quality. Just wondering if you guys have come up with a similar word to describe literature? Or maybe you describe books as being 'Kino' too?
Also, how is the tone and collective views of this board now? I know you all have individual views, but where does the board stand politically and philosophically from a collective perspective?
I left about four years ago, after the book club, where a book would be voted upon, stickied and the whole board read and discussed it. We had The Sorrows of Young Werther, the Epic of Gilgamesh and a few others.
Theologically, you had entered a Christian phase with a strong dose of buddhism, maybe 30% buddhist and 70% Christian, having remained atheist until the death of Hitchens. You described things you didn't like as either reddit, /pol/ or fedora.
Politically, you were left of center, and communism was the prevailing ideology. A lot of you were heavily into Marxist theory and dialectics. Occasionally capitalists or libertarian views were discussed, but generally anyone like Friedman or Hayek were ridiculed, and Ayn Rand was the anti-Christ.
Philosophically, Zizek and Stirner were the two meme philosopher mascots. Stirner threads were 10+ a day. You frequently debated objectivity vs subjectivity, determinism vs free will, analytic vs continental. Hegel, Kant and Derrida were the most popular philosophers, Wittgenstein was the most hated. You had an obsession with postmodernism. With literature, DFW and Pynchon were the writers on a pedestal (along with the modernist Joyce) and hailed as the postmodern kings. Joyce, Pynchon and DFW were the untouchable trinity. And Tao Lin was like the board's pet writer.
In philosophy, there was a consensus that reality could only be 'described' using linguistic frameworks, and their value was given a probability using bayesianism, but no linguistic framework was ever true, so all we have are intersubjective descriptions of empirical events. This created the postmodern worship and a powerful anti-scientism feeling. Psychology was also despised. Anything leaning towards neuroscience had a Sam Harris scientism element and was ridiculed for being analytical, and psychoanalysis had a Deepak Chopra element and was treated even worse for being mumbo-jumbo pseudoscience.
Feminism and the SJW's from Tumblr were the board's arch-nemesis and when there were more than two threads about feminism, tumblr and reddit or trolling /pol/ were often accused of raiding.
I know the SJW movement is much worse on collage campuses to date, so I expect your stance on that has has hardened even more. I'm guessing you're still predominantly Christian as atheism has gained even more momentum in the masses. Where does the board stand politically and philosophically? What has changed and what big events have I missed?