Why are you still coming here?

Honest question: why do you continue to post here?

I had lurked and occasionally shitposted for a year. Eventually, I found Bloom's Western Canon. I have a background in undergraduate philosophy so I already had a reading list that I knew I would have to come to grips with. Reading any text that isn't merely published or accessed through public domain means that you get a scholarly introduction and a reading list to move forward with. Finding "contemporary" work is easy since publishers are constantly trying to push their wares on you, not to mention that their business model forces them to reprint works that actually mattered or at least have the public conception of mattering. Literary and political journals keep relevant works front and center.

So, there's no need for me to try and find other primary sources to read through Veeky Forums. It's so easily accessible elsewhere and all of you are savvy enough to know what you need to read and how best to access it. Occasionally, I would see a really well thought out point that made a work or an author more accessible. Unfortunately, I would have to sift through mountains of the same tired memes and /pol/ spillover to find it, finding instead that the sheer volume of shit content was having a larger net effect than any of the occasional and real profundity that user would put out there.

Scholarly discourse is also very easy to access. Any idiot with a friend in school has access to JSTOR and there are so many commentaries and edited volumes of even the most obscurely written Continental philosophy that there is nothing to be gained in the terse posting that Veeky Forums almost always requires. Why would you want distilled information about something you care about instead of actually exploring it anyways?

Unless you're one of those relativists and believe that all works matter and your finite reading list is arbitrary, then keep doing this because there really isn't any premium placed on your limited amount of time before senility or early death. Otherwise, why? What keeps you coming back? I ask for myself too. It's been at least three months since I've posted here and still I come back and see that nothing has changed. People setting up their camps and talking about how difficult Hegel is to read. Same same same.

I'm just here to report phil posts and wonder who would possibly be moved to make them and why

Why would you come on Veeky Forums searching for something else than cheap jokes and badly edited memes, sir?

why would you read a book about the night porter, instead of watching it? you're probs retarded and should stop posting.

Because I have no direction in what I read. I don't know which scholarly works are worth reading when I search google scholar. I tend to open up to catalog waiting for a thread or post to inspire me to read something as I've done at times. The unfiltered opinions too.

So you report half the catalog? I remember last year philosophy threads used to get deleted but not ever now.

I don't post much, mostly lurk, and was most active here around 2013-14. Then I got a gf and though she doesn't browse Veeky Forums, she was very literary and had browsed /tv/ while she was in high school (and had since grown out of it, as /tv/ has always been shit). So she didn't look down on me for my Veeky Forums browsing, and we found some good threads together that led to in-depth irl discussions on works we had recently read. However, as our relationship went on, we stopped looking at Veeky Forums much and focused on just reading and watching films and whatnot.
We were together for 3 and a half years and just recently broke up. I don't have anyone at home to talk to about literature and philosophy with anymore, since I graduated uni last year and now live alone. I'm back because I'm severely depressed and can't always focus on dense material, often finding my mind wandering, so this is a way to read stuff relevant to my interests that's a bit lighter and social.

You're not wrong in anything you say, and though Veeky Forums has always required one to traverse mountains of stale memes and (what used to be only occasional) /pol/ posting to find some good threads, this board is so much worse off than when I stopped browsing in 2015. Some of the philosophy threads can be good when an actual discussion is formed and the memers are ignored. I'm thinking of threads discussing specific passages from Girad and Deleuze, both of whom seemed relatively absent from here a few years ago. Sure, it's not scholarly critique, but can be a fun distraction nonetheless if you know how to browse efficiently and skip over the shit as much as possible.

unironically, try /r/AskLiteraryStudies

I come here to keep track of the zeitgeist and to feel vaguely connected to it.

Thank you for sharing user.

fucking kys you subhuman

This may be extremely hard for you to understand, but some people have nowhere else to go.

I come here to argue with people. I just like arguing but it upsets people too much irl to tear apart their beliefs

pol is way better than lit for arguments though

mind stimulation. not for the quality of discussion but just for the fact of putting your mind in the conversational mode, that helps putting ideas out to clarify them to yourself.

I'm curious if there's any other life-changing perspectives out there like Buddhism. Most systems of thought seem like willful self-delusion until you accept their premises, but there's got to be plenty of worthwhile stuff I've missed.

i KNOW this is a bait thread but i'll answer anyway

why don't you read a motherfucking book, then make a motherfucking thread so you can talk about it with other brainlets. the argument you are trying to make, undercutting Veeky Forums as not a valid place to talk about books, is fucking retarded just like you. this is a fine place to talk about books, in real time, in any mode you want. delete this thread.

>he thinks buddhism isn't self-delusion

>everyone else is as miserable as me!
>if i pretend i don't want anything then i can tell myself i'm content!

On a side note, is the book in pic related good? I’ve been desperately looking for a text on that exact subject.

It’s just a place to talk about literature and the ideas related to it in a very casual social context. A lot of us don’t have a good place to do that in real life (or even if you do, it can still be nice to be able to pick and choose your discussions here). People also like to joke and meme about their interests. You don’t always have to take literature so goddamn seriously.

If there was a better place to discuss literature on the internet, I’d go there, but I haven’t seen one. A lot of them are overly serious or less active or just don’t have the same sense of community. Even though everyone is anonymous, it feels like I have friends here, which is never something I get from reddit despite its lack of anonymity.

It sounds like you just don’t belong here, OP, so kindly GTFO, you fucking pseudo intellectual normie

because i have no friends who live in my city and i see things that interest me occasionally, my classmates are subhuman and my life is extremey barren without internet interactions. i hate you all, hate this board, hate Veeky Forums culture, hate internet culture, hate literature oriented people and hate artists but this is the only board where the type of people i like sometimes drop by. im basically waiting for the 2-3 times a week where something worthwhile is said.

There was a recent Confess thread that had me doubled over in tears laughing.

Also not every second of your day has to be filled with literary pursuits, lit can be a fun way to engage subjects that you care or want to learn more about without walking around with a stick in yr arse reading secondary texts.

I think Veeky Forums is better than a lot of anons are saying.

I have a few friends I can talk about books to, but the majority of the time I can't go as in depth as I would like, or more commonly I want to discuss a book that no one I know has read.

Veeky Forums is probably the best literature discussion venue on the internet. It's unrivalled for the following reasons:

- despite being slow for Veeky Forums you'll get a quicker response here than most other places for literature discussion
- the anonymous requirement begets honesty of opinion
- yes many anons are retarded but there are some very well-read and insightful anons who post here
- some of the memes are pretty funny
- i've had some great recommendations on here

The highlight is probably /sffg/ which is often the fastest thread on Veeky Forums and usually very helpful. Before Veeky Forums I'd be saddened/shocked/confused at something that happened in a book, and have nowhere to go to help me through it or discuss it. It's awesome to be able to come here say "wtf is going on" and in a matter of minutes have user reassuring me that it might not make sense now, but just continue 30 pages and I'll enjoy it a lot more, or alternatively, yeah if I don't like that section then I'm not gonna enjoy the rest.

OP mentions it's easy to access JSTOR or academic literary opinion. Well, sure, but academics often don't explain concepts well to the layman. As someone who studied physics but enjoys literature I lack the academic grounding in literature and philosophy, people like me need a layman's explanation.

I don't usually go in for the philosophy threads so can't comment on their quality.

6.5/10

I just probably have a mild addiction and am too lazy to stop wasting my time on the internet. I agree with you completely. I live in an irrelevant, conservative country and even in high school lit classes I learned more than I ever could've from Veeky Forums. Now I'm in uni, my professors are published writers of fiction or lengthy texts on theoretical matters. I have gotten precisely nothing from this place in the last few months except for a couple of lels and disappointment.

>It’s just a place to talk about literature and the ideas related to it in a very casual social context. A lot of us don’t have a good place to do that in real life
This is the only acceptable reason for staying here.

>The highlight is probably /sffg/
Die in a fire

What's wrong with /sffg/?

Graffiti. I tag this place knowing none of my tags endure. I choose here because this is where my enemies are as well as those that don't yet know that I am their friend. I'd studied rhetoric a bit and business communications and in order to get a sellable detournement going I figured I might as well maximise my spite and fuck with people who've fucked with me. It's childish, I know, but so aren't movies and video games. I like to think I'll be able to steal everything from all who post here in order to serve it back to them at a cost they can barely afford. It's petty, yes, but it's been as enjoyable as an actual book. A sort of text based game in which the point is not to lose the plot for too long but to hold onto your responsibility to solve the case and hold the criminal responsible for his or her's crimes against humanity. It's obviously not so dramatic, those are just the words on a board game instruction manual that introduce you to the themes, to the type of fun you'll be having if you can abide by the rules.

Also this. A social space in which the ego reins as it wills, leaving even sincerity feeling false, the self nothing but the sound of keys being pressed.
This. Except maybe to find spaces in which to control and manipulate the zeitgeist to my own ends such that I may rule the world and win a most sportsman like medal from our alien overlords.

I wish I didn't hurt when someone notices that I'm such a pseud. How can I ever learn to acknowledge what I don't know and speak as though someone grappling with knowledge, yet not someone who is simply bowing to a master? Hmm? How does the rebel humble himself in front of the cannon and its gatekeepers?
Addiction to oxygen is sever, but highly non life threatening. Internet addiction is a bad term for what's going on on the internet. People use to fill notebooks with ramblings, or couldn't be apart from other people for long.

I like Veeky Forums. I like books. Why wouldn't I like talking about books on Veeky Forums?

>Graffiti. I tag this place knowing none of my tags endure. I choose here because this is where my enemies are as well as those that don't yet know that I am their friend. I'd studied rhetoric a bit and business communications and in order to get a sellable detournement going I figured I might as well maximise my spite and fuck with people who've fucked with me. It's childish, I know, but so aren't movies and video games. I like to think I'll be able to steal everything from all who post here in order to serve it back to them at a cost they can barely afford. It's petty, yes, but it's been as enjoyable as an actual book. A sort of text based game in which the point is not to lose the plot for too long but to hold onto your responsibility to solve the case and hold the criminal responsible for his or her's crimes against humanity. It's obviously not so dramatic, those are just the words on a board game instruction manual that introduce you to the themes, to the type of fun you'll be having if you can abide by the rules.
could you kys or something, your public larping is embarrassing