Is it still possible to shock the modern reader?

>traditional family with mother, father and four children
>they are not dysfunctional and miserable
>they go to church together every Sunday
>children grow up and start functional families of their own

You sound like a moron.

Good lord

pull a red wedding

for the most part no
you can trigger people with far swinging political views(see the triggered alt-righters in this thread) and get them pretty upset but I wouldn't say shock
obviously there are incredibly sheltered people out there but your average western reader has been desensitized to any ideas you could put down with words

Not really
By being 'le politically incorrect rebel kid xd' you'll get the weak minded to think you're a bigot and the more intelligent to think you're an edgy tool

It's easier than ever. All you have to do is write a book with only white people and some people will flip-out.

Or if you want to be really shocking, suggest that blacks commit more crime per capita than whites.

Case and point

...

Sure. Not a problem at all.

Just write a sincere novel about a National Socialist and make the character believable and argue to the best of your ability through him why National Socialism is right, and you will trigger better part of the entire Western world.

> Case and point
You're memeing, right?

Most people wouldn't even read it after they found out it was pro-Nazi though. Can't shock people who don't read the book.

Veeky Forums's going to shit on you, but I'd read that. As long as it's not edgy and cringey. It's really funny how Nazis are dehumanized now, especially since that's what they did to the Jews.

I'm gonna get slated for this but...

The later episodes of Bojack Horseman are genuinely shocking, and caught me off guard. He, in completely frank language, articulates the pointlessness of everything, and offers no hope to cushion you. If it wasn't a cartoon horse it would be the saddest thing i've ever watched.

>Most people wouldn't even read it after they found out it was pro-Nazi though

Sure, but that just proves my point even more. National Socialism is such a taboo, that even murder, paedophilia, rape and incest are less shocking to people, so much so that they won't even read books about it.

>'m gonna get slated for this but...
Of course. That "everything is meaningless" stuff was shocking when Dostoevsky and Turgenev wrote about it, today, not so much.

Even The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti isn't that shocking despite it probably being the most all encompassing book on nihilism ever. Because really the stuff he's saying has all been said before.

Yes by having strong moral convictions.

I don't know. about that.

For starters Dostoevsky didn't think everything was meaningless, his books are christian parables.

But more importantly having somebody state in the most morose and blunt possible way that life is meaningless and depressing is apparently still shocking enough for people to react about this show. Most of pop culture still has a happy clappy message at the end, even when it is cynical. I'm not saying it is completely original, but it is actually still quite shocking to not resolve the watchers fear at the end of the 30 minutes.

DELETE THIS

>itt all these plebs who haven't even mastered the room silencing book clap
try sneaking up behind them and saying boo, you fucking basics

I was thinking in terms of literature. For example, an author can shock us by writing a character who we emphasize with, who we get behind - and then he commits an act of cruelty or rapaciousness, or does something out of an unconscious bigotry.

>For starters Dostoevsky didn't think everything was meaningless, his books are christian parables.
You should try reading him before talking about him. His stories almost always revolve around a battle between nihilism and faith; sometimes between people and sometimes just in one person's head. Dostoevsky was on the faith side, but his books accurately depict both. That's the reason why some people will read the Brother Karamazov and find faith while others will lose it.

This thread is about "readers" anyway. So maybe if someone is an intellectually sheltered person whose never read anything ever, then they might be shocked by that show, but anyone who's read stuff like in the picture wouldn't be shocked in the slightest.

underrated

I've read his entire oeuvre, I really don't think he could make anybody have a crisis unless their reading comprehension is poor.

>For example, an author can shock us by writing a character who we emphasize with, who we get behind - and then he commits an act of cruelty or rapaciousness, or does something out of an unconscious bigotry.

Write a story about a very kind and courageous man, who helps his community and those who suffer, and is a good friend and husband; a person everyone will love, and then reveal in the last 4 pages that he is a die-hard member of the upper echelons of the National Socialist Worker's Party.

Yes. People are more easily offended than ever these days. Write about what offends the modern citizen, present it in an engaging and hard-to-dismiss way and you will shock them

>I really don't think he could make anybody have a crisis unless their reading comprehension is poor.

Certainly he could. There are plenty of valid interpretations of his work, and the Grand Inquisitor chapter is probably the best example of what the other poster was saying about accurately depicting the struggle between nihilism and faith.

Lots of people won't be satisfied with his conclusions and then why shouldn't they have a crisis?

Write a book where negroes are objectively intellectually inferior, with obvious parallels to their RL behaviour. Don't bring any hate in, however, but make "how to deal with inferiority of a race in a way that would preserve their humanity and overall justice" the main theme of the book.

Story of the Eye is pretty shocking. Plato's Republic is shocking if you're paying attention. Houllebecq still triggers people.

>put a metal sleeve on your book
>connect it to a small taser device within book

There's your shocking book

Shock is such a fucking overrated reaction.

Planing on reading Zapffe's "Om the tragiske"(on the tragic). Which the Last Messiah essay is based on.
He seems like one of the most interesting philosphers from Norway, at least to me.

"The tragedy of a species becoming unfit for life by over-evolving one ability is not confined to humankind. Thus it is thought, for instance, that certain deer in paleontological times succumbed as they acquired overly-heavy horns. The mutations must be considered blind, they work, are thrown forth, without any contact of interest with their environment. In depressive states, the mind may be seen in the image of such an antler, in all its fantastic splendour pinning its bearer to the ground." Qoute from the Last Messiah. It just hits home.

Kek

>He seems like one of the most interesting philosphers from Norway, at least to me.

There barely are any philosophers from Norway so that's not really saying much.

t. Norwegian

I was trying to avoid pluging that i'm Norwegian, but yes, there aren't that many. Him and Arne Næss were among the few.

What did you just say about Apache Attack Helicopters you little shit? I'll have you known, I'm a proudly identified half Apache Attack Helicopter and you, my dear sir, are a racist piece of boeing shit.

UNFASHIONABLE HONESTY
CINCERITY
EARNEST DISPLAYS OF INTEREST

American Psycho gets to most people, and that's basically only liveleak tier. You can also shock the modern reader by making them like characters and then kill them a la Game of Thrones; the modern reader reads from a very coddled paradigm, so it's distressing to them if something doesn't go their way

I hated it, it's like babies first existentialism in an unfunny animated show.

Yeah. If somebody wrote something good.

>filtering Veeky Forums through the eyes of /pol/

blinders, have you

I was shocked by by the end of a short story I read.

I already posted about it in an earlier thread so if you missed it, too bad. No shock for you.

Yeah, like 20 years ago. Nobody cares about it now.

sauce for the love of god

pedophilia or /pol/ shit usually, then again a lot of people are so internet-addled I don't even know if they have the ability to be offended or even feel any emotion at all anymore.

Really?

Kill yourself

>ignorance of mongolian masturbation material is cause for derision

No, you simpleminded fuckwit. They are deriding you because you because of the blatantly lewd way you typed your post strongly suggesting that 'mongolian masturbation material' actually turned you on. How do you even misinterpret this without being a 2nd grader jesus christ

Idgaf about the subject matter but fucking morons like you need to get off this board

HE'S A PESSIMIST YOU BUMBMBLE CUNT. FOR FUCK SAKE, WILL YOU ASDHOLES STOP CALLING DONE ONE WHO THINKS EXISTENCE IS SHIT AND AWFUL A NIHILIST. A NIHILIST IS APATHETIC, WHILE HE IS CRITICAL.

GOOD GOD, IS THERE NOTHING FRABJOUS LEFT ON THIS BOARD.

Are you trying to suggest that it's not erotic?

Are you actually retarded

It is 'erotic' definitively but it repels me and pretty much every other remotely human person on on this board. What you wrote in your earlier reply that incurred derision was the fact you found that repelling shit image which was definitively 'erotic' stimulating enough to request source in such a desperate fashion

Would you say that you are shocked, user?

Sade would still disgust most people.

>. A NIHILIST IS APATHETIC
not necessarily

>open book
>it's actually a mail bomb
>combustive shock tears insides to shreds
10/10

Pentti Linkola is one of those writers that will piss literally everyone off with his thinking. He even got me by exposing how cats are evil foreign pests destroying local fauna.

He's also right about pretty much everything.

>exposing how cats are evil foreign pests destroying local fauna.

This is common knowledge?

>Pentti Linkola
He is pretty based. And he is just repeating what every single misanthrope desires deep in his hearth. Now, how do we bring human extermination?

I never even thought about it before, and then there's that whole toxoplasmosis shit. Truly revolting.
Pentti Linkola is in no way a misanthrope, read closer.

never looked at a cat the same way because of that lad desu

>Now, how do we bring human extermination?
The most likely extinction event at the moment is creating artificial intelligence that will wreck the shit out of us.

Friend Animal

I tried reading Naked Lunch, recently, I guess it shocked me.

The whole chapter in Kristof's The Notebook where they find Harelip dead was pretty shocking

Best bud!

Yes, just don't listen to the people in this thread that think politics or killing every character is the answer.

The genre of horror is basic tier shit and has yet to become anything worthwhile. There is plenty of room to grow, especially when people think works like The Conspiracy Against The Human Race is shocking.

Really, no matter how much of a hardcore faggot a reader thinks they are, their own death will always be a source for fear.

I reckon there'll be some controversial best-seller about pedo rights in the next few years.

>It's really funny how Nazis are dehumanized now, especially since that's what they did to the Jews.

I know, it's disturbing that so many people don't see the irony of doing this to even German foot soldiers. Which is why 'Holocaust denial' is illegal and nobody objects.

Evangellion would completely fuck you up.