I keep trying to get my friends to read some so we can talk about books but the most I could get one to do is steal 2 books from the library just to only read 5 pages. Reading is literally a basic human function and probably the best form of entertainment. Why are Zoomers so shit when it comes to lit? It’s not like I recommend them total garbage; I usually suggest they read Faulkner or Delillo but they are incapable of doing so for some odd reason
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in basic terms, they find that whatever they do right now instead of reading is preferable to reading itself.
>behaviorism chad
True, but it just kinda blows that they’d rather watch tiktok videos or play vidya all day rather than take an hour or two each night and read 20-50 pages. They act like I’m lying when I tell them I sometimes read 100 pages a day. I don’t even try to brag to them or anything since I’m fairly humble in that regard. After all, reading is child’s play. Literally.
I run 5 miles every morning, and that doesn't even stop for actual cardio days.
Be a little realistic with understanding where you are and where others are.
If I dragged my chubby friend along for a single run, do you think that would actually change anything for him?
Would it make him want to do it more if I made him miserable the first time he stepped out of his comfort zone?
Would the embarrassment he suffered from struggling alongside my trot make him want to change his life or just make him feel inferior and want to stop talking to me?
I get it, you're not like the other girls, but finding something that speaks to them is more important than pushing what you find good or stimulating.
They may have to just come around to it in time.
>Faulkner or Delillo
Maybe try litRPGs?
Might as well suggest reading twitter.
Well, it's a good entry-level genre, especially for someone who doesn't read.
>"incapable of doing so for some odd reason"
You know why they don't want to read Faulkner or DeLillo, OP. Don't play dumb about it. You are clearly autistic by this post, but surely not that much so.
No I don’t know what you mean. Those are both solid choices for American men enrolled in university. I already know that if I handed them Gravitys Rainbow or Infinite Jest that they’d never even entertain the idea at all. Hell, I don’t even recommend them McCarthy because I think the shit is boring sometimes save for Suttree and the watermelon boy
under godless homosexual communism there is no incentive to better oneself
>My friends don't read
>Recommend Faulkner and Delillo right away
Why are you so autistic.
Give them something more pedestrian to get them started.
First, they must enjoy the act of reading, then they may eventually appreciate more works.
Just because it's a good programming language that has an immense amount to teach you, I wouldn't recommend someone learn C just raw off the rip if I wanted them to truly enjoy the art of creating and communing with computers.
Okay, to be fair I also recommended that they try American Psycho in hopes that they would fall for le sigma male shit and take the bait, but instead, they just said that they’d already seen the movie. I made one friend by The Trial by Kafka while in a local bookstore. I looked at his desk one day while visiting and he’d only made it to page 20 before quitting. I lowkey don’t understand because even my moronic zoomer brain can sit alone in a quiet place and read
>American Psycho
Give them some good genre fiction instead, similar to what they like to watch, but that's not a direct inspiration for a film or TV show.
I really don’t know any genre fiction. I got into lit because I’m lonely and like the company of the characters unironically. I only read “literary fiction” because my professor told me that any lit chad can write genre schlock while the genre cuck struggles to even write any story at all. Nonetheless, I’d still like to read some Gene Wolfe and K. Dick one day for the lolz.
Yeah I’m pretty moronic socially speaking
Like I said, I enjoy reading because it offers a sense of companionship, catharsis and accomplishment all in one. It’s like a video game but more attractive since you don’t have to do repetitive combat and shit level design just to progress through the story. You also get the autonomy of setting your own pace which I like, so I’d also like to share that fun with my friends because I think they’d enjoy it to if they gave it a try. I will see about recommending them some of those books you listed though and play it by ear. They can’t go through 4 years of college without reading a single book. Even my geography professor talked about how he remembers reading a frick ton of Hemingway and Asimov back in grad school
You could even try and get them to make an audiobook their workout/housechore companion. At least get their mind open to the idea of story/discussion, even if you can't get them to sit still for 20 minutes to read in peace just yet.
or driving companion.
Where would you want them to start then if not C
Something more approachable and readable than C but still useful; perhaps Visual Basic.
VB isn't bad.
Excel macros are incredibly useful.
Python is just more fun for a noob, though.
Python, obviously. Start with Automate the Boring Stuff with Python from no starch press. Then you can go to C. Pythons libraries just make it easier to sink your teeth into as you work through learning projects. Then I guess powershell would be useful even for a home user.
This
Or if they have a knack for design, I might send them down the web dev route, but few ever escape that.
I don't have a drive to make good UI/UX.
I'm a Low-level/Backend goblin for life.
Recommending someone start with C is like telling them that they should get into sculpting marble.
If they can stick it out, they'll be better for it, but it isn't for the faint of heart or a recommendation you give to someone who hasn't done art since making a painting for their mother in middle school.
This is so funny because I’m literally teaching my brother C and trying to get him into reading atm
C is how i started
And you're here with us on IQfy. Not a selling point, lmao.
I started with TI Basic, but C was what really took me places.
I also wanted to learn and loved it.
I still love it, but even I know that it isn't something that someone will pick up for fun on a whim.
Give them a short stories collection of anything. Collection of various authors, or a specific author, of a specific genre. You dont just throw Moby Dick at them and tell them “Good luck”. You have to patiently spoonfeed zoomers with things out of their comfort zone, not just throw them straight into the water
>t. zoomer currently convincing zoomer friends to read with some success
OP, when IQfy anons are calling you out for being autistic and socially clueless, you should probably start taking notes
Because they are normalcattle and are incapable of empathy or rational thought. Pearls before swine. But also because you're reccomending philosophy to people who've likely never picked up a book before in their lives.
Most normal people's idea of "literature" is informed by a combination of the pretentious rich wankers in their social circle and the intellectually and ethnically inbred NY-core bourgeois literature that get astroturfed everywhere as "great literature". No wonder they aren't interested, I wouldn't be either if these two scenes were my only exposure to what literature is.
Find some high-school books that they never read, not everyone was popped out of their mother with Fyodor Dostoevsky in one hand and Hegel in the other. I almost wonder if you even enjoy reading, or if you enjoy the conversations that it brings, hence why you're insisting that they follow your taste instead of you actually finding what they want.
Try:
Clockwork Oregano
Cache 22
Dune
Hitchhiker's Guide to the gayacy
Good O-mens
Ender's Taint
The jannies make this board literally 1984
Brave new worl
A picture of Dorian Gay
HOUSE of Leaves
The poisoner's handbook
Snow Crash
Some poetry or artsy shit, I don't have a funny one for this one because I don't read it really
Army Field Manual 3-24 MCWP 3-33.5 INSURGENCIES AND COUNTERING INSURGENCIES
The Rebel - Camel
The Prince of Persia - Machiavelli
Meditations - Marcus THE STALLION Aurelius
Something that doesn't require hand-holding and that they are either able to think about on their own or just be entertained by.
You're competing with their entertainment and their love doing things other than reading, and you're clearly not making it fun or easy for them.
>Reading is literally a basic human function and probably the best form of entertainment. Why are Zoomers so shit when it comes to lit?
no, and no. you live in the 21st century, not the 20th.
>Why don't they have the same taste as me? All kids these days know is they phone and games with they friends.
I'm just thinking of the spat between Pulitzer and Hearst where their journalism was derided for being vulgar.
>Newspapers are rotting your brain!
>writing in greentxt as though the point is made moot by it’s banality
Then do something other than b***hing about it if it's so important.
People never read much. Most people were illiterate 200 years ago. And at that time, there was not much to do. No smartphones, computers, tv's, radios. You either talk, read, play instruments or cards in your spare time. So you had a small % of people that read a lot. More than today but still a small %.
Now there's a myriad of things to do and since reading requires some introspection and effort, most people are incapable of doing it.
The same about opera. I do like it and know other people that can watch a 4 hour one. But that's more of a XVIII-XIX centuries show, made for people who did not have many other options to have fun, than something made for people who grew up scrolling smartphones, watching 10 minutes videos on youtube (as a millenial), etc. Now zoomers watch 15 seconds tik toks. Obviously only few people would be able to read many and good books.
Besides, excluding some circles, reading does not grant you any kind of social validation. Sometimes even the opposite. You'll mostly be neutral or considered a dork that like to discuss literature than being considered someone with a respectful hobby and/or intelectual curiosity. In my experience, even in top tier universities only 10% of students like to read what is not related to their field of studies.
>Reading is literally a basic human function and probably the best form of entertainment.
It is not. The vast majority of humanity would be better off if illiterate.
Stage plays are the best form of entertainment.
Reddit exodus
Still not as bad as the extended summer of 2014-2016
I don't know what education system you were brought up in, but speaking as an American our school system teaches us to hate reading from an early age. A few of us learn to love books despite this but most people i know hate reading so much they won't read anything at all if they can avoid it.
Many are also what I would call pseudo-literate. They are technically literate in the sense that they can sound out words and such but are so inept that it could never be enjoyable for them.
I wouldn't say that people are taught to hate books, least of all from the education system.
If anything, it has been the draw of society pulling you into the digital realm more and more.
I wouldn't ever say that the education system teaches you to hate math, kids just do because they think they know better or that their tech will make the underlying skills obsolete.
Parents aren't doing much in the way of encouraging this either.
I like reading and even I find it difficult to get into sometimes, because there's literally no one in a couple hundred mile radius of me that gives a shit to read anything themselves. The more I read, the further I separate myself from everyone else, and that rift is already massive.
My wife will buy self help type books and pile them in every corner of the house, never reading them but acting like she's somehow gained their knowledge. That's the only "reading" I see from anyone anymore.
Even those I know that graduated with useless English degrees quit reading, most of them playing video games or binging Netflix. The world has just changed, and it's not going back. Reading takes a modicum of effort, and at the end of the day, you won't be able to discuss it with anyone, making it completely and totally for yourself.
That's fine, assuming you have no social life in the slightest, but I do have to admit that I would rather wind down with something social now than read. This is especially true for those that are only reading fiction.
If you're a neet with nothing going on in life, reading IS the best one to pick, but only if you truly don't mind being ostracized. If you're not a woman, reading erotica and YA novels, reading is simply self segregation from society at this point.
I'm sorry that you don't have anyone in your life that you can discuss your reading with.
I'm also sorry that you think it's a chore.
I pity the outlook you have, and I hope you find a way to connect with the ones around you in a way that brings you satisfaction.
You patronizing little shit.
I started studying tonight, I won't pass tomorrow's linear algebra exam
It's so fricking over bros, I barely know how to find ker f and Im f, and I only manage it if the equations are simple enough for me to not frick up gauss
Stop seeing reading books as an inherent virtue and learn to leave people alone.
A significant portion of the population simply lack the intelligence to enjoy reading. Given the studies I've read, 50% to 60% of the population have difficulty in reading high school level texts; 20% of the population reads at a 3rd grade level or are functionally illiterate. This is consistent across all industrialized societies; it has to do with intelligence rather than any failings of the education system.
In previous centuries these people would simply remain illiterate, but in the modern world functional literacy is a prerequisite for anything more than menial labor, so they have literacy but not enough intelligence to find reading as a hobby enjoyable.
So you're telling me, not everyone starts to imagine a tapestry of beautiful imagery whilst reading books that is able to put lots of problems in life into perspective? You're telling people most people aren't capable of at least doing it with a shitty book like Holes or whatever from school?
I really don't agree with that. It's not that people don't have the intellectual or imaginative capacity to read it's that reading requires a lot of effort compared to 'flashy-flashy lighty-lighty' from 'screeny-screeny'. You could quite easily reverse this process if there was a societal effort to push literature and low tech usage as 'cool' and 'chic' but that won't happen because our entire western economy depends on people looking at screens.
>So you're telling me, not everyone starts to imagine a tapestry of beautiful imagery whilst reading books that is able to put lots of problems in life into perspective?
A good amount of people lack the ability to easily visualize words they read, but that's tangential.
>It's not that people don't have the intellectual or imaginative capacity to read it's that reading requires a lot of effort compared to 'flashy-flashy lighty-lighty' from 'screeny-screeny'.
I think your hypothesis is correct that you would see greater literary attainment if it were pushed, but I really don't think it would be all that significant. Those who naturally find reading easy or stimulating (as do I, whenever I'm reading my mind naturally makes a web of connections and whatnot), but those who can't... won't. I think it's something like a third of high school graduates never read a book after graduation.
There are large swathes of people who are simple ineducable. It was shocking to me as well, but you have to remember that your friend group and your acquaintances aren't representative of the general population. Everyone in my friend group has at least a bachelors, most have masters, and a few have Phds. What percent of adults in American have a bachelors? Like 38% or something. If you became a teacher you'd realize that many things that more intelligent people don't have hurdles with are taken for granted.
What a horrifying thought. I certainly don't want to sound up myself but I cannot imagine living like that. Being unable to engage with another reality through imagination would make life so fricking dull I would probably kill myself.
You are right. I need to be much more appreciative of my intelligence.