Young men, like 18-24 year old males on Hexbear: Is the culture for your age group completely fucked, or am I out of touch?

I don't know if it's attention spans or w/e but it does feel like fewer people of all generations are reading now, and when they do read, they just want slop. Anything that demands engagement or effort from the reader is denounced as 'badly written'. It drives me a bit mad tbh, because at the same time that people smugly reject good literature, you can see that they're unfulfilled reading the same old dreck for the millionth time.

A common thing I used to see on Book Twitter was people complaining at the lack of beautifully written prose that focuses on the interior life and I just want to scream THAT'S MODERNISM YOU'RE DESCRIBING MODERNISM, READ THE WAVES, PLEASE READ THE WAVES, IT WILL MOVE YOU SO DEEPLY, but the thing is that while they want that, they also only read YA dystopian fiction written in the past simple as an iron rule.

IT SUCKS IT SUCKS IT SUCKS

I'm begging anyone in my immediate circle to just read a book or think about what they watch just a little. You don't have to be a scholar, God knows I'm not either, but it's so BORING. I dunno, maybe it's me, but I try to like, have a slightly in-depth conversation about any piece of media or art or whatever with someone and I just get nothing. We're all hooked up to the slop spigot and can't turn it off.

Also GET OFF YOUR FUCKING PHONE WHEN WE'RE HANGING OUT.

I'm not of that age, but imo it's more a technological thing than a generational thing. People, of any age, cannot put their phones down. I personally have to make the conscious decision to disconnect if I'm going to read something or watch a movie or whatever. I imagine that for people who grew up with smartphones, that's like cutting off a limb.

In that sense, yes absolutely. There's a huge prevalent mindset of anti-intellectualism and hopelessness that leads to individualistic hustle culture with no appreciation for the arts. I think you'd see the same thing in any nascent fascist society in history, where any actual love for art is replaced by much shallower symbols in the service of reinforcing hegemonic masculinity. But even among my leftier friends, if I send them a message that's longer than 2 sentences I'm very likely to receive an "I ain't reading all that" (even a literal 3 sentence message).

I think music has probably retained a similar relevance for my age group as previous ones, but the way that people engage with music is a lot more easy come easy go, which means that unless you have a specific kind of personality you're unlikely to try to dig much meaning out of music, especially men with lower emotional intelligence. But there's still the same drive to make music a part of your identity, just shallower.

Not a man but I am in the age range. I mean it may be the case that more people are turning to parasocial relationships and falling into manosphere holes because of the internet. But also idk, maybe we've got to take stock of how misogyny plays a role into all this? Most men (and I truly mean, like 99% of them) don't want to unpack the way they hold privilege and power over women. In decades past in which men were reading books more, they also had legal control over their wives? Women were gatekept out of academia for centuries. We live in a patriarchy and that needs to factor into any analysis of men as a social class that happens.

These are consequences of living in a system that rewards your individualism.

I am in that age bracket, and when I was in college I found it quite difficult to get friends just because of that. Young men are easily influenced by capitalist propaganda, and not only are they manipulable, but they like to feel that way. So, most commonly, they feel like they're in a competition all the time. If they read philosophy, they read about individualism and idealism (if they read philosophy at all). If they read fiction, they read only the misogynistic and crass author, and so on.

Of course, today we live in the society of spectacle, so these people do not usually read, but are merely educated by images. This, coupled with zero critical thinking, simply generates a wave of stupid, misogynistic and individualistic people.

Anecdotal, but my friend is a high school math teacher and said most of the dudes want to be in real estate. So, at least in that particular high school the grindset pipeline seems to be in full effect.

I'm in that age bracket and male and among the people I know reading literature is basically nonexistent. I constantly see people browse Instagram when randomly bored so a bunch of organizations use Instagram as their primary means of communication then I end up browsing Instagram to get updates from those organizations and get addicted to it like everyone else. Video games are social and also addicting so people prefer those over literature as well. Aside from that people have very limited time and want to spend the few moments of free time they have doing things that are more social, more engaging (which black marks on a white paper doesn't do a great job at, I can barely pay attention to them for like 2 minutes), or more relevant to their hobbies or future. With music on the other hand I've seen differently, a lot of people use Spotify frequently and I've met quite a few people who have strong interests in certain bands or genres. Also while the internet has caused all sorts of problems regarding addiction and misinformation and people not being as social, I think it has also caused people to be more connected and empathetic on a large scale since they see the struggles of people outside of their physical social bubble.

Men no longer reading Western Canon Literary Classics, billions must die. I think youngmen culture was probably fucked long before dudes stopped reading fuckin Hemmingway.

Sure hope nothing silly happens in this thread

Absolutely.

This is what you get after decades of capitalist brainwashing, schools being defunded, worse and working to maximize profits instead of raising our future generations. Competition within the working class reaching an all time high and making people cannibalistic wage slaves that somehow still think they're gonna be the next Elon. Consumerism making people obsessed about their material possesions and looking richer that the rest. Capitalism has made art and culture an expensive commodity to be bought and sold instead of given to the people to enlighten them and make them think for themselves. No one reads anymore, their attention spans are hardwired for 10 second reels that mostly play CIA propaganda by default if it's politics related, e.g. the obsession with the Tiananmen "massacre" and a ton of memes about it giving the impression that it was historically brutal and definitely not something that the West has done in much worse ways. There are ton of examples about how "innocent funny memes" passively propagandise anyone that won't really sit and read about what happened. Cynicism and nihilism are extremely common, probably due to the realization deep down that we are not even remotely living in democracies and the world is steadily getting worse and there's not much you can do about it individually.

I'll say it again, how the fuck are we as communists supposed to radicalize the working class, when the working class refuses to think about anything on a deeper level that is outside of the given framework by the ruling class? How do you get someone to really understand something like Marxism, when they refuse to read anything longer than a maximum length Tweet?

It really bothers me to see how each generation is seemingly getting less and less able to conceptualize and analyze the system they're living under or pretty much anything for that matter, unless it's a science and they're getting paid to do so.

A lot of people in that age bracket are reading trashy web serials on RoyalRoad now.

Huh, I guess I'm really young but I always considered literature majority woman/femme presenting.

My guy friends that do read often read more helpful/confidence boosting works. Or they listen to audiobooks I suppose, both fiction and the helpful/confidence kind. By helpful I mean works like "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck", or "Stolen Focus".

Most of my guy friends are technical or nerd types, not sure if that means anything.

People who use the internet instead of books are fucking pathetic