Basically a repost pf things I said in the mega, but anecdotally I’m hearing that sales of fiction read by men are dropping precipitously, and English and literature classes in colleges are now dominated by women. It seems like young men are not being exposed to literature in the same way that they used to. Like, when I was in high school and college, you could be a “bro” kind of guy and read Chuck Palahniuk, or Hunter S. Thompson, or David Foster Wallace. For decades, authors like Hemmingway and Bukowski found receptive audiences in young men, not to mention all the crime fiction, horror, sci-fi, and fantasy that men have traditionally consumed. The “guy in your English class who loves David Foster Wallace” was a stereotype for a reason. I read in another thread that music is less culturally important to young men than it used to be. It seems like younger men just straight up see no value in reading literature or fiction, or exposing themselves or critically engaging with art and music, because the algorithms just railroad them into Alpha Gridset world.
Am I wrong about this? Am I being condescending and out of touch, or is this a real thing that’s happening, where the whole “male” culture is turning into grindset podcasts and streamers?
Edit: Okay, so the impression I’m getting is that everything is worse but also kind of the same as it ever was, which sounds right.
Generally, from what I’ve seen; the biggest issue is not “the kids aren’t reading hemingway!!!” because, actually, in my high-school; a good chunk of students were given the “classics” as assigned reading in English, as well as some other ones like Hatchet and such. Neighboring school districts had different ones, but same principle. This was city, as well; so I am not sure if the bougies cut out classics elsewhere or if the city I had just had a ton of donated books. People my age also just prefer to read more short-form content.
That is sort of a thing I notice though. Attention-spans are being fucking shot. This isn’t even unique to Gen Z; I know boomers, X, etc who will sit on their phone and just scroll and scroll. Hell, I do it sometimes; how else do I get dank lefty memes?
A good chunk of people can retain their spans, I can still read Dune or watch a 3 hour video without losing attention. However, I worry more for children who are being handed a tablet as a form of “here kid, get outta my hair”.