askchapo

Younger people seem to read less novels and more stuff they find online like creepy pastas, fan fiction, smut, etc.

Not in the age group, but I read a hell of a lot more at that age than I do in my 30s.

I can just tell you that, personally, as a 33 cishet dude, my attention span is shot to shit and I can barely watch a whole ass movie or listen to a new song let alone añbum. If anythibg, my capapcity for reading a book, fictional or otherwise is far more in tact.

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.

All the young groypers I see online are obsessed with Trump and Elon, I highly doubt they care about old heroes young men used to take up like sports stars and the like.

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".

No I’m in this age range and all my friends read at least to some degree. Some of us are very avid and occasionally do little book clubs

Fuck I’m old, but to contribute something, my nephew joined the navy so anecdotally, no it’s not going great, not at all

I am out of that range. When I was in that ranged it was fucked. from what I can see they are still fucked. Less fucked than my generation, cause they have access to infinite learning which has bred empathy. Still little fucked. I think they will grow up to be alright

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.

Newly minted 25 year old, In my circle of ~20 guys id say about 5 of them read fiction with any regularity myself included.