[protocolture]

Yeah man.

Just like how novel reading, newspapers, music, rock music, the internet, computer games all made everyone super dumb and the world ended.

I am definitely sure that this time you are right and the world will actually end this time, everyones going to end up way dumber than you, or if they dont, you will still pretend it happened and be smug about it on the internet.

[anthk]

Mobile computer games compared to the ones from the 80's, 90's, and early 00's? For sure. Ditto with tons of best sellers, which are very dull and dumbed down compared to what I could read in Spanish "Dollar Stores" like shops in Spain such as the books Clarke/PKD and Orwell novels for very little, less than what $2 were in Pesetas (pre Euro Spanish currency) in late 90's.

Nowadays you have AI generated books which are very surpar even if they look an impressive exercise of LLM's.

[protocolture]

I saw someones profile on goodreads, she was putting away 100 - 200 of those cheap supernatural romance books per year. Reading at that level isnt dumb, the books arent making her stupid. That I consider the books stupid isnt ending the world.

[anthk]

Pulp, a dime novels weren't better but often you could find gems in scifi and thrillers.

Expensive bestsellers had the worst quality/price ratio.

[protocolture]

Funny you mention that, because apparently the worst "The Shadow" and "Doc Savage" stories are coming from James Patterson dressed up as bestsellers. And I am a massive massive fan of their pulp outings.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56028217-the-shadow

[direwolf20]

they kind of did