BlindDeafRat
No bio...
User ID: 2868
BlindDeafRat
18d ago
A cafe at a skiing resort. The teas I've had after a skiing for an hour or two at those places were something I haven't been able to recreate myself.
Or a restaurant at a top of a mountain.
BlindDeafRat
21d ago
It's not just a masculine reading crisis, reading is down for everyone, however it is worse for men.
Most people (both men and women) already basically read something that's a level about the RR slop which is romantasy and thrillers.
Every single book you mention could be put into a literary fiction which is read by a minority of the minority who reads in the first place. I've read a lot, but I haven't read a single book of on that list, and so I'm curious if you have read them, and not for a school assignment, but pleasure out of your own free time.
As it is reading is basically somewhat of a dead hobby. Like there's obviously communities where reading is valued like in the rationalist adjacent communities like the Motte. But for the majority, reading is just not popular. This is a pure hypothetical, but I would guess that audiobooks will become more popular than actually reading books, which is a damn shame.
My and @GBRK's point I think is that more people should try to read, even if it's slop, just because reading is something that should have more people doing. There's a ton of great literary works that will never be read by the majority of people because they just don't care to read in the first place, let alone read demanding works, where as at least more would've watched classical movies.
Like I would easily recommend Pynchon's Crying of Lot 49 to someone who doesn't read a lot, because it's not at all difficult to read and quite funny, and could serve as an introduction to a great author. But the fact is that most people will never read in the first place, but if they do, they would probably rather read some RR slop than that.
BlindDeafRat
21d ago
I don't have the patience to engage with them. I'm not competitive enough, nor do I think that I could even if I was.
Also I already spend too much time doing idle things when I should be doing thins that are more important.
BlindDeafRat
21d ago
The point is that it's not easily digestible enough when you're starting at a level where you don't read recreationally at all.
All over the internet you see how quickly people say "tl;dr" for any post that's over like three paragraphs. People don't read articles, only headlines. To take a lifting example, if you try to lift 100kg without any muscle training, you won't lift anything at all, or at least most you'll lift it for a few cms, drop it and become exhausted from that alone. And then you won't want to do it again for a while.
RoyalRoad stories are easy to consume, more appealing because they provides an escapist fantasy, and usually have contemporary themes and references. Once you get used to reading, once you can read a few chapters a week, and do that for a while you'll be able to start reading other things too.
You're seriously underestimating just how easy RoyalRoad is to read.
his sea-chest following behind him in a hand-barrow; a tall, strong, heavy, nut-brown man; his tarry pigtail falling over the shoulders of his soiled blue coat; his hands ragged and scarred, with black, broken nails; and the sabre cut across one cheek, a dirty, livid white.
This is an excerpt from Treasure Island. Commonly on RoyalRoad is that often character descriptions are rarely given, or if they are they're spare. Which speeds up visualization because you don't need to build the full image in your head. Now I'm good at visualization, and I can do it as fast as as I can read pretty much, but again, that's a skill that's built by doing. The prose is far more spare as well. The more I read this excerpt the more this is just way beyond average RoyalRoad.
How that personage haunted my dreams, I need scarcely tell you. On stormy nights, when the wind shook the four corners of the house, and the surf roared along the cove and up the cliffs, I would see him in a thousand forms, and with a thousand diabolical expressions. Now the leg would be cut off at the knee, now at the hip; now he was a monstrous kind of a creature who had never had but the one leg, and that in the middle of his body. To see him leap and run and pursue me over hedge and ditch was the worst of nightmares. And altogether I paid pretty dear for my monthly fourpenny piece, in the shape of these abominable fancies.
Meanwhile for comparison from Primal Hunter Ch 6:
The tree was more than strong enough to take the hits, having barely taken any damage. With its circumference easily being large enough for 7-8 grown men to stand holding hands around it, he saw no scenario where it would be falling over. So, to sum it all up… if he had been alone, he would have gotten solo experience and TP, and no one would have gotten seriously hurt, though the fight would have taken longer. On top of that, Jake had an inherent unwillingness to ignore his own instincts and intuition. As most people would, he assumed. While he in his work-life before the system was very calculating, always taking an analytical and data-based approach, he also relied on his guts a lot. The same for tests in university. He trusted his intuition to an almost unhealthy degree.
There is a drastic difference between the two. I would bet that if you give the average kid the latter he'll read more of it than Treasure Island.
That's why I do think more people should be given slop to read. Babies aren't given hard meat to chew through to eat, they're given food that's easy to digest. And that's what more people need to consume before they can take on something more.
BlindDeafRat
21d ago
You're not baiting discussion and downvotes, you're just baiting getting banned all together. Which is what has happened.
I think you have a good point, and a it could lead to good discussion, that's why it's a shame you try to include stuff like that.
BlindDeafRat
21d ago
Despite the Motte's posters being primarily right wing, I still value it as someone who is left-leaning and read it regularly as a there's a number of posters whose opinion I find interesting. George_E_Hale is one example.
But there's also a a minority of posters, whom I won't name, not everyone I've blocked is like that. But as a whole there are certain posters who are predictably irritating, who skirt around the "Be Kind" rule as a suggestion by wording things differently despite essentially openly shitting on the outgroup. But because the site isn't very active as it is, and because their rule breaking isn't sufficient they're ignored by the mods.
Do I then leave this site because of these people? The "Be Kind" rule is probably the reason why I'm here. Despite this place being a hive of villainy, it's also the most polite and kind place to discuss politics that I've found (besides the aforementioned posters, whom I don't see anyway), there people don't instantly start shitting on the outgroup and making strawman posts out of them.
BlindDeafRat
24d ago
I fully agree with your point. But I think there's one additional aspect that's present in webfics that isn't found elsewhere, which the social aspect of webfic.
There's a lot of comments saying that there's more material written than you could read in a dozen lifetimes. Good material at that, and that's true. But the issue is that we are social creatures. I can read the original Journey to the West from which a lot of the modern day Xianxia tropes originate from, but if I want to discuss this work with others I'll have more luck if I learn Chinese or get into academia. Meanwhile I can go on WebToons right now and find some manhwa to read and then read the comments and see other people's perspectives, and discuss it with them. This is something that already exists with fiction that's marketed towards women. They see it on TikTok, they read it, discuss it, and then move on.
Overall, a large part of what people spend their time on is in some sense meant to be fill a social need. TikTok, Twitch, Youtube, Twitter/X, Reddit, Bluesky. People want to not just do things, but do them with others. You can discuss Worm right now very easily by going on Reddit or various Discord servers. And obviously you also have the comments on each new chapter on RoyalRoad.
And since chapters release weekly or biweekly on RoyalRoad, it's easy to make a habit of reading for a bit every few days. This is really what webfics are so good at. You cannot read Worm in one sitting, and instead it has to be something you do over time. In turn this creates a habit where you read more often. This is especially the case with ongoing stories where you'd come and check them once or twice a week. A lot of the things people do in their day to day lives are simply habits. If instead of scrolling TikTok, you check the stories you're following on RoyalRoad and read a chapter or two, that's already far more reading than you would've done normally, and that's also far easier to do than taking a book and reading a chapter or two from it instead.
Reading is a muscle that everyone on this site has already trained far beyond the average person, and it would be good for society if this became more common. And webfic is good specifically because it's easy to read, and there's a lot of it.
But also while a lot of webfic is slop, there is also a lot of really really good works. I believe that ultimately the great works of our time will most likely be webfics. Which is another reason to start reading them.
BlindDeafRat
24d ago
A better comparison would be pulp from the last century. Howard, Lovecraft, Ashton Smith.
But the issue is that those books aren't very contemporary. I've read Path of Dragons recently, it's complete slop, and I dropped it after 1.5 books, but during that I saw a ton of inspiration from video games like World of Warcraft, and other stories. And you know what, it's still fun to see those references to video games I've played and experienced, rather than just another 18th century world that's as disconnected from me as it could be. Meanwhile I've read a Clark Ashton Smith short story recently and the writing style was great, far better than you'd find on RoyalRoad, but also clearly set in a specific time period.
There is a reason why Urban Fantasy is so popular, people want to read what's familiar.
Fanfiction, and RR specifically is easier to read because you come in with certain expectations. For example when I start a Wormfanfic I know who all the characters are, and they or the world don't need to be introduced. The same goes for a lot of RoyalRoad stories that basically play off the same rough world building. System Apocalypse, Xianxia. They all reuse a lot of concepts. And in turn this allows the subversion of those existing concepts as well.
And as a comparison. I would also say that authors like Pynchon, are closer to modern webfic in terms of style than they are to those older stories. Which also speaks to how ahead his works are. Crying of Lot 49 feels more contemporary and could've been made in the last 20 years despite having been written in '66. It also shows just how influential Post-Modernism was, and that escaping it is impossible.
BlindDeafRat
24d ago
And at least speaking personally, I'm against DEI in general and for men in particular. But where does that leave us?
This is basically baiting angry comments on Reddit. You realize that using the word "DEI" will essentially label you as a chud and render the rest of your post irrelevant even if it was interesting beforehand?
You can try to edit and remove that and probably this too.
Yes, there's a certain risk that the Heinlens and Ayn Rands of the world will feed them masculinist fantasies incompatible with the feminist-egalitarian view of the world you might prefer to instill... but hey, at least that's better than whatever the TikTok algorithm would have done to them.
Like I fully agree with your main point, but the fact is that if you want to post on Reddit, you need to word it in a way that they will accept. I'm not surprised your post was removed personally. I don't go on /r/books, but I read /r/games, and the only places I see people mention DEI are at the bottom of the comments with 50 downvotes.
I imagine you read a lot, so I think your perspective is skewed by what counts as difficult. You are underestimating just how simple RoyalRoad is, and how that simplicity is very useful when you haven't been reading your whole life.
The first issue is that you're competing with TikTok, video games, and twitch streams. I can promise you that there is a gulf between Treasure Island and your average RoyalRoad story in terms of ease of reading.
And the second issue is that, or at least this is my perspective, is that it's fun to read books that are contemporary. I've read Count of Monte Cristo, and in it I clearly saw a lot of inspiration for what the modern WebFic world developed from. In many ways it's a proto webfic. And yet, I would say it's also much worse than modern web novels. Is it better than the average RR slop? Of course, is it as interesting to read as the above average RR stories? I don't think so.
Reading RoyalRoad stories is like eating popcorn. I'm a very fast reader, depending on the book, I can reach up to 400 WPM. I'm obviously an outlier, but the way I reached this is by just reading a lot of slop. Reading is a much a muscle as anything else, and you do develop it as long as you do it. Even if you read slop, you will get better at consuming slop more quickly.
I've started reading translated xianxia slop, then webfics like Worm, and now I've also read "highbrow" authors like Pynchon, and Burroughs. But I don't think I would've enjoyed them anywhere as much if I hadn't developed my ability to consume words on the lowbrow stories first.
BlindDeafRat
25d ago
Why couldn't you make it about the opposite? A mousy girl uses a One Wish Willow to date Chad that she's read about in all her romantasy slop and have her Disney Princess experience, and it turns out that actually being raped isn't as good as it seems even if he's the man of your dreams. Even better if she wishes a whole harem of attractive men loved her, and they kill each other to get to her.
Loser wishes they had a partner can easily be gender swapped.
As an aside. Do you think Bear was the villain or not?
Overall, while I see the connections with the gender war and Obsession, and I'm sure a lot of people will try and use them, I don't think that the movie itself is taking a stance of it.
I mean, Bear is a coward, that's really his defining characteristic, and while it's not a sin to be a coward, and it's something that men are judged by far more than women, overall, he's not an incel. By /r9k/ standards he's a normie. He has a job, friends, female friends at that, that he goes out with every week, a girl who likes him (that he doesn't know about), a job, his own inherited house. He is lost in life, and obsessed with his oneitis, but even when the girl he likes asks him if he has feelings for her, he says they're just friends. As an aside, the director said that Nikki would've gone out with him, had he been open with her.
BlindDeafRat
30d ago
BlindDeafRat
30d ago
I agree. I liked it from the start. But the fun part starts once you get to the part with the bear, which is pretty early on, I don't think it's more than like 20 chapters if that. And then it gets better from that.
There are certainly lulls in the beginning of the arcs while stuff is being set up, but the pay off is worth it.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
Ordering food can be cheaper if you use the apps and wait for a deal. But that's still something you do once in a while, not a an every day thing.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
I really like boba tea, but I prefer making it myself since the ones you buy usually have the balls too soft where as I prefer they have some bite to them.
I like tea, and boba is basically just lightly sweetened ice tea, with the balls having interesting texture.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
If you flip flop from one thing to another, with every time it being something new, like a kid who doesn't know what he wants to be when he grows up then I don't think that's reliable.
But if you consistently think about something but then find a reason not do to do it, until it comes up again in the future, then I would say that counts. If you want to be a girl as a kid, a teen, a young adult, and an adult, and is a persistent nagging that you can never get rid of, only suppress temporarily then it can be something else.
But really the biggest factor is also simply doing something. Not just wishing to be a girl, but going about doing that. Actually learning makeup, how to dressing well, and voice training to speak more femininely.
Obviously there's persistent thoughts that should be suppressed for the social good, but in general, transitioning doesn't harm anyone else, so if it improves your quality of life, it's fine.
But if I had a trans-like belief that "I know what I am, but the world won't let me be it," with tons of people telling me over and over that I'm right and there are evil people out to get me, I think I'd have latched onto it hard.
I mean, factually people are out to get you if you're trans. It is a choice that will lower your future life prospects in many ways. People will shit on online far more than if you're just a man. As a man you're invisible, as a transwoman you're a living example of the culture war.
If you don't pass, you will be judged for it, and will likely get less/worse jobs and worse dating prospects as a result. Some things like professional sports will essentially be cut off for the rest of your life.
In general, considering the cost of the act, if you feel bad enough that it outweighs all these risks, I see no reason why I would be against transitioning, and calling people by whatever pronouns they want.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
Korean BBQ restaurant
I've gone to something similar on a couple dates, but every time a waiter came and helped with everything and clearly explained what to do, and to call him if we needed more help. I'm surprised yours didn't have anything similar.
Also I otherwise enjoy it as something where the closest comparison I would use is something like tacos, where you make your own with the lettuce, meat, and veggies.
It is quite expensive though, so it's very much a once in a while thing.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
I would recommend trying Dark Souls with controller. All the souls games are beatable with M&B, but sometimes you just gotta use the right tool for the job.
The main advice for the series is to not worry about dying. It's not a skill check as much as a knowledge check.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
What if you don't like "dating"? I want to be (and am) in a relationship. Dating apps should try to build long term relationship, or ideally offer both, short term flings to those that want those, and long term to those that want that. And in a way to isolate each group from each other.
I've also thought about this dating app idea lot, and wanted to write a post about it, but I'll try and post one eventually.
BlindDeafRat
1mo ago
dating apps rely on unintelligent slobs forking over money because they think that they'll get more action by paying a third party
That's why a dating app should be made by the government with tax dollars. It is in the government's interests to get people in a relationship since couples with kids overall spend more money than singles or couples with no kids. And are just better long term.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
God, those censored cases are so fucked up. Still I like reading them, as a form of very black comedy.
How did item 7 keep getting off with 6 months of jail for this?
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
The reason why CSAM shouldn't be possessed or distributed is because its production is inherently harmful. Not because it's disgusting.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
Have you tried like this one specifically? Usually most of these rely on some some kind of IR sensor or a hat or something, but NeuralNet doesn't need anything else. I'm using like a cheapo logitech webcam that I doubt is much better than yours.
It's really nice being able to look around while turning for example, since usually both hands are busy during that.
BlindDeafRat
2mo ago
I've had it on a my wishlist for ages and I recently bought it and I agree it's fun. I've only played arcade flight games like Ace Combat and Project Wingman, and I really like the more in-depth targeting and radar, and how the missiles are just better than something like Ace Combat.
If you have a spare webcam, even a shitty one. I recommend getting OpenTrack with NeutralNet Tracker for Input which you can then use so that if you move your head around, like even turning to the side, it'll move the camera around, so you don't have to do it with your controller or mouse. It's super easy to install, and really immersive.
Works on a bunch of other games too, like Freespace 2 for example.
There's also The Sword of Truth. The author is a big fan of Ayn Rand.
More options
Context Copy link