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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   3830 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 18, 2024

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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The men who have entirely stopped reading and replaced it with video games are equally matched by the women who have stopped reading and replaced it with social media.

The men who would be traditionally reading a lot still read a ton it's just been replaced with non-fiction and stuff like this. Reading forum posts and /r/HobbyDrama or whatever is reading, it's just not fiction. And again, there are still large communities of men clamoring for fiction that appeals to them just a lot of them are looking at Royal Road or other stuff outside of traditional publishing.

Demand exists, supply is constrained. And again we see this in other markets impacted by wokeness.

Overall reading is down but as suggested in my link by someone who knows more about this than either of us, that doesn't need to be gendered.

HobbyDrama, 4chan, this place, celebrity gossip, AskReddit, WSB and most of TikTok are all nonfiction, so men and women are well-represented as readers there.

What’s the male equivalent to the fiction that women read? Well, porn in some cases, I guess. But in most it’s the fiction in video games, it’s Stalker, it’s Assassin’s Creed, it’s Dead Space, it’s The Last of Us, it’s Baldur’s Gate, it’s Red Dead Redemption (obviously all these have women players, but the the majority of playtime by hours is men).

Licensed fiction. I’ve probably read more Star Trek, Star Wars, movie, and video game adaptation books by volume, plus fanfiction, than original works.

Same here. And it’s not like I avoiding physical reading. Just…once I had an unlimited backlog of interesting media in my pocket, it became a very easy leisure activity.

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