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This it it IMO. While I would consider myself someone who enjoys reading (I try to read a book every two weeks or so) I certainly wouldn't consider giving up everything else I enjoy doing in favor of only reading books the best use of my time. There's many more worthwhile movies, video games, internet text etc that's worth engaging with that I'll never experience in my lifetime, to speak nothing of all the pleasurable non-consumption activities I could be doing, so it really seems ludicrous on the face of it to give everything else up to max out my books/year stat.
To go on a vaguely CW tangent, and I'm only bringing this up because your post brought this to mind and not because I'm trying to say you're doing this, is that I think there's a general tendency to elevate some types of consumption as being more virtuous than others, when really they're all just intellectually gratifying activities stratified by ease of access as a proxy for wealth and perceived intellect.
For example, I don't consider the consumption of books, international travel, and live artistic performances any more or less superior than the consumption of internet blogs, local outings and tv shows, yet it's the first class of activities that are considered higher status because they better signal intelligence, disposable income and free time.
While I have no problem with the many people that really do just enjoy the first class of pleasurable things in and of themselves, I have to admit that I find myself reflexively on guard when I meet someone who makes how many books they read, how many countries they've been to or how many live shows they've seen the center of their personality.
Increasingly I find that many people in the PMC class use their hobbies as a way of bludgeoning others for their lack of virtue and to improve their own status rather than because they actually inherently enjoy doing these things (although I suppose elites have been doing this since antiquity, so I can't really point at modern PMCs in particular).
Good books are more engrossing, detailed and better written than good tv shows. They are also more time consuming and less relaxing experience.
I actually would consider certain blogs to be superior to books both as a way to transmit your ideas and to read them. Books can still be better in terms of being more detailed on the issue but the benefit of succinctness and immediacy can't be understated. That and in terms of gate keeping gives blogs an additional value since you are going to find blogs that I would consider more intellectually honest as a higher % of blogs than books as a proportion of books. That and you can communicate with people while if you start talking to your book, usually nobody replies back
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I would say that these hobbies aren't just high-status because they signal wealth, but because they can be used to signal taste, and taste is the virtue of the haute-bourgeois. There are better and worse ways to do each of those, and failing is obviously tacky (e.g. reading Harlequin smut/Star Wars novels, gushing about your holiday to Ibiza/Pattaya/Vegas, idk maybe taylor swift).
This is your tackiness detector going off.
The alternatives to the high-status pursuits you list are noticeably less legible in terms of taste. Partly this is because they do not, in fact, have the high highs that the people engaging in those high-status activities are seeking. No blog is comparable to a Great Book, etc. But, also, it's because they basically require you to already have deep knowledge about the blogosphere or your local area in order to judge whether or not someone has good taste in those hobbies (TV shows are something of a different matter in the HBO era).
I'm pretty sure I remember it from this article, but the joke at the beginning stuck with me and seems relevant:
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Funnily enough, I disagree with Mr. Dizzler - I think out of these "higher perceived than actual value" activities, travel is the one with the closest value, and live music second.
Typically when I see someone read a ton of books, they're crappy modern romance novels or self-help slop. You can read 50 pages/hour of these sorts of books but they're not providing any value, especially not over a great movie or TV show (much less a video game).
Think about the current state of music, too. We aren't even listening to nice CDs anymore. A hard core of hipsters and status chasers have vinyls, but I don't know anyone with an actual high quality sound system besides me. We're all listening to the equivalent of 192kbps MP3s from spotify. Especially for bands that open for others, they have access to only the crappiest recording studios. The difference between hearing them live and on a streaming services is significant, and then the concert experience of being around people is fun.
For travel, the reality distortion field around locations and cultures has never been stronger. Every secondhand report about a country or city from a normie is colored through a political lens, and common attractions have never been more accessible/overwhelmed because of the internet. To paraphrase a reddit comment I made a few years ago:
These are all experiences that required travel, and don't even touch on any of what I've gotten to do domestically or the incredible natural beauty I've gotten to experience firsthand. I absolutely wish I could do it more, and regret not having done so before having children.
All this being said, however, I largely agree with you. I find that these hobbies are venerated in a way far outsize their value for precisely the reasons you describe. I love travel, shows, and reading, and hate social media flexing for all 3 with passion.
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I agree with you about travel, but I have to disagree with you about books vs. TV. The teleology of the technology is completely different. Books (and inernet blogs) shape us to follow logical, thought out arguments. TV shapes us to care primarily about appearances. The Medium is the Message.
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