Were books better?

Literary types are always lecturing the unwashed masses about the critical importance of BIG HEAVY BOOKS. If you aren’t reading BIG HEAVY BOOKS you’re illiterate.

I used to read lots of books, including BIG HEAVY ones. Did I get more benefit from them than I’m getting currently from social media?

Not really.

Through the 70s and 80s I read three or four books a week. I stopped at the library after work in the same way that some people stop at the bar. Most books were snacks, spy novels and sci-fi novels, but some were SERIOUS LIT’RATUUURE. Thinking back on the BIG HEAVY BOOKS, I can remember the titles but nothing more. They didn’t change my way of thinking, didn’t give me any grand inspiration.

Around 1990 novelists and newspapers soiled their own nest. I gradually gave up on libraries and books after too many disgusting bait-n-switch experiences. Authors would start out with a readable and interesting story, then switch to pure DNC preaching. Newspapers stopped giving useful information about crimes, stopped providing human interest features, and switched to raw contempt for their readers.

The web didn’t force them to kick out their customers. They made that decision on their own.

Now that the customers have left the venue and chosen Tiktok or Onlyfans or Trump or spiritual but not churched, the old institutions still haven’t learned. They’re still blaming and spitting on the customers. We’re dumb and fascist because we left the store after you kicked us out.

Well, why should we come back? You’re not offering better books or better media or better governance or better churches, you’re just kicking us for being the horrible peasants you kicked before. Your fake “soul-searching sessions” always conclude that you need to kick harder.