Bookwyrm – A federated social network for reading books

Yeah, I know. I just look at the absolute technological absurdity that is "e-book lending" and can't help but think that something done like this, by book lovers, could perhaps emerge a better way to pay writers.

You'd hope that, but it doesn't work that way.

In a place where you can be banned for the gross slurs, you might be banned for relating some personal anecdote in which you speak of some other person making a gross slur. Why, when you didn't type in the gross slur yourself?

Who knows. Maybe they think you're secretly a klansman, trying to pollute people's brains with the slur without actually saying the slur. Maybe they think you're not sufficiently progressive enough because you actually have a personal history where you were proximate enough to a bigot that you could hear what they were saying. Maybe it really is Orwellian, and you thought the word though you didn't put it in the comment.

But considering the extra effort it would take to post in such a place, always wondering if the next comment will get you banned, why would you bother?

People with interesting things to say will find it difficult to exist, belong, or remain in such a forum.

I don't think you get any of the good, without accepting that some of the bad has to be present too.

These people who do that sort of banning, somewhere in their shriveled little brains actually believe they're making the world a better place.

I joined a subreddit a few years ago, printSF, I think (not sure) thinking that it might be more to my liking. The regular science fiction subreddit seemed to be more about Marvel movies (it's not just reddit that does this, scifi.stackexchange might as well be harrypotter.stackexchange).

I tried to like it. I saw books and authors that were unfamiliar (that should be good... it's difficult to find new stuff I enjoy). But then I started digging into the comments, and it was complete drek. There was one day when I must have read through two dozen, and "Bechdel" was in every single one of them. I don't think I knew what it was at the time, but one of them was a comment haranguing someone else about it, and so I enedd up learning that day.

Another time, someone mentioned Asimov's Foundation in a recommendation thread. The replies were bizarre.

It's clear that whatever they were after is nothing like what I want to read. We're not wanting the same genres. And I don't know why. It'd be one thing if these same sorts of people who were concerned with all that bullshit were happy and well-adjusted. Then it would mean that I was just some old fuddy-duddy and that the world had moved on without me. But they're not happy or well-adjusted, and they seem as if all they want out of this (and everything else) is to ruin and trash what they can.

I suspect that too many literature classes in public schools and community colleges are to blame. They can't listen to or read a story and just enjoy it for what it is. Everything must be deconstructed and hidden meanings revealed, the sort of hidden meanings only they're clever enough to see. And that opens up the cracks for their weird-assed politics to be inserted into it. Then every interaction between every two characters is homoerotic, every dystopia is a critique of capitalism, and the only horror permitted is how conservative modern governments are.

So yeh, I guess you could say this is a bigger problem for me than some halfwit in mama's basement trying to be an edgelord on 4chan and failing. And I hesitate to say that too loudly most of the time, because even though none of my words here are offensive, having described my personality there are those who would seek to make sure I'm not allowed to post ever again.