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Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

residentcontrarian.com

91–100 of 140 posts

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#91

> I once told a friend that there are a lot of books I enjoyed as one enjoys a piece of candy After 8 paragraphs of this sort of thing we get to the book The Tim Tebow CFL Chronicles follows the adventures of a fictionalized version of Tim Tebow who, brokenhearted over his inability to make it as an NFL quarterback, arrives in Toronto to join the Argonauts What school of writing is teaching writers to bury the lede i…

The one that teaches you that your article doesn't get impressions if readers don't scroll through it. That is, you don't get paid for writing well. Thanks, Capitalism!

Your comment sparked some interesting thoughts and when that happens I often think of the small farm I grew up on with my grandparents, because you learn a lot of life's most basic lessons working on a farm. The rhythms of nature enforce a particular and unforgiving honesty on a young impressionable mind. I learned my first thoughts aren't always correct. Like grandpa used to say "truth is in the rain."

Grandma would cook Apple pies and the scent would reach me in the field when I was hungry from hard work. I'd come running and she would exclaim "I know how much you love my pies by how you come running!" So there's truth in pies as well as rain.

As I thought about my reply to your comment, I thought back to the time someone sold me oregano in college claiming it was marijuana. I was mad, but that person taught me a valuable lesson about honesty and I vowed I would always try to be an honest person.

After much reflection and with a little help from memories of my ex-wife pointing out all they ways I wasn't honest, all minor complaints mind you, I realized that my response to your criticism of capitalism upset me so that I was probably going to make an emotional response.

I learned not to make emotional responses at a retreat in Central America where we took some kind of psychedelic and did cognitive behavioral therapy from a man I'll call Gunter (not his real name) who was an Austrian fellow who came to this country to organize a coup and stayed after it's success as one of the spiritual leaders of the new communist state. After repeated attempts by him to get me in bed with him, I concluded the communism wasn't good for people and had turned this nice man into a hedonist.

So getting back to my comment, capitalism is the least worse system so we'd probably better stick with it and try and curb the worst excesses of narcissism and self-aggrandizement that it engenders with it's stress on the individual self and ego. This author is correct to attempt to make money under a capitalist system, but is using unintelligent means to accomplish it. I understand not everyone is a great writer and has to resort to tricks, but that's why it pays to hire a editor, whose services the capitalist system incentivizes!

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one that teaches you that your article doesn't get impressions if readers don't scroll through it. That is, you don't get paid for writing well. Thanks, Capitalism!

Your comment sparked some interesting thoughts and when that happens I often think of the small farm I grew up on with my grandparents, because you learn a lot of life's most basic lessons working on a farm. The rhythms of nature enforce a particular and unforgiving honesty on a young impressionable mind. I learned my first thoughts aren't always correct. Like grandpa used to say "truth is in the rain." Grandma would…

Is this a GPT-3 comment?

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#95
post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your comment sparked some interesting thoughts and when that happens I often think of the small farm I grew up on with my grandparents, because you learn a lot of life's most basic lessons working on a farm. The rhythms of nature enforce a particular and unforgiving honesty on a young impressionable mind. I learned my first thoughts aren't always correct. Like grandpa used to say "truth is in the rain." Grandma would…

Is this a GPT-3 comment?

No but you just gave me an idea. I could hide behind GPT-3 in the future and claim that any of my writing that upsets people was actually my AI and I should probably tweak it some more. No offense was intended.

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#96
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is incredible. I almost closed the tab when the text grew out of control, I thought it was a bug.

Are you sure it's supposed to do that? I remember reading this story there back when it was printed, and I don't remember the text doing that. I went to read it again a year or so ago, but couldn't, because the text started growing out of control and froze Firefox (as it just did for me now). How do you actually read it? Edit: hmm, if I very quickly scroll to the bottom of the page, I can click the image to go to the…

Firefox 99 on Windows slows down but eventually gets to the next page. Except for a quick interstitial image of a current time, the next page is here if you want to pick up the story: https://www.sbnation.com/a/17776-football/chapter-1

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The title may, just may, not be intended to be taken literally.

Right? Not everything is a dry research paper. I will never understand the penchant for so many HN users to be such incredible, over-the-top pedantic sticks-in-the-mud when it comes to titles.

I took offense to your comment. I found the title a complete clickbait. I couldn’t find any humor in it that would make me think otherwise. The content of the text is completely unrelated to any part of the title. And I don’t think I am pedantic.

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#98

"Best Novel of Our Generation" Best out of how many novels that you've read over what period of time? And based on what criteria? Isn't the proper headline here something more like, "I enjoyed this book"?

The title may, just may, not be intended to be taken literally.

How should I take it? I failed to think about any interpretation other than being clickbait (by looking contrarian and exaggerated, withou the text corroborating this take).

What is your interpretation of the title?

Re: Nobody will admit the best novel of our generation is about football

#100
post #81

"Best Novel of Our Generation" Best out of how many novels that you've read over what period of time? And based on what criteria? Isn't the proper headline here something more like, "I enjoyed this book"?

I took the title to be hyperbole, exuberance at finding something the author liked so much, not truly the best novel of our generation.

I have no idea what the hell I'm reading, but it's full of stuff like this:

> And if you want to engage in some open-field swordplay and smack some defenders to the ground, you might just load the whole damn front -- b1 through b11. Catching one of those is like being hit with a big sack of nickels.

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