Unpopular General Opinions • Page 10

Oh yeah for sure and that's what I've gathered from talking to people there but once that downhill spiral starts it's just as dangerous

 

It's really not as big a step up as you think

 

Lol NOPE

 

Yeah I get you, I guess I'm focusing on the wrong point.

 

yall live weird lives

 

if you're trying to curtail your soda intake, absolutely. taste wise: well, you already know that answer haha

 

sprite is a soda...

 

Trav you're making no sense

 

without caffeine, which doesn't taste as sugary sweet as Coke either

 

Jeezus he's in massive justifiable denial. Now we need two interventions

 

At my work today (every thursday) there is a meeting for alcoholics where they come in and talk to a counsellor about how they are coping with their problem. I often sit in the next room and overhear some of the stories they tell and jesus christ I am in disbelief sometimes. Alcohol ruins lives just as much as heroin and the stigma that it is more acceptable than drugs is a huge part of what makes it so dangerous.

There was one guy who literally cant sleep through the night because his body so desperately craves booze he will wake up with the shakes. Has to keep a bottle by his bedside to drink when he wakes up. Thats probably the least bad of the stories I hear

 

I mean, do what works for you. this has already helped me. I'm not drinking half as much soda

 

It actually is because coke and other dark sodas have phosphoric acid which has been linked pretty hard to esophageal cancer. which is a cancer with one of the absolute highest mortality rates

PSA everybody. I'm serious

 

Yeah most of the people at the alumni group meetings I go to at the rehab I went through are recovering alcoholics and some of their stories are far worse than mine with heroin

 

We are here because we CARE

 

That's what I do for my job!

 

I explain that I used the wrong term literacy below. But some links related to children's mental development and screen time:

Kids And Screen Time: What Does The Research Say?
New screen time rules for kids, by doctors - CNN.com

See below.

I think this is also a generation gap, thing. Don't think you're that much younger than me, but I have a similar experience. This is more in regards to current highschoolers and younger.

Reply to all of you:

First and foremost, literacy was the wrong term used on my part so sorry about that. I was falling asleep as I wrote that and did a terrible job of expressing what I actually meant. So let me try to rephrase:

Video games at their best are a beautiful art. I've played them most of my life, twenty years now since I got my first PS1 at 6. Like Jake said, they have a lot of positives when used in non-addictive tendencies... just like anything else. And I'd say that just putting the blame on video games as opposed to jointly with television (where equal "blame" for the problem lies, if I'm being totally honest) is based more on knowing a large group of current teenagers and kids due to being an active part in my cousins' lives and knowing that very few, if any of them, really watch television/many movies while they all continuously play video games. So there's my inherent bias.

My bigger issue is how video games (and the modern blockbuster) have changed the publishing landscape for children (and how adult publishing has followed suit). I did a terrible job of expressing that in my original post. I'm going to edit it with a link to this post once it's up.

Video games are a sensory experience. There's sound, quick movement, adventure, instant gratification (in the sense that you can achieve things quickly, not that you win games instantly), a wide variety of narratives and sports. In the interest of full disclosure, even the good ones that are art, modern blockbusters do all of this as well. Books were never going to compete with that, and if sales are any indication, they can't compete with that. This is a huge problem on an educational level AND a publishing business level.

As a senior in college, I helped teach a freshman class in my major (English Literature) and of the forty students, thirty-eight of them admitted they hadn't done the majority--if any--of their assigned reading in high school. There's probably an argument that too much reading is required, but judging by my cousin and his friends' work load, I'd have a hard time buying that argument. Thirty-eight potential English majors hadn't read Hamlet in high school, which is astounding. It's widely considered the greatest work in the English language, which they were hoping to study, and when I asked them what was their reasoning for not reading it, I got answers like: "It wasn't engaging." "The words are tough to understand." (Noted: Shakespeare can be difficult, but most high schools use modernized translations to help avoid this.) "It wasn't exciting." (Proving they didn't get to the end where a bunch of people die.)

I don't think that is a failure of the education system, though I'm sure there are things that can be done better in it for sure. In the rise of digital media and the hard sciences, liberal arts education is plummeting across the nation. Communication skills are terrible. Grammar and spelling is horrendous. So much of this is easily fixed by a greater emphasis on reading. But reading can't compete with visual. Just like celery can't compete with donuts.

Moving on to how this has affected publishing. Publishers need to sell books to make money. Kids, even despite all of this, buy more books than anyone except housewives. (YA fiction and Romance fiction trade back and forth for the #1 selling subsection of books every year, with nonfiction in a distant third.) Kids fiction was at a decades all-time low just before Harry Potter exploded. So despite what you think of Harry Potter in any capacity, it's arguably one of the most important books ever written.

Publishers went in search of the next Harry Potter, obviously. I'm sure you're familiar with Twilight, The Hunger Games, Divergent, The Maze Runner, the 5th Wave, and maybe the new guard of Red Queen and mega-authors Sarah J. Maas and Leigh Bardugo (who is a true talent that I feel guilty lumping into this group). Some of these stories are magnificent in raw plot (The Hunger Games would get published on plot alone, for example). Some are so derivative it hurts (Divergent and Red Queen). But one thing literally all of these authors have in common is that they're safe, boring... and sometimes downright terrible crafters of the English language. Their books are short, move incredibly rapid, and are filled with plot holes because of the desire to engage and twist and keep people hooked. There's no doubt in my mind this is a direct influence of the engaging nature of video games and blockbusters. I don't apply these terms to Rowling's work, but even she is in dire need of a willful editor to tell her to quit using adverbs.

Kids won't buy books that don't engage them the way another passion of theirs does. Just like with music. And I know there's a gap involved regarding tastes, and that's okay, but I think it's beyond that now. Bad writing creates bad readers and bad readers creates a hosts of other problems we're beginning to see the fruit of. I firmly believe that. And yes, if they're "bad writers" how are they getting published? Because it's a business and they've very quickly deduced that bad writing sells.

And despite YA being one of the best selling subsects of publishing in the world, it's only valued at 3 billion a year in revenue. Video games are at 21 billion. And we all know what blockbusters do throughout the year.

A note: middle grade fiction (ie 7-12 year old readers) thankfully escapes this. Rick Riordan is a master crafter, writes complex narratives and handles representation very importantly, and still manages to educate despite his books being hilarious and perfect. Fully believe every kid needs to read the Percy Jackson books.

We're finally seeing a good push for representation in books and getting faster results than in other forms of media, too. Next month a novel called "The Hate U Give" has the potential to rock the world. We're seeing more far-eastern inspired narratives with non-write narrators, more depression narratives, more crippled (for lack of a better term) narratives, more Muslim narratives, more sports narratives, etc. Kids need to know they're a part of this world, and they can find that in books when they can't always find it in other media. I don't want them to miss that.

And because YA sells so well, it directly influences the adult market trying to turn young adults into adult readers. (Statistically, most people who fall in love with YA fiction continue to read it well on into their adult lives.) The new guard of fantasy writers such as Brandon Sanderson write plots at the same level of the masters of previous generations, but their actual crafting level is much simplified.

And I'm not trying to be some sort of down with electronic media person. Far from it. I just happen to have my passion and dream career in a medium that is directly affected by others where the ramifications haven't been learned fully yet by the great digital shift of our lifetimes. So maybe I should've just said, "Books aren't important enough anymore and while good for people at their best, video games and movies are killing books and it's not worth the cost."

tl;dr I love books, long-live books.

 

rick and morty is better than hamlet, your point is invalid

 

I wish I liked books.

 

I'm an English teacher. Not only did I not read the books required of me in college, I haven't read some of the books I'm currently teaching to my students. I did create a 2K player last night that kinda looked like me and it took about 45 minutes. We'll all be okay

 

What about audiobooks?

 

I read maybe more than the average adult. But it's mostly news or science articles, never books as an adult.

 

LOL

 

lmao off

 

At the crux of English education, once you master reading comprehension and analysis of literature, it shouldn't matter if you read the works if you can pull enough information out to discuss themes/whatever is required of you. Forcing students to read "Classic" works is harmful and pushes a lot of them away from reading. Guiding them through the stories, creating discussion and drawing connections to their own lives is, IMO, more essential. If they want to pick up a book, they will. I'm just giving them the tools to analyze.