Plausibly some kids might still be reading entire novels worth of text online on the regular. Think of all the massive fanfic archives (Including original fics) Lots of fanfic authors have fans of their own, and those have got to be coming from somewhere.
It doesn't need to be in dead tree format. It doesn't need to be famous authors. Just so long as they read!
Ye gods, that's like saying that youth may not be willing to consume a nutritious, balanced diet but we should rejoice that they are at least consuming vast quantities of sugar and fat. With vanishingly rare exceptions, fanfic is crap in textual form, laden to bursting with literary sins both venal and mortal.
The usefulness of reading books is not about what factual information you can glean from them. They're about engaging the imagination and making you take hypothetical situations seriously. In that sense traditionally published works aren't going to offer all that much more than fanfiction.
> They're about engaging the imagination and making you take hypothetical situations seriously.
- that nudges readers in interesting (to society) or new (to the reader) directions. Or at least in not in actively harmful ways. Otherwise, OF, livestreaming, or whatever latest social media BS, etc. are king: purposefully designed to create parasocial relationships that trick you thinking you have chance to be noticed.
My main beef with most fan fiction is that in my experience, it unconsciously locks readers into an extremely rigid way of thinking. Of course, this varies from fandom to fandom but woe upon the budding writer who ships the wrong pair or violates the canon.
It mirrors religious dogma, but somehow even worse when compared to all the disputes in Christianity throughout the centuries. (Plus, there's at least a connection between Christianity to modern democracy.)
People said all kinds of nonsense about comic books and cheap novels leading kids astray in the past. What actually happened is those kids ended up being slightly better readers.
That you don't like something doesn't mean it's actually harmful.
People said that comic books and pulp novels were morally harmful and caused juvenile delinquency, which is indeed nonsense. However that has nothing to do with the quality and depth of the writing so your post is irrelevant.
The writing quality and complexity of amateur content, even long-form is only around the level of a YA novel, truth be told alot of the stuff I was reading back in junior high in my school library had more depth than this.
It's good that you can get people reading, but reading the equivalent of pulp is very different from real novel that isn't so bounded by tropes or genre limits.
Maybe even 99+% these days, seeing how easy it is to publish your first finger-painting online. Doesn't mean there isn't any good stuff, or even a lot of good stuff. 1% of a lot is still a lot.
(ps. and once you get people reading, they tend to keep doing it and develop taste over time. if it's even just a few who wouldn't have done it before. That's good, right?)
(pps. For example: at 2M words, I think pirateaba might exceed the "first 1M words are practice" threshold)
Even without the, you know, murder stuff, I think we can do better for kids than another generation of "rationalists", considering the track record here.
Who cares? If people enjoy it, let them enjoy it. I've read a few YA novels as an adult that I enjoyed, even though I regularly read more complex stuff.
Most people, for most of history, have only ever enjoyed what might be considered "low quality" entertainment - pulp fiction, shitty plays, etc.
> real novel that isn't so bounded by tropes or genre limits.
Interestingly, even discounting YA and other stuff like that, you are only describing a very small subset of novels.
That cherry picks the best of the best without comparing them with the other 99.9% of their contemporaries who were pulp authors. They and their literary output are forgotten for good reasons.
If the works are so great then you've got nothing to worry about. Kids will read them on their own. Of course we both know that's not true, because the works are not that great.
They can read Minecraft strategy guides and Yahoo auction fan fics for all I care, since that's a lot better than nothing. I remember not wanting to read what school assigned me and how that killed my desire to read most fiction writing, and would prefer that not happen to more kids.
Art is a matter of taste, and if you go counter to your audience's taste, don't be surprised if they disengage.
Beyond a basic level of literacy, I'm not sure it's clear that reading pulp is better for any defined outcome than reading nothing. And I'm not sure why it would be. Once you are able to fully grasp a level of literacy, reading more of that level or below probably isn't really doing anything for you.
I am not responding to the examples, and I am not challenging the claim that famous vs not famous author does not matter, or that dead tree vs screen does not matter; I am raising the question whether it's just a quantity issue ("Just so long as they read", "entire novels worth of text").
Is it? I am not sure either way. Do you lose something by only reading chapters of a novel but never the whole story from the beginning to the end, even if you're still reading the same amount?
>Also, I thought that Yudkowsky's HPMOR fanfic had more interesting ideas than the whole Rowling series, which I like a lot.
Then you do not understand writing. If Yudkowski really had more interesting ideas, then he would have been able to do HPMOR as original fiction.
Rowling is actually really good, inventing very charming things, very fun sentences, and there's nothing even close in HPMOR (I have read it myself, and enjoyed it to some degree), but you really underestimate how good Rowling is.
Yes, pedantically, and as mentioned in the Notes in the Text in most editions, the Lord of the Rings is a single book sometimes published in three volumes.
It doesn't need to be in dead tree format. It doesn't need to be famous authors. Just so long as they read!
For long form original see eg:
* The last angel https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/the-last-angel.24420...
* The wandering inn https://wanderinginn.com/2017/03/03/rw1-00/
* Or eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel) which made its way off the net and into print, possibly to the detriment of both. :-P Original location (afaict) (no longer available there) : https://www.galactanet.com/writing.html