Comment by ThrowawayR2 2 days ago
> "massive fanfic archives"
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.
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 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.