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Ian Boudreau@iboudreau.bsky.social |
The thing with these guys is they view communications media (speech, fiction, film, TV series, drama, you name it) as data transmission and nothing more. The Great Gatsby is a list of events and characters and if you can cut that down to 500 words, you're maximizing something.
40 replies 169 reposts 685 likes
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ollie
@ossiel.bsky.social
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So silly ~ this already has existed for some time
2 replies 0 reposts 4 likes
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Gabe Graziani
@gabegraziani.bsky.social
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This is why these folks believe 'plot holes' are the most egregious narrative crime imaginable and 'plot hole' is defined by anything that happens where the audience does not already have full understanding of the contributing factors to the event.
5 replies 4 reposts 64 likes
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Ciarán
@ciaran84.bsky.social
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If I could add to everything above and go back to the original post; "maximising your reading potential"? This would do the complete opposite no? Reading isn't just knowing the plot.
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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Conner
@connermac.bsky.social
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I argued once with someone that reading a summery summary isn't the same as actually reading the book... these people don't get it.
0 replies 0 reposts 4 likes
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blue jeans bloviated
@bloviated.bsky.social
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I think they're still just in the mindset of a highschool English student who is only reading in order to pass a class
0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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David Rafferty
@davidrafferty.bsky.social
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This is just the 2020s equivalent of “here’s a plot summary so you can pretend to be a well-read person at parties.”
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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John George
@jcgeorge.bsky.social
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People have already pointed out that Classics Illustrated and Cliff Notes/Spark Notes have done this for a long time. Let me be the first to point out:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=uwAO...
0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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Ian Boudreau
@iboudreau.bsky.social
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When you talk to another person it's like modems sending files to each other. They truly do not understand that anything else is going on
2 replies 2 reposts 161 likes
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Alex Merz
@merz.bsky.social
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If this was a new thing Cliff’s Notes would never have existed.
0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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Jeffw
@jeffw.bsky.social
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Brilliantly put.
0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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E-W
@edashw.bsky.social
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So I briefly advised one of these. The business idea was classroom material for K-8 kids with serious cognitive impairments, so they could read the same things as kids in their grade. I'm not sure who this one is selling to, but "if you've got brain damage, this is the book for you" is accurate
2 replies 0 reposts 10 likes
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Nick Dixon
@ndixon.bsky.social
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This whole concept is essentially Google Translate for morons: reduce everything, even the richest and most sophisticated writing, to something an 8-year-old could understand. It's infantilism leading to infantilization of an entire society.
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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PlaceboMessiah
@placebomessiah.bsky.social
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In the simplified version you completely miss how The Great Gatsby is just Dracula for middling white people
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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Little Gems
@lettucewrangler.bsky.social
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It's already a pretty short book. That's part of why it's such a common choice for high school literature classes
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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En Buen Ora
@enbuenora.bsky.social
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'look could we make Cliffs Notes but way, way dumber'
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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Eric Einsame
@cyclingennui.bsky.social
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Cliff is going to be upset…
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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Violet The Gummy Shark
@exiledviolet.bsky.social
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This is like what people do to real food to make baby food except for books. I'm pretty sure I can comprehend this man-made horror but I don't think I want to.
0 replies 0 reposts 4 likes
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Jim Whitlam
@bocklam.bsky.social
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I mean it’s the fucking great gatsby. The plot is one thing, the *style* of the thing is what makes it sublime.
1 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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Brian (rough hands; soft heart)
@brian456.bsky.social
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It just breaks my mind that the "hard" passage in the example is a fairly simple, easily understood declarative sentence.
1 replies 0 reposts 11 likes
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Just here to chill
@garbagearsonist.bsky.social
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When my kid was, like, 10 I pulled a Cormac McCarthy novel off a shelf to make a point about the style of prose and what it adds to a read; how come he could get it and - you know what, never mind
3 replies 0 reposts 8 likes
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Chet Faliszek
@chetsucks.com
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There is no art... only information that can be disrupted.
0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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Career Quartermaster
@cmiciek.bsky.social
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This mindset is the (current) abso distillation of the ancient Greek despising of work, as something to avoid or put on the backs of lesser people while one enjoys leisure. Anything -reading, creating art, cooking/eating, etc - perceived as work must be made efficient or offloaded to lesser beings.
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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David W
@dewelsh.bsky.social
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The bit driving me bonkers is the flattening of “younger and more vulnerable years” to “young.” Even if you’re simplifying the sentence as a learning aid, vulnerable is doing a lot of heavy lifting to tell you what’s happening!
1 replies 0 reposts 3 likes
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Godspeed You! Woke Moralists
@dashwallkick.bsky.social
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they're happier reading wikipedia summaries than actually watching things because it means they're less efficient somewhere else. the idea of savoring is alien to them.
1 replies 0 reposts 17 likes
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James Might Be A Little Broken...As A Treat
@equaloppdork.bsky.social
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This is so wild. How a book is written and how the characters speak is so central to my enjoyment of the novels I like. Taking out the weird turns of phrase from something like 1984 or Fahrenheit 451 completely destroys the world building.
0 replies 0 reposts 3 likes
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Jason, Sleve McDichael, Bluto, He Who Must Shove It
@thebiglutovsky.bsky.social
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I just actually read the example... These people don't comprehend wanting to feel things, to grapple with those feelings to understand oneself and the world around them, and wanting to convey feelings to others. Is it just tv static between their ears?
0 replies 0 reposts 3 likes
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boxelder
@boxelder.bsky.social
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just read the fucking wikipedia summary if all you care about is the skeleton of the plot
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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Marxist Monster Mayhem
@calderwood.bsky.social
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Possibly the funniest example of this. Gatsby’s beauty is almost exclusively in its prose. But my students tried this as well—to somehow distill the plot outline & themes from online sources. Such a waste of time! The love story is sort of immature; the sentences are some of the best in English.
0 replies 0 reposts 6 likes
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@ipnotica.bsky.social
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ages back I recall ads for subscriptions of simple versions of airport bookstore hits meant to "save time" so you could regurgitate (not digest) talking points on the latest Robert T. Kiyosaki, Dave Ramsey or Thomas Friedman banger
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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Julian Lass
@julianlass.bsky.social
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It's not just "these guys" - everything is seen now as data to mine. We're all caught in it. The challenge isn't stopping AI; it's preserving what remains in a world that treats everything as a resource to be extracted for profit.
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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Benjamin Reed (aka Raccoon Fink)
@rangerrick.bsky.social
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I assume it’s because these people don’t read for fun or knowledge, they read only so they know enough of the gist to prove they know it and thus can “prove” they’re smart to other people who also don’t read books.
0 replies 0 reposts 2 likes
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Ghidorahstan64 (he/him)
@deathginger.bsky.social
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In the 90's there was a movement to translate Shakespeare into "modern" English to the kids could appreciate Shakespeare's... plots, I guess? Remember that? Right. No one does. This will be gone and dust before the leaves fall in Vermont.
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes
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Eric
@ericcalkins.bsky.social
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Same people who when they do engage with art, it’s almost always on purely superficial levels of stuff like plotting. Also typically the same people who like to assert that there is “objectively” good and bad art.
0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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@electricchimp.bsky.social
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fascists also are determined to remove everything that makes people think and feel anything other than fascist thoughts and feelings completely from the world if they can't get away with book burnings, they go this route
2 replies 0 reposts 21 likes
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Chris
@cbn.bsky.social
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light: green [x] hope: represented [x] gatsby: dead [x] current: ceaseless [x] ok more time for linkedin recommended books
0 replies 2 reposts 36 likes
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KakapOu
@inviolet.bsky.social
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On a similar note, we could also just read the wiki plot section for movies, instead of watching them. What an efficient way to solve entertainment.
0 replies 0 reposts 6 likes
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Harmonyfb
@harmonyfb.bsky.social
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I'm still stuck on the characterization of The Great Gatsby as a "hard" book. Seriously?
2 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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Gavin B
@ghostflaneur.bsky.social
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yeah, its one of the reasons I get a bit twitchy when, in librarian speak, everyone is considered an "information bearing object" - because eventually that way means text stops being an aesthetic and just something to be altered or removed.
0 replies 0 reposts 1 likes
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Gabriela 🇵🇷🏳️🌈🥄♾️
@gabrielart.bsky.social
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When I was in high school, a classmate read a summarized version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. But that summary, which was written by a person, was so condensed and so simplified it was essentially a different book, that he failed the reading comprehension test.
1 replies 0 reposts 3 likes
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Richard Keppler 🦋
@richardkeppler.bsky.social
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You just need to watch the Family Guy version
www.youtube.com/watch?v=63lp...
0 replies 0 reposts 0 likes