the fact the most-liked review on andrea dworkin’s pornography on goodreads is both essay-length and by a man defending why he likes porn

thanks goodreads.

OH MY GOD DID YOU ALSO NOT LIKE THE ATLAS COMPLEX

no i really REALLY did not djfjgjghfb i had many issues with it; some of them structural and others personal. it just didn’t do what i wanted it or even expected it to do. and reaching the end felt like “what was that?!?!”. when the only emotions a book evokes are frustration and annoyance there is something majorly wrong with it in my opinion. and don’t even get me started on how bored i was. that’s probably the biggest crime of them all.

how about you??? i would love to hear your thoughts!!

Bought a book i've never heard of at full price off a whim only to come home and find that the book has so-so ratings on goodreads . Shoot me?

whenever i finish reading a novel (that i enjoyed) and i check Goodreads to add it to my read list and see the reviews😭 ……

Decided to read one star reviews of my favourite books and I can not not recommend this enough

the good news is that I finished a book and it got me out of my reading slump where I would start things, not finish, switch to something else, not finish

the bad news is that "yes daddy" by jonathan parks-ramage is one of the worst written books I've read in a whiiiile. bland expositiony prose, flat characters, a bunch of weird plot detours. Written like a 200-page Wikipedia summary instead of an actual book

the worst news is that it has such intensely favorable gushing reviews on goodreads, and the people who hated it mostly hated it for a different reason, and so I'm left alone like oKAY BUT THE PROSE WAS SHIT, HOW DO YOU NOT SEE THIS

hot girls write in-depth book reviews on goodreads

a lot of the time i can completely understand why someone doesn't like something i do-- i mean, i know the stuff i love isn't perfect. but with The Grass Dancer it's different. i legit do not get that. stop, don't pass go, don't tell me you didn't like it or didn't understand it, it's my favorite book of all time and my only criticism of it is that there isn't more of it lol

you ever read a review so bad you feel like emailing to arrange a duel

Moral purity OCD ever send u into a spiral so bad at work u nearly miss lunch and don't do ur literal job

Instead u spend literally hours reading critical book reviews and working yourself up because oh god oh no someone said something was problematic about a book/show/etc that you love deeply and now ur brain is convinced ur a terrible bad demon person? For consuming the Problematic Content? Even tho in your saner moments you realize this is stupid and the internet has NO capacity for nuance and SURELY there's a middle ground between "I said this was problematic (without basis) and youre morally impure for enjoying it" and "there's is no such thing as privilege or racism or appropriation" SURELY

I also have to stop letting my flight or fight send me into obsessive spirals it's like. Who tf cares if this internet person with poorly formed opinions thinks [thing you love] is problematic! 1) they're probably not correct, but formed out of bad faith internet discourse 2) even if they are correct, problematic isn't contagious and you aren't morally impure for reading smthn supposedly problematic 3) your OCD is morphing a genuine concern about cultural and racial issues into self flagellation because ur white, the same way it takes minor tenents of Christianity and spins them into ways for you to punish and/or damn yourself. 4) disagreement doesn't need to be conflict or mean your bad and wrong. The internet has no nuance and treast disagreement as moral impurity. You were raised in a dysfunctional family where you still live and were trained to see the slightest disagreement or tone of voice as a danger so that is also making the obsessions and fear worse. It's a brain disease.

But also WHAT IF???

Tldr My specific neuroses feed on and magnify the internets lack of nuance or ability to think critically making me convinced I'm a terrible bad person for believing in my ideals and my heart and duty and Goodness, and this leads to a existential pessimism spiral where everything is meaningless and I have no purpose but ALSO I have to punish myself and go to great lengths to prove I'm not A Bad Person because nothing is worse than being a Bad Person (defined by what metrics? Oh that would be too easy, it changes every OCD episode)

Goodreads and booktok are the worst things that could have happened to the reading community. I swear to all Gods that yes while "I didn't personally like the book" is a valid opinion to have and share, it does not make an informative review. You can't just say "it was badly written" and not give an ounce of context: is it the grammar? Are the characters flat? Are there glaring plotholes?

"Oh the subtext isn't clear enough" What do you want, the author to hand-hold you throughout the entire book? You are supposed to think critically, look for clues in the text, estrapolate your own message. I swear, too many people slept through text analysis classes in school or something.

the most insufferable people are 1 star goodreads reviewers

i keep telling myself i'd get a letterboxd so i can keep track of all my thoughts on movies i've seen but to this day i still haven't made an account

Does your post about creators and tumblr tags extend to the campaign podcast?

Nah, that post was more targeted at a certain type of creator whose ego demands that they constantly involve themself in the fandom because they love the attention, but then the same ego makes them completely unable to handle criticism or haters present in that fandom. Which usually results in them throwing a fit about how toxic and mean the fan spaces are, and how damaging it is to their mental health to see all those mean things - but crucially, they will not remove themselves from those fan spaces.

I think James can handle criticism rationally and could take a step back from the fandom if he ever needed to, so he's not in that class.