It’s weird how you guys throw “reading” in there, but you always cite hours of reading you know people aren’t going to do.

Literacy and healthcare are the cornerstones of the socialist project. Our longest running group that meets regularly is our book club, which predates the existence of the site. Our most active members tend to be at least decently well-read in terms of communist theory. Even more if you expand to nerdy fiction.

And you can’t really make any actual points from all that reading in a couple paragraphs.

I’ll bite.

I’m currently reading Inventing Reality by Michael Parenti. It’s an analysis of how, in capitalist societies, media companies consist of many stakeholders and natural social filters which influence the news to converge on simplified narrative versions of the truth which is biased in favor of capital. This process doesn’t need to happen through direct centralized conspiracy, but rather through interest convergence and socioeconomic in-group preference. It’s similar to Noam Chomsky’s work on the topic, but I prefer Parenti’s prose and structure.

You’d have to make a foothold before you can get people to spend hours of their life reading what you want.

I used to think this until I realized how many hours I spent reading and replying to long threads like this. This format is much more conducive to spreading falsehood than people recommending books.

I’m open to actual points, but all I see here is bandwagoning and attempted peer pressure. It’s like 2015 r/the_donald techniques part two.

There were people on r/t_d giving you book recommendations? I shudder at the thought.