What happened to Zoomers that caused them to stop reading/fall for the stem meme...

Boils down to your parents

They seem more responsible than 30 year old boomers

it’s also worth noting that the current degenerate, dystopian political dogma is not shared by a single great thinker throughout human history. that’s why the more academically-minded degenerates constantly cite degenerate late 20th century “philosophers”. they have no one else to lean on.

yet in popular culture the romans, the greeks, socrates, kant, descartes, marcus aurelius, etc are still seen as honorable and wise men. this is a vestige of a better time. not a single one of those men considered great would ever think of our society as anything more than a degenerate, sinful clown world

political and communal virtue is almost entirely dead. anything one does in benefit of the stability of the system, even if it seems harmless or even positive, is ultimately pernicious. the only virtue that can really be assumed in this world is individual, or familiar, if you are lucky enough to have a family that is not completely lost

I'm studying comp sci right now and I can't stand it. All I'm good at is the humanities, but I couldn't go to college for something that wouldn't someday pay off the investment (American), so I'm stuck doing that which I feel totally unsuited for. It's really such a fucking meme, not everyone should be a programmer. Maybe if I'm lucky I could go back to school later on, or double major.

I suppose then I did fall for the STEM meme, but not because I had a choice.

>I suppose then I did fall for the STEM meme, but not because I had a choice.
Yes you did, and you do. You're just accepting misery and mediocrity.

awfully presumptuous, user

Go ahead and suggest something then.

I used to study English at an elite university and switched to information systems at a local state university which is basically CS for mathlets. If you did the degree you would qualify for jobs that pay $70k in most major cities. I highly recommend it if you want a degree less demanding than CS. It doesn't pay as well but $50-70k is about all you need these days anyway. A good IS program should be able to teach you SQL, Windows, Linux, etc. and even a bit of software engineering.

job saturation means that they found enough niggers doing it for under value

stemlordery educates the hymenity fags with facts and logic.

BA in Crim J here. In law enforcement now and Spanish would have been a more practical choice of major for this line of work. However, I don't even know if a four year degree would have made me functionally fluent.

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>In 1970, seven in 10 students thought it was very important or essential to “develop a meaningful philosophy of life” through education, while about four in 10 (and five in 10 men) put a priority on using it to “make more money.” By the mid-’80s, these ratios had flipped. Of all the statistics on the humanities I’ve seen, I find this one the most depressing: For the past 40 years, the percentage of first-year college students who think highly enough of crafting a life philosophy in the course of their studies to muster the energy to fill out a bubble indicating as much has flatlined below half.

Lmao, you can read books and learn languages for free. The only reasons to blow tens of thousands of dollars and four years to attend a university are to earn a degree and make useful connections.

You're not going dedicate the time and energy to an academic focus without the social and financial pressure of a university. All of the knowledge in the classroom can be found on your computer, but you will not dive into it without the structured time limits of academia.

It mostly has to do with a precipitously changing job market. Economic factors are some of the biggest psychological motivators, and always have been. If the economic utility of sitting in front of a computer going clickity clack on a keyboard all day outweighs that of reading Shakespeare, you can bet your ass people are going to trend toward the former.

Then there are some maladjusted neurotics like me who prefer the latter. There's always a few.

>he fell for the reading meme

>caused them to stop reading/fall for the stem meme
I expected more from Yea Forums. I am a programmer, I like it, I even enjoy it and in my free time I only read. Reading fiction and non fiction will supplement anyone regardless of their proffered profession or a field.
But to somewhat answer ops question, why nobody reads, especially people predisposed to humanities? its because of modern technology, mainly social networks, being always connected etc, I believe all of this has caused great damage to people who cant even handle technology at best of times, their brain has been forced to develop in a certain way (accompanied by smartphones and facebook from before they could even read) and that is massively affecting their attention span and the way they process information.

Have sex

This is true. Lots of people even struggle with online courses (at least when taking a full courseloads) because of the relatively lack of structure and lack of negative reinforcement to discourage slacking off. You can't understatement the power of social motivators. They're literally what keeps humans functional.

Depressing, but should be somewhat nuanced by the fact that in the 1970s a smaller portion of the population would enter college. Now it's considered almost mandatory for nearly everything, even for being a jobless aimless fuck.

Nowadays you either have to live for your career or do completely soul crushing menial work which will only get worse in the future. In the good old days you could get somewhat comfortable job fairly easily, you just didn't have to put in as much effort. Now you're exhausted from simply trying to reach a feeling of security in your life (which you might never find), it doesn't leave you with much energy for reading books and doing other nonessential things. Might as well just watch netflix to zone out. Everything can and will always get worse.

According to some graph that was posted here a few months ago, nurses are one of the fields that will least be affected by artificial intelligence. Being a nurse sounds pretty easy, and they are still in demand.

I'd say it depends on what kind of books. Anyone remember geronimo stilton? Everyone was reading those 8 years ago. Same thing with hunger games and other pop literature more recently. Reading rates are largely governed by what's popular with a core group that does much of the reading and accounting for most book sales. People prefer books that read similar to how they speak their language, or books with relatable themes, or with just easily digestible entertainment. It's why books that are considered classics and taught in schools tend to leave reading a bad taste in the minds of most children in school, which can later on deter them from reading anything heavier than self help or lit from non experimental contemporary authors.

What is not considered accepting mediocrity these days? Even being president doesn't seem that impressive or virtuous, because you essentially trade in your identity to be a simulation of a president.

Even the smartest, most gifted people just end up fucking around in academia, developing a few cures for diseases over their lifespan, or solving a few unsolved math problems. Maybe they work their way into silicon valley, or work high up in a fortune-500 company. Some end up making f-500 companies. But all this leads to nothing. Even the most talented will just end up becoming the top of their highly-specified profession, who will just form an extremely small task in the construction of the combined efforts of an attempt at maximum capability on a modulated systematic scale, which will one day be reconceptualized to be contained inside one person which will make the rest of us look embarrassing in comparison.

Who are the greatest people of the last decade? All I can think of is musicians. In order to not "accept mediocrity" in this restraining era of human existance, you need to go against a lot of cultural and societal values head-on, nearly in striding, on top of being an insane fearless supergenius powerartist. The closest we got is Kanye West and Ted Kazinski, who each got half of those characteristics.

*Kaczynski

I just want a job where I can work from home, so I can live in a cozy cabin in the woods and make enough money to support a family.

become a youtuber

Don't you think the e-celeb bubble will pop sooner or later.

I'm not sure what you mean. If you can find something to spark interest through a video, you can start making money through patreon or whatever. Varg Vikernes sells books and fucking tabletop rpgs by promoting them inbetween his anti-civilization lectures. This allows him to support his wife and seven kids. Let that sink in.

>Also, everyone either went to college to study engineering,
To put it simply one has to base one's education on vocational training in order to meet the demands of the market. Contrary to popular belief a free market doesn't necessarily mean you are "free" to choose what you want to do for a living. The vast majority of people have to go where the jobs are and to base their life decisions on that or else they won't have any career prospects.

So really education becomes an attendant of the market process, where there is collective betting on where the labor market will trend, except people have to bet their livelihoods and many thousands dollars in debt on that assumption. Which is clearly a deeply flawed and perhaps unethical approach to a society but I digress.

Education becomes a sort of prediction market, where the enrollment into different degree programs tracks the demand for certain labor categories.

>You're not going dedicate the time and energy to an academic focus without the social and financial pressure of a university

Is this seriously the mindset of people in university? lmao
Pathetic
Please don't ever study the humanities

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GIVE ME FINANCIAL SECURITY OR GIVE ME DEEEEEEEEEEEEEEATH

I, myself, am guilty of being a boomer who doesn't read books all too often. At the same time, though, I'm not so dull as to assume I could just jump into a STEM degree and succeed so long as I have the money and will to grind towards it.
I would like to add some wrinkles to my smoothbrain though, OP; what are some books the common brute such as myself should read to learn a thing or two? What should the common man read to become more.

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Why do you choose the comments that you do, havesex-poster?

>all these words and no mention of capitalism
Sperg-tastic post

>The 'have sex' poster

Part of a condom company's eccentric social media and advertising team. He utilizes a manipulation tactic that relies on Occam's Razor. Has contributed to an exponential increase in sales to the millennial reader demographic.

Hear hear

A ton of people read on their own (if you hang around decently smart people), just nobody talks about it. Sure, there's a ton of shallow STEM cucks, but don't assume there aren't genuinely smart people who go into STEM for practical reasons or genuine interest and enjoy the arts on their own time.

Just liberal (=Anglo-American) culture reaching its logical conclusion of complete self-destruction, writhing on the ground and shrieking about privilege, rights, bigotry, etc.

Between chivalry, Individualism (tm), empiricism, Rights, equality, "democracy", and more, there are a lot of fundamental errors here.

I read this whole thread and didn’t see any alternatives to STEM still. I realized STEM sucks while I was getting my CS degree and that history or literature would be something I find more interesting, but I didn’t see any viable career paths. What’s the alternative to STEM? Business? I see those two areas as the big ones if you want a job and everything else as fun stuff that I don’t have the privilege of learning about unless it’s on my free time

Starting your own business?? Why does it seem like white Americans think their only avenue for acquiring money is through a college degree and a 'career'? Shit I'm an arab, my family has been in this country for 50 years now and the only people who got college degrees got it just to study something they liked without any thought of getting a job. All of my family members made and are making big money from business ownership in the beginning, anything you can get your hands on and learn quickly, and then from there they moved into real estate. My dad worked a shit job for a couple years living with his parents until he saved enough money to buy a small business. From there its a gradual acceleration of income if you're willing to work hard and do not need a prestigious role attached to your persona. If you want something easy, clock in, clock out, get paid, then go for stem. If you want to work from home than get your brain moving and think up something, nobody is going to give it to you. We can sit here and complain about the state of things, but if you do not care to change the system and still want to make money then start thinking. Again, nobody is going to give it to you.
I knew I would kill myself if I worked a typical 9-5 so I instead took a risk and started a business bases on something I enjoy and is basically just passive income

Americans aren't really entrepenurial. Why do you think most people who make it in the US are foreigners? Also they don't tend to have any kind of safety net in the form of family etc. that say an Arab or Chinaman would have. Remember lots of American parents kick their kids out at 18.

This is the right mentality. I think there's a lot of truth to both the pessimistic and optimistic/virtuous views, but the only productive way to view things is optimistically.

With college tuition as high as it is, while I'd love to minor in the classics I can't afford the debt.

not OP but I can't recommend the Stoics enough. I know they've become a meme at this point but Seneca and Marcus Aurelius in particular offer extremely insightful platitudes that have restructured the way I think about pleasure, pain, duty, virtue, and my fellow man.

Thanks for the advice and that’s something I have thought about a lot but I still have a lot of thinking to do. You have a whole family of business owners and entrepreneurs. I don’t have any network. I worked hard for my money and am going to be very cautious when I have no idea where to start

I bet if we read good shit in high school instead of infantilising political drivel there’d be a lot more literate people my age. The English program in the public school system selects for highly compliant YA/Rupi Kaur readers. If I were an English teacher I’d force my students to read Blood Meridian instead of Lord of the Flies, just to see what happens

Now, with the new generation of indoctrinated, female, 23-year-old English teachers my old high school is trying to remove classics like The Odyssey in favor of shitty modern literature that agrees with the teachers' feminist/multicultural ideologies. I feel bad for my younger sibling and the younger generations who are forced to endure (and for the most part, buy into) the indoctrination.

I remember when the English department at my high school held a survey as to what books to add or remove from the curriculum and after that all of the semi classics we read like the Great Gatsby and the like were replaced on the basis that they were created by ‘dead white men,’ as stated by almost every girl in my class

You can also learn Calculus and advanced mathematics for free, or for a pretty cheap price.
Every user who thinks they can't afford an education, either elective or for career, check this.

1. First (perhaps optionally) get a tome like this, as a comprehensive reference:
amazon.com/Princeton-Companion-Mathematics-Timothy-Gowers/dp/0691118809/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Princeton companion to mathematics&link_code=qs&qid=1556600149&s=gateway&sourceid=Mozilla-search&sr=8-1
2. Get a graphing claculator, physically or otherwise.
meta-calculator.com
3. Go on youtube, search for lessons, as a stand in for a lecture.
youtube.com/results?search_query=learn calculus&page=&utm_source=opensearch
4. Then, find a website with a comprehensive lesson plan.
khanacademy.org/math/calculus-1
edx.org/learn/calculus
5. Start browsing relevant communities, like /sci/.

It took me less than five minutes to figure out a plan to learn calculus. Precalc, if you want to start easier is also available for free, I think.

This same methodology applies to:
(In career)
Programming (sites like codeacademy exist)
IT (check this, youtube.com/watch?v=2eLe7uz-7CM full course on CompTIA A+ cert, and with youtube, you can watch on 1.5 - 2 x speed, get the cert, and be eligible for an entry IT job).
(In Gen Ed)
Introductory Physics (youtube.com/results?search_query=physics intro course)
Or any Introductory Science, really.
Shit, you can probably replicate more than introductory.

It's easy. Do things like 1. Research what textbooks a given class might use, 2. seeing the general course sequence a degree or specialization might have on a uni's website, to get a sense of how the material builds, and 3. search for either free or cheap collegiate resources. A lot of Uni's give out course material for free or for cheap.

What you can't get from this is mentorship and criticism, and guided growth in skills like reading comprehension and writing. You can't learn how to be a good communicator. I think it makes more sense for traditional institutional education to focus around the humanities, for this reason.

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really user i thought the field that will be least affected by artificial intelligence will be goddamn artificial intelligence

>When I was in high school a couple years ago I hadn’t met a single person who regularly read.
How would you know? Because they don't put up a 'im so literary' label? Reading is mundane, everyone does it every day, reading books is a tiny step.

Do you think reading text messages, emails, or news stories is the same as reading Crime and Punishment?

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No, I do not, where did you get that idea? By ignoring my post? I bet you base most of your worth and identity on pseudo-aristocratic LARPing. Pathetic subhuman.

That future already arrived, I was only saved from plebdom by Yea Forums rec charts

This might be true for normalplebs that need social support but they are more career focused anyway. I learned coding, art history and mathematics (beyond what I had to do for my electrical engineer degree) outside university.
I've had more success in the first and last than in my supposed academic major.
In many disciplines (say, anything about programming) it is widely recognized that university is just for connections and that you will learn just as well outside college. This is true of virtually all subjects todat but in some disciplines academics like to larp as 14th century scholars having a monopoly on knowledge.

Mindless entertainment became a thing. Stuff like video games and TV series are easily available. Reading even 300 years ago always served an entertainment purpose. Video games and movies are much more easy on the brain and take no effort. Problem is they are also made for brainlets.

In my country only 4 out of 10 have read a book since high school. Seems high to me

Quads of truth.
I was like that until I my 18s. Then something inside me changed and made me drop all that vacuous rubbish high paced endorphins-making "leisure" activities and I started reading for the first time (I never read anything at school, looked at online summaries) those internet culture consumerism toys only make you a low willed person, at the mercy of the powerful people (those who read)
Drop videogames, TV and social media. Trust me. It would be ideal to drop Yea Forums but who can?

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Because the boomers completely fucked us.

Adhd and "post-lexia" are symptoms of late capitalism's constant flow of entertainment. Its pretty obvious that the entertainment machine and constant access to it mediated by a phone which serves as an extension of the self would rewire the brain, its reward systems, and its capability to concentrate. We live in an age that relies on images/signs as opposed to language.

I'm a zoomer and many of my friends read for fun.

Eh I'm 24 and I read for fun or I play games. I don't think it's that bad some people just dont like reading some don't like video games. Whatever man.

The economic machine of production and consumption requires STEM to function and keep up. Obama pushed public schools to focus on STEM so that we the US could compete in the global economy. Education today is merely a factory to churn out machines.

Nice quads grandpa, but don't be that guy. There's just as many "mindless" genre fiction books as there are mindless movies and video games. And just like with books, some are harder to read(watch/play) and more demanding of your attention span and critical thinking than others.

I'll agree though that visual media can be more addictive and harder to put down because of the sounds and colors. And that it's easier for their creators to use them as skinner boxes to exploit your psychology and make you waste more time and money.

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While I'm not American, the saturation in the STEM market is exactly why I never considered it (aside from the fact that I'm genuinely a brainlet when it comes to all things STEM).

I'm doing a Humanities/Social Science degree in the hopes of getting a comfy little job dealing with people. I don't really care about money, I just want to do something that feels fulfilling.

But varg had plenty of money to set up his almost self sufficient lifestyle in the woods,including the land that his wife had.Speaking of his wife she is literally french royalty and they will get the money if they ever need them for something

Most normies never cared much for books,there just wasn't much to do in the past.Today every normie is connected to his friends at all times and has probably something better to do than sit down and read.And even if he doesn't,there is plenty of much more easily accessible and enjoyable entertainment a click away

>eng*neer complaining about muh academic muhnopology on knowledge
tell us more about the theory of everything you’ve worked out

The actual, non-ironic asnwer? Much of the softer "sciences"/humanities became dominated by jargon-toting hacks using word salad to look deep and just generally feign intelligence, and in many ways have just become a front for armchair activism. This trend can be traced directly to French academy, and more broadly to idealism philosophy(particularly Hegel), that used(and still uses) word salad as a way to obfuscate the actual meaning of the text and thus make the writer seem smarter and the reader less willingly to challenge what he is reading, basically by beating him by exhaustion and using the vagueness created by the obfuscation to dismiss criticism.
tl;dr: Modern humanities mostly use sophistry as it main method of inquiry.

This is disingenuous because it doesn't account for how competitive everything has become. There's no time to develop a meaningful, somewhat logically consistent philosophy of life when you're expected to have so much on a resume. Exceptional grades, volunteer hours, internships, extra-curriculars, changing cover letters for every resume sent. We just don't have the time...

When college costs 20 grand a semester there's less inclination to spend that time learning anything that won't one day make you money. They should stop calling it third-level education and call it what it is, career preparation and wheat-chaff-separation

>If you want something easy, clock in, clock out, get paid, then go for stem
this is not accurate, people who are not predisposed towards stem will most likely drop out at one point or another or will hate their job for the rest of their lives.

>will hate their job for the rest of their lives
This is pretty much what half of zoomers are like now. Virtually any STEMlord of any worth is self-taught - picking up math, physics or IT as a hobby by the time they're 12 at fairly competent level (though obviously not very disciplined). College education is there as a mere bonus, and most of the time not even necessary.

However ton of zoomers in IT I come in contact with are not like that, they're mere code monkeys of the worst caliber, think pajeet meme pasting answers from SO with no ability for independent problem solving whatsoever. They follow the career path for same reason a pajeet does - solely for the prospect of employment security. There's use for them, sure, but it sucks to be them - the career is just glorified burger flipping, doing job they have no genuine talent or passion for.

image based digital natives
not conducive to text, never-mind longform text

its really bad, before people who stem wasnt for them would just drop out, nowadays it seems standards have dropped a lot because most people pass even if they havent got a clue, I know cs graduates who could not write hello world program if their life depended on it, thats how it is.

It's true! I've got about a stash of them despite that I never have sex.

Porn

>implying people read more back in the day
This misinformation meme need to stop. Millennials might read shitty books but they read more than older people.

thanks Chomsky

(i think there's actually a lot of truth to this. my experience in college has shown me that you can coast fairly well in the humanities by couching very simple ideas in unnecessarily complicated language)

>thanks Chomsky
As far as I know, Chomsky is pretty pretty critic of that kind of stuff in academy, or are you saying that is something Chomsky would say?

This is all well and good but who has the time to do this if they are, for example, working 9-5 in some factory? After work, daily chores, feeding and socialising you've barely got time for sleep let alone teaching yourself calculus comprehensively.

I've had experience with this myself, although in reverse as in I'm doing a STEM degree and teaching myself humanities and the like. I worked in a factory from the age of 18 until last year at 25 when I had enough and decided to go to university. It's only now I'm a student I have enough free time to read a lot and teach myself things like humanities and history in my spare time.

>not even hello world
Here (eurocuck education) it's not as bad. The college curriculum simply adapted to market demand. Most of these people can code - if you give them step by step recipe and drill them with codified rigor how to do things for 6 years. It's a lot like cooking. Monkeys need to follow recipe and they know how to translate the recipe to final product.

But monkey is unable to write original recipe of their own. They're completely lost when there's something to troubleshoot. Debugging takes them days via trial and error, instead of minutes through proper abstraction. Monkeys can generally thrive in corporate environment as there's tremendous amount of structure supporting them. They can never survive on their own (startups), however, thus they're destined to always tail at the bottom of the system, bordering poverty.

I lost track of my point with this. I guess what I mean to say is that university gives you so much free time you probably don't appreciate it if you've never had to keep a job before. Whatever degree you choose just use all that free time wisely (even if that includes positive things not related to the degree) and it'll be worthwhile. It's a bitch trying to do anything while trying to keep up with bills and the rest of the mundanities of life

yeah i was saying that Chomsky makes many of those same points. he thinks modern "critical studies" is a huge fraud and the French academics who popularized the trend had no idea what they were talking about and were actively harmful to serious philosophical work and political activism, as it led to people devoting tons of energy to writing incomprehensible radical feminist deconstructions or whatever

>he thinks modern "critical studies" is a huge fraud and the French academics who popularized the trend had no idea what they were talking about and were actively harmful to serious philosophical work and political activism
He is entirely correct. There even a case were the IDF made a pomo department for officers, and it resulted in said coming out of there spouting gibberish that led to a complete breakdown in communications between them and the rank-and-file soldiers.

>most people pass even if they havent got a clue
Literally me desu, EE grad and I can't even do vector calculus

>who each got half of those characteristics

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>La-Mulana
Now that was an experience. Probably the most impactful one I've had in all of gaming. Sadly, I don't know how I would rate the game since so many of its puzzles are insanely cryptic, although I think I could get over everything other than Twin Labyrinths and maybe one more area whose name I forgot.
What a weird love-hate relationship with this game I have.

Same, some of them read classics too

This