One weird trick that will drive Smuel's mom crazy

The thread title is bogus, this thread as nothing to do with Smuel's mom.

Or does it? You decide.

I opened the iPhone book store a moment ago, hoping to find a decent book to read behind the wheel on the way to work, and since I was feeling lazy I just tapped Top Charts. I'll just be a lemming and read whatever everyone else is reading, right?

The first list was the top paid books, and the second was top free, and both lists were populated entirely with trashy romance novels. At first, my reaction was scorn for the women who read this garbage. But then I realized that it is as much an indictment of men, who are apparently a bunch of illiterate slobs. We couldn't even get a single spy thriller in the top charts?

My third reaction: men are too busy winning bread so their fat slob housewives can sit around reading and fantasizing about getting humped by a billionaire.

Anyway, what are your thoughts?

 

Probably the demographics of baby boomer widows chewing through pulp romance.

I have no opinion about romance novels or the iStore numbers but I know that old ladies can not get enough of that tripe. My great grandmother died with like five thousand of them under her bed.

In the digital age, with the baby boom generation hitting retirement, the men are dead or keeping active and the women are probably buying ten books a piece per week.

 

You seem to have overlooked the possibility that men read those books too. Of course, while they're drinking beer with you, shooting the breeze, they'll be all macho and like "Fat slob housewives lol" and "Old ladies can not get enough of it, if you know what I mean". But secretly they're revelling in the tangled affairs of Miss Blank Slate and her beau, Gymfit McBusinessman. Why do you have to create a hostile atmosphere for those poor guys, Japes? Especially since it seems like you're on the brink of becoming one yourself. Embrace your destiny, I say.

 

Are you fucking serious, Japes? 'lol romance? Must be girls, amirite? Also they're fat, I presume, and don't work.' Ridiculously sexist much?

 

Take your butt-hurt somewhere else wayne. My post was mostly tongue in cheek, though I'd be surprised if the male audience for romance novels is more than a drop in a large bucket.

 

I know that when 50 Shades hit, I did notice a shitload of men reading it. So on the one hand, I think the male market for this kind of drivel is higher than you might think.

On the other, it's hard to ignore the demographic here isn't women - and that there are more housewives than there are househusbands purely because when a woman drops a baby out that inherently puts her out of work for a time so in a purely pragmatic sense couples often develop that kind of dynamic. I would say this leads to housewives therefore boosting the popularity of these books.

I hope this has appeased both sides - by making clear that there is a male market but also by asserting machismo by referring to pregnancy as dropping a baby out.

 

Appeasement accepted.

 

Except in the US where that only happens if, you know, she can afford it: they don't give paid maternity leave (let alone paternity leave) in America, so she might have to go pretty much straight back to work—which could actually be a good thing, especially if she works with the likes of Japes, because I'd hate for this hypothetical woman who's already being fucked over by America's backward laws to miss any more of the 'Get it? Because sexism lollllll! Woah relax it's just a joke' banter.

But that assumed female majority is fat and jobless, right? Or was that just another of these jokes we're all meant to laugh off lest we be called butthurt?

 

This thread was a good effort, but I think I have to award the points to yztk for the subtleness of his trolling. I mean, we all know ytzk is kind of a hippy, so a post where he describes his psychic sense pool leaves us completely unsure about whether he's serious, and he mixes in just enough actual science to keep it real. Whereas this? Casual misogyny from Japes? It's too far fetched. Nobody would fall for it.

 

::silence::

Thoughts were solicited, not knee-jerk white knight reactions.

 

The assumption being that anybody who thinks this sort of attitude is shameful and expresses what they think is just thoughtlessly white-knighting? Maybe you have some thinking and jerky knees of your own to work on, TDC.

 

Because Ireland aren't just total shits on the related issue of abortion compared to the UK? Yeah I get it, changing the subject - slightly - but we're a multinational website so while I get we can all mudsling it becomes a bit pointless after a time because there's so much mud to go around.

I find all this shit slightly tedious - people rally around freedom of speech to potentially make a jokey refrain or possibly mask their vaguely held resentments that may or may not me genuine and may or may not upset people. And then you get people who also want to uphold personal liberty who get all upset by these statements regardless, despite whether the initial person may have been half-hearted to begin with or instead entirely sincere - but those damn pinko-libertarians can't let a single non-PC comment slip.

I guess what I'm building towards is a "tongue in bum" statement. People may question how "non-PC" you might think a tongue in cheek statement is, but when you're like, "Hey, it was tongue-in-bum, a whole new level of worse - deal with my un-PC-ness," then you know people are going to be like, "Whoa that was total 'tongue-in-bum', I mean tongue in cheek I would have totally taken him to task over, but with tongue in bum I totally dig that."

Then the world is in peace and Trump doesn't become president.

#TongueInBum

 

Yeah so I can't really work out much of what you're writing after the whole 'if you're so right why aren't your politicians as abortion-friendly as my politicians?' thing; but:

I'm sorry you find issues of hegemonic oppression boring, I guess, but treating them like you would a tv show you just got tired of just isn't really good enough. I don't think the idea is that some people are trying to make your life difficult by reacting badly to your weird 'jokes'; for me, anyway, the problems and questions surround not how 'PC' your comments are, but the desire to make those comments and tell those jokes in the first place. What are they but reminders from oppressor to oppressed of sexist (or racist, etc.) stereotypes? Is that funny? Who wants to be reminded of that? What's the mindset behind it? (And where's the line, by the way? Do you get to decide?)

Sounds a little less like a case of who's for freedom of speech etc. than one of who's a complete asshole or not.

 

All of the subtext is suddenly developing subtext here.

I agree that I dismissed the male market out of hand and implied it is the equivalent of porn for old ladies. That's my experience. I also find that women are an underestimated market, particular among male dominated cultures like the military.

Secondly spy thrillers seem totally gay to me. I prefer robots and laser beams pew pew pew. Anyway the point is books ain't books, there's so much publishing now and all the marketing is targeted, so that everything is a niche. An iTunes top ten list is a thing that would follow trends drastically. I think the biggest factor is the generation of educated women hitting menopause. That's a big market for softcore erotica.

Finally, I agree with Wayne that we ought to rise up and overthrow our capitalist oppressors.

 

"And lo, the wayne-scales didst descend from on high to cast judgment upon the regressive vermin. And the light of his egalitarian holiness didst shine into the darkness of their hearts and drive out all manner of bigotry, misogyny, and hatred."

Apparently stereotypes aren't allowed to be funny anymore, because somebody might file a Hurt Feelings Report. I guess we'll just have to get our laughs from benign puns and wordplay now, lest we be accused of sexism or racism.

 

Hey so I dunno if you read what I wrote, but it wasn't that. And as for the predictable holier-than-thou jab, I'm not saying 'look at me; I'm better than you'; I'm saying, 'hey how about just being an okay person and thinking about what you say every once in a while?' Like I mentioned, it's not people trying to annoy you by picking holes in your jokes; sometimes you're legitimately just being a thoughtless prick.

 

You raise a good point. What would Jesus do?

He was big on the puns and word play. Convincing a camel to go through a needle, hilarious. Calling the devil the lord of poo. Zing!

On the other hand, he'd probably be all like "WOMAN fetch me a spy thriller from the iStore, I don't even care if you're a Samaritan whore." Then maybe curse the iStore if it didn't bear fruit?

 

Nope. That you came down on the negative characterization of the housewife without criticizing the sweeping assumption that men cannot read makes your overreaction white-knighting. Relax wayne-scales, no hypothetical housewives were harmed in the making of Jungle Japes's initial post. Your princess is in another castle.

 

Yeah so while I get that it's easy to just immediately dismiss these sorts of responses as 'white knighting', maybe it's still worth considering the possibility that this issue and reactions to it like mine aren't reducible to some 4chan/urban dictionary buzzword you came across somewhere. Perhaps life's a little more nuanced than that. And maybe—just maybe—I focused more on the characterization of housewives because it's an established stereotype that gets bandied about anachronistically a lot everyday, is a reminder (as I said earlier) of the (ongoing) hardship faced by women, and is something people (both men and women) actually get offended by regularly for those very reasons. Could it be possible that I more easily dismissed the notion that men can't read because this latter characterization came up in the context of Japes' (a guy, right?) talking about looking up a book to read for his commute? Also, some of the responses above (not just mine) point out that his reasoning is obviously faulty, since men don't just read spy thrillers and so the absence of those sorts of books from the lists Japes mentioned, along with the heavy presence of romance novels, doesn't say anything about how much men read or don't read; so there's that. Lastly, I'd say if you think about it for a second, you might be able to see a point of view where the sexist attitude behind Japes' original post could, in fact, be harmful; and when 'men can't/don't read' becomes as insidious and divisive as that sort of attitude, then maybe it's time to give a shit.

 

There is no sexist attitude behind my post. I employed a persona as a humorous literary device, but behind the post there is a guy who values the contributions of both women and men, believes in equal opportunity, and doesn't read while driving because that's super dangerous.

I meant to start a lighthearted conversation. If I had known we would be this deep in the weeds on page one, I would have couched my anecdote in a different style.