Lately I've been seeing many more people reading books in public.
Yesterday, 5 books on one bus.
Newspapers and magazines stay losing. Zero zero.
EBook readers occasional.
Is it some performative fad?
this post was submitted on 14 Jan 2026
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Do you think nonstop barrages of ads and AI slop have something to do with this? People doomscroll on their phones because it is easy and convenient, but when it is just a frustrating nightmare of meaningless slop it probably makes people want to do literally anything else.
I think its a mix of several things. Mostly that you spend an hour on the internet and feel worse afterwards. The internet used to be something you looked forward to using
Yeah, there's a reason Hexbear is basically 90% of my internet usage these days, this is the only place I know that feels like the "old internet"
I don't think it's like the old internet. It's just a good part of the new internet. There was never anyplace like this before.
That's true. There's parts of it that remind me a lot of old forums I used to be a part of, but there's a lot of new stuff that didn't exist back then as well.