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Comment by sequoia | Hacker News Reader

This is interesting but I can't help but notice how intensely performative these kids are as well, at least how they're characterized in this article. They're wearing Carhartt (an unusual choice for a metropolis like NYC), reading Dostoyevski and gathering to "listen to the wind." I will say most teens are like this and I certainly was myself, but I hope they are careful not to cultivate their own "artisan" brand of snobbishness (as I also did as a young punk).

One thread they're touching on that I think is healthy and good is the DIY aesthetic, and the resistance to tools and media that primarily serve to make you a passive consumer, and to choose and live ones values more consciously & proactively. These features are (or ate least were) prominent in the punk scene, but also in many other subcultures including many religious groups.

I am glad to see "the kids" continuing to question & challenge and try to take more control of their own lives, so this is great in my opinion. A bit of pretentiousness is a small price to pay in my opinion.

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I think there's a selection bias here; the ones who are performative are more likely to cross paths with a NYTimes journalist than the ones who aren't. People who keep it low key don't often rise to the notice of others.

Look up their parents. It's not a coincidence they crossed path with NY Times reporters looking to profile them. Nepotism teens doesn't have the same ring though.

Another interesting angle related to their coming from money—I don't have enough data to really even call it, well, data, but the limited glimpse I've had into properly upper-middle (as in the Fussell, social-class sense, not the "I make $130k/yr as a middle manager and live in a McMansion in a nice school district, so I call myself upper-middle class" sense) and upper classes' kids and schools, they're giving their kids phones way later than the public-school set. Like, 20% or less the ownership rate by 5th grade, I'd say. Nowhere near universal personal smartphone ownership by 8th grade, even, unlike the public schools, where nearly all the kids have one by then.

But I'm mostly seeing a single school, so it may just be that that school operates in some kind of techphobic bubble, not that the better-off are generally exposing their kids to cell phones and the Internet way less than the middle-class and lower.

... then again, maybe what I'm seeing isn't a heavily biased sample, and that's exactly what's going on, and this article is a manifestation of a real tendency of the upper classes to curtail tech exposure for their kids, compared with the general population.

yeah I was wondering how a small group of say 5-8 teens made it to NYtimes. The paper tries to fool you to think these are just organic encounters that are part of a massive movement(anti-tech) when its really just hand picked people close to a friend of someone that works at the paper. Remember it was discovered this year the editorial desk of the NYtimes has a mandate that all stories must paint tech in a negative light.

This is common in reporting "human interest" stories. If you know someone who knows someone who knows someone who is up to something unique, is that any different than getting a tip from your community?

This is not a story of consequence but it does speak to an important issue of our day. It's not as though this is the only kind of reporting NY Times does.

> Remember it was discovered this year the editorial desk of the NYtimes has a mandate that all stories must paint tech in a negative light.

That's not at all what happened. There were rumors that tech reporting should be critical[1], instead of gushing and repeating claims from press releases without actually investigating. Real journalism is critical, and critical doesn't mean "bad" or "negative".

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33473275

Nepoteenism.

While there’s definitely a performative aspect to it, I think there’s a genuine & sincere interest in rejecting social-media manufactured-reality. These teens, regardless of sincerity, are rejecting a demonstrably negative & harmful activity in favor of reading, art, music, & engaging with their local community. I’m thrilled that this is catching on at all. I’ve had a deep hatred of owning a smartphone for years, but always feel like I need it (slack & email for work, immediate news/link aggregation, etc.), so I’m jealous/happy that they’ve gotten a head start at rejecting it outright so young.

Or to put it another way, being ironically literate and contemplative is still being literate and contemplative.

I think they're no more performative than other teenagers, who are almost developmentally predisposed to be preoccupied with in- and outgroup signaling.

>This is interesting but I can't help but notice how intensely performative these kids are as well, at least how they're characterized in this article.

I mean, they are teenagers. I said this in a longer comment in this thread, but teenagers tend to be performative. That's sort of the point of growing up and finding yourself.

Carhartt is a very trendy street wear brand in addition to their (still very trendy and brandy) workwear.

> They're wearing Carhartt (an unusual choice for a metropolis like NYC), reading Dostoyevski and gathering to "listen to the wind."

I don't know, to me it all seemed exceedingly genuine. If they're spending lots of time outside in parks—"rain or shine, even snow"—their clothing choices make sense. They like reading, and their reading material has made an impression (as good books are wont to do, especially for impressionable teenagers), such as by convincing them of the value of activities like "listening to the wind".

It’s genuine insofar as we have gone too far one way as a society and now people, even young people who have no concept of the old days, are exploring the opposite again.

I guess it seems a bit pretentious since those of us who were around as young adults when mobiles and the internet took off, and then worked in the industries that made the current situation happen, realise there is a happy midpoint. “The only thing better than a flip phone is no phone?” I can’t roll my eyes enough.

I dare say “our generation” started the idea of removing technology again and getting back some of the good old days.

> “The only thing better than a flip phone is no phone?” I can’t roll my eyes enough.

Yeah, but kids often say groan-worthy things, or have opinions that lack perspective. I still think she was being perfectly earnest.

It's worth noting that Carhartt is currently hot as a fashion brand. Yes, really.

In many ways the article feels like it's documenting kids with the freedom to have an opinion. Looking at the pictures in the article, it feels like a pretty uniform demographic. And in New York City, no less.

Also, they idolize Chris McCandless - he was also a child of privilege who wanted to reject society. Chris didn't have to die but he did because he went up to Alaska woefully unprepared. That doesn't make his death any less tragic, of course.

I guess my point is that this phenomenon is not anything new, if anything we've just gotten for enough into the 21st century that the 1970s ethic is making a comeback.

I think the Krakauer book does a great job of describing the nuances of McCandless's level of preparedness. Of course maybe the author has a bias, but it certainly doesn't seem that way to me. McCandless was fairly unlucky despite having done quite a bit to prepare and try to ensure success. He ate a plant that was categorized as edible in a respected source book, but the actual part that he ate (in the season that he ate it) was poisonous. Once that happened and he realized what was going on, all his prior efforts to make sure he would remain isolated (including dubious choices like not bringing a map) spelled his doom. To me, McCandless made a conscious choice to try to live off the land without help. That is also a conscious choice to die if things go too wrong. Did he want to die? I don't think so, but he had to know it was a distinct and not-so-insignificant likelihood. I think I would NEVER do something like that. But was McCandless woefully unprepared? I personally don't think so. I am aware that I might have a minority opinion on that, because he did die.

Without commenting on McCandless in particular, pretty much every mountaineering accident report as well points out things that, had they been done differently, would have led to a better outcome. This becomes less true as you know you're going to be pushing limits if you go to climb K2. But lack of preparation or just shouldn't have gone out that day are pretty common themes.

> Also, they idolize Chris McCandless - he was also a child of privilege who wanted to reject society.

Idolizing McCandless is such an odd thing; Alaska is filled with people who rejected their past lives like he did, but who didn't die because they had more humility and respect for the land.

Lol I can’t imagine judging kids this hard. You’re doing great

His death wasn't a freak accident, it was a predictable consequence of him going into Alaska unprepared. He shot a moose and let it rot because he didn't know better and didn't bother to learn first. This was hubris; Alaska is not the place to fake it until you make it.

Anyway, my critique of McCandless is mild, talk to some Alaskans if you want to hear some proper vitriolic criticism of him. I barely scratched the surface by accusing him of hubris.

If you mean my criticism of teens idolizing McCandless, I don't know what to tell you. He isn't a good role model. There are obviously worse role models, but he isn't a good one.

Nice. Nah I was talking about you generally roasting teens in comments on this thread. Just seems weird. Maybe you are a teen and it’s not? Idk who cares I guess

I really have no idea what you're on about. In this thread I have discussed: my suspicion that most teens are not as performative as those who get interviewed by the NYTimes, my preference for boots, my theory on TV shows outlasting their quality, my belief that children are better off without smartphones, and my criticism of McCandless.

Where is the roasting of teens? The closest I've come to roasting teens is saying that teens idolizing McCandless is 'odd'.

Does one always risk a bit of "pretentiousness" if they act/live contrary to the "main stream"? Just by having a flip phone, for example, someone will be called a "hipster" or whatever name. It's like a group social phenomena or something - just by being vegetarian (or being more "pretentious" by being vegan) people experience this sort of stuff

Haha, how times have changed, I was a pretty hard core vegan between 1990 and 2003 and was much more likely to be called a cunt than pretentious!

Basically, yes, because a lot of people don't really know what being pretentious or a hipster actually means. The passage of time has lead to both terms being misunderstood and simultaneously conflated.

In order for someone to actually be pretentious, there has to be a pretense. Being purposefully non-mainstream doesn't make someone pretentious as much as a more normal individual would like to believe. Hipsters aren't necessarily pretentious, even when they have a pattern of rejecting the mainstream. A hipster might be pretentious if their image is disingenuous (ex. wearing some article they don't actually identify with, pooh-poohing something publicly while appreciating it secretly), but that doesn't have to describe all or most hipsters.

I get called a hipster because I often reject or have no interest in many things that most people consider good on that basis alone. When something becomes mainstream, I like it less because I believe something going from unknown to mainstream is usually a bad sign, and that instinct is almost always right. Breaking Bad was way better until everyone started slobbering over it and chanted "get back to cooking meth bruh", and look how it ended. Such a long way for a ham sandwich. haha

I've got a theory that the TV show Firefly is appreciated today because it got cancelled before it was popular; they quit when they were ahead and before popularity ruined it. But most Firefly fans seem to hate my theory.

I think you're absolutely correct. The show was campy, and in time, would have become grating and fallen apart.

Star Wars, once lauded, has been milked dry. There are a few good works, but by and large they're beating a dead horse.

The same thing is happening to Marvel. People checked out after Endgame.

Game of Thrones was so near to perfection. It had an unusually large cast of a hundred characters and an expansive world to draw down. But even if the new show is good, the magic is gone.

The mystery of Stranger Things after season one ended. We're getting a rehash with common character tropes you can find anywhere.

The allure of Westworld softened after season one attempted to open up to bigger themes, but actually cut down on the possibility space.

The third Godfather. Dexter. Every single Jurassic Park but the first. Jaws. On and on.

Chiefly, it's simply a function of multiplied probabilities to continue with a success streak. Eventually the odds do not pay off in your favor.

But I think another contributing factor is that our brains begin to fit the shape of the setting, the motifs, the character arcs, the narrative world - and we just aren't surprised or pleased any longer. Few people would ask for twenty seasons of a show. Or ten movies in a given franchise. Our brains learn the shape of the landscape and grow bored.

> The same thing is happening to Marvel. People checked out after Endgame.

First, it would be weird to say that was because Marvel was falling apart. It was the conclusion of a decade long movie franchise. Of course people might watch something else once the story they had been following was done. It doesn't mean they won't come back or didn't like the new movies, it means they wanted a break.

But mainly, it's also not true. Leaving aside 2020 (when Marvel released their movies all online), let's look at 2021. 4 out of the top 10 movies were Marvel movies (including number 1).

In 2022, they have 3 of the top 10 slots. They were beaten out by the Top Gun reboot and the latest Jurassic Park

> it means they wanted a break

My point exactly. We tire of the familiar.

> 4 out of the top 10 movies were Marvel movies

Disney operates at a scale none of their peers can match. They have the most well tuned pipeline of any production company. I'd expect this.

Nevertheless, metrics point to declining interest. If I had time to write a longer comment, I'd be able to cite sources and offer more than just a suggestion to google "marvel fatigue".

Wanting something different is not the statement that you were originally making. Your original contention was that quality goes down, it "becomes grating and falls apart".

> They were beaten out by the Top Gun reboot and the latest Jurassic Park

Which is both sad and hilarious in the context of this thread

I mean, rounding out the top 10 of 2022 are the latest Minions, Batman, Harry Potter, Sonic the Hedgehog (for some reason) and a sequel to a Chinese movie which was in the top 10 in 2021. Nothing original at all in 2022, and the big things that may still break into the top 10 (e.g. Avatar 2) are also sequels.

In 2021, the only original things were the highest production cost Chinese movie in history that glorified the Chinese army vanquishing their enemies (South Korea, the US) in the Korean War (this is the one that got a sequel) and a Chinese comedy. The western movies were the latest Bond, Fast and Furious, Kong vs. Godzilla, and Sing 2.

(A Chinese movie series also was in the top 10 in 2021)

Yeah, some of the sometimes literal Wild West in space was fun given appealing characters. Even Serenity worked pretty well. I'm not sure how it would have played out longer term. I certainly probably appreciate it better as a brief fan fave than something that maybe wore out its welcome sooner rather than later.

>> Star Wars, once lauded, has been milked dry. There are a few good works, but by and large they're beating a dead horse

That's been true since 1983.

How does something being popular ruin its quality? The reason people diss hipsters is because they’re reacting to what other people enjoy instead of just liking something for its own sake.

Several mechanisms. For one, a show running to long simply squeezes all the juice out of the premise. Popular shows are kept running too long to extract all the money out of them, but they become soulless and formulaic towards the end.

Another mechanism is flanderization, in which writers simplify characters or other aspects of the show for various reasons, mostly laziness and to conform to expectations the audience develops about how characters should act. Characters with depth become shallow shadows of their past selves as one aspect of their personality starts to dominate the others. When characters are driven by audience expectations instead of the writer's internal muse, they become soulless and predictable.

Another is overdeveloping the setting. Throwaway lines in earlier media get needlessly turned into developed storylines. It leaves less to the imagination. This is often related to the first mechanism I mention; the writers squeezing all the juice out of the earlier media.

Popular songs are ruined by being ubiquitous. They're everywhere for a period of time. Over concentrated. Inescapable. And from that point, ruined.

Popular movies get discussed to death and over-mis-interpreted to the point where just the mention of it causes a mental effort to ignore the assumed sycophantic rambling that's to follow.

Popularity ruins perceived quality by the nature of media to seize upon it and, as someone else said in a slightly different context above, squeeze every last cent of profit out of the opportunity that's presented by it's popularity.

Technically it doesn't affect the quality, but it adds a thick layer of media slime that can take years to dry up and fall off.

Lastly, popularity and quality are two scales that have interesting intersections. It's a concept I'd actually like to investigate further.

I suppose popularity could inflate the creators' egos, leading them to make unilateral decisions without any advice or input from others. Not necessarily a bad thing, especially if the creator was already making unilateral decisions, but if before the popularity there was a group of people making decisions (such as a writers room for a television show) and after popularity they stop doing that, then there is a risk the quality goes down. Of course that's just one possibility of how popularity could lead to a reduction in quality, and its not the popularity itself that is the cause, it is a change in decision-making procedure. So in general, I would say it is disingenuous and pretentious to dislike something because of its popularity. It's not a valid reason

> I suppose popularity could inflate the creators' egos, leading them to make unilateral decisions without any advice or input from others. Not necessarily a bad thing, especially if the creator was already making unilateral decisions, but if before the popularity there was a group of people making decisions (such as a writers room for a television show) and after popularity they stop doing that, then there is a risk the quality goes down.

Kojima and the Metal Gear series.

Firefly was a mistake,

in that the corporate machine made a mistake in not extracting all that it could from it in follow-up seasons, movies, sequels, etc.

You know how good a movie is by how many sequels it took to kill it.

Well yes, most people react poorly to "The reason you love the thing you love is not because it is good, but for <shallow/superficial reason>"

No, I'm saying that Firefly is and was good. It never got a chance to become bad.

And even if not become bad... For myself I have something called the 5 season rule. Not literal (quite) but somewhere around 5 seasons I just get bored--even if the show if still on a good trajectory, which it often isn't.

Rejection of the mainstream / establishment properties is the pretense.

It isn't that you like something, it's that you don't want to be associated to some other things. And you don't want to be associated to those other things because of some pretense about what associating to those things means.

That's not a pretense. The word you're looking for is pretext. Rejecting the mainstream is completely a legitimate position on its own. The only way it can be a pretense is if it's done for appearance only. Well, maybe there are other ways, but that's the only one I can think of at the moment.

Maybe this is confusing because of the phrase "false pretense", which is redundant and can lead to some people thinking that there's such a thing as a pretense that isn't false-ish.

My previous comment wasn't worded the best.

At the end of the day, I think the pretentiousness comes from superiority signalling. When a vegan talks about how eating meat is wrong the implication is that they feel morally superior to those who eat meat. And when someone rejects things generally, as opposed to just liking their own things, it implies that those things they reject aren't worth consideration, and hence anyone who does has some inferior judgement or taste.

The statement "I would never listen to disco music" implies there is something wrong with doing so, and hence something wrong with those who choose to. "I would never listen to disco music" is a pretentious statement.

I feel "hipster" can be boiled down to something which is leveled only as a mildly pejorative epithet, and frequently by those who are secretly envious of the subject's aesthetic, or their freedom to exhibit it.

> a lot of people don't really know what being pretentious or a hipster actually means

https://catandgirl.com/riddle-me-this/

Well, if we're going to talk "really means," then . . .

Hipsters are people who follow trends. They try to be "hip."

Rejecting things because everyone else likes them is not being a hipster. It's being a contrarian.

"When something becomes mainstream, I like it less because I believe something going from unknown to mainstream is usually a bad sign"

If someone ever asks me for an example of a pretentious comment, I'm going to give them this

"Flipsters", perhaps :)

Didn't read the article, but I wish I had friends who made listening to the wind an activity growing up. There's a lot of performance any direction you take, surrendering time to the elements is a lovely little angle.

Fear of coming across as performative has overall hindered my ability to coexist within certain subcultures. I wish I cared less about this and I admire people who manage to find cultural unity through performance.

at some point you have to realize the overwhelming majority of people you're worried about being judged by aren't people whose opinions you'd care about if they were offered to you, and that being an authentic you is more important than the judgement of strangers.

A lot of people's lives could be way better if they internalized this.

I like to remind myself that the world has done nothing for me.

> This is interesting but I can't help but notice how intensely performative these kids are as well, at least how they're characterized in this article. They're wearing Carhartt (an unusual choice for a metropolis like NYC), reading Dostoyevski and gathering to "listen to the wind." I will say most teens are like this and I certainly was myself, but I hope they are careful not to cultivate their own "artisan" brand of snobbishness (as I also did as a young punk).

Also, does the NYT Style section have a reputation of elevating some tiny little clique into a "trend" that goes nowhere because it's not a real trend, just a clique that got written about?

I'd love for something like this to be an actual trend (sans the snobbish performance), but I'm skeptical this anything at all.

it's the 2022 version of "kill your television" and i love it.

in practice: i wonder how practical it is to survive as an adult without a smartphone. uber has decimated cabs and i don't think you can telephone for an uber.

i wonder what else is unreachable/unworkable/etc...

I don't carry a cellphone. The rates are atrocious in Canada, and I don't like being rung when I'm out and about.

The biggest problem is 2-factor. Many services are starting to require it, which has led me to losing access to various accounts. Looking at you, Paypal.

Otherwise, it's fine. I make a paper shopping list. I schedule meetings in advance, and show up at the expected time. Uber isn't even in my city so there's no loss there.

In the UK, you can get texts sent to landline numbers. Not sure if it's carrier-dependent, but my Mum would occasionally get texts sent to her landline. She'd get a call saying that she'd received a text and the text was read to her by a computer. Perhaps that might work in Canada?

Thank you for the suggestion.

SMS 2 factor is terrible anyway and is on the way out, although it may still be the only choice for some services for quite a while. A hardware security key is best, and TOTP (Google Authenticator and similar) is very good and both can be used without cell connectivity.

In Paypal, for example, this is the screen I reach every time I try to log in.

https://i.imgur.com/V2WbK6C.png

There is no skip button. Even worse, every method I've tried to access customer support requires I be logged into an account.

I do have an Android device at home that may support TOPT, but a lot of websites still recklessly assume you have a mobile number available.

In Brooklyn now, it's cheaper to use a car service than Uber/Lyft, so I think you could get by fine without those apps. Getting around without Google Maps would be pretty challenging, I think.

> Getting around without Google Maps would be pretty challenging, I think.

I learned to drive before smartphones. I can assure you its very possible to find addresses without a phone. Heck, I still sometimes do it for fun! Nothing wrong with a little u-turn here or there.

Before smartphones I would use a street map, which were sold at every gas station. And if I was still having trouble, I would call for directions from a public pay phone, which were located on street corners every few blocks.

just checked, chatgpt can give directions...

reminds me of the old days when i used to text GOOGL for exact addresses

To me, this feels like you're criticizing kids for being kids. You grew out of it, so will they.

It also might be you projecting. It's entirely possible they genuinely enjoy their choice of clothing and literature and it's not a performance.

> They're wearing Carhartt (an unusual choice for a metropolis like NYC),

It's not really, it's become a pretty fashionable brand in urban areas. Basically a combination of work wear and basic REI aesthetic.

I'm old and I love the Carhartt tee shirts I bought a few years ago...thick cotton, softened through wear and washing, the best shirts I've ever owned. These kids have good taste.

Having read the rest of TFA I think my initial reaction is not fair. What they said about kids not being able to put the phones down for a 1hr meeting was surprising to me and made clear how bad the issue is. More power to these kids and to heck with people calling them classist; what are they obligated to have iPhones for the sake of class solidarity or something? Sounds silly.

Carhartt isn't unsusual at all, it's trendy and has been adopted as streetwear.

And I think you're overthinking the performative aspect, it's bog standard teenage behavior that diminishes over time but persists forever. Every branded piece of apparel, every vanity plate, all interior decorating are in the same performative vein.

I do think it's a significant price to pay. While a lot of teens are indeed like this, plenty aren't, and I'd (admittedly without evidence) guess that there's actually a negative correlation between wanting to be part of such a performative group and liking the idea behind the group to the extent of being willing to participate in it and make "sacrifices" for doing so. Maybe it's just personal bias but back when I was a teen, I'd have loved the idea behind it but definitely not joined it for that reason. Especially as a teen, being the only one not participating in the aesthestic would made me feel left out.

Carhartt often moonlights as a streetwear brand.

They actually have a dedicated streetwear/hipper line called WIP (https://us.carhartt-wip.com/)

That’s what I was referring to.

I'd suggest the vagueness of "often moonlights" indicated that you weren't aware of the sub-brand being a thing.

"Streetwear" itself has a snobbish connotation as of late.

Streetwear has been associated with luxury/higher fashion/snobbery in the mainstream for at least a decade (though its influence both on and by high fashion goes back to the 90s). The biggest fashion trend of the 2010s that has extended into the 2020s was the rise of the streetwear and sneaker culture from the streets and into the mainstream, often at luxury price points.

I don’t know what the nature of the culture is these days, but in hindsight, it’s always been.

Hottake: the author is effectively oblivious to the impact of the aesthetic scene and unable to filter its impact on contemporary youth culture.

Considering this is a piece in the style section I find that almost impossible to believe. Seems much more likely that they're just being a bit dishonest about why these kids are "luddites" because it makes for a better story.

I picked up on this a few years ago and mentioned it briefly in Digital Vegan. What struck me while researching was that the accusation of "Luddite" is levelled mainly against older (Boomer, Gen-X/Z) people and comes from the same group. Whereas younger people, glorified as "digital natives" by our older group, actually have more critical attitude towards gratuitous connection and consumption.

It made me realise that the mythologies of tech (an inevitable, ubiquitous force of progress and 'convenience' that we must slavishly follow or be "left behind") resides in my generation.

Anyone who thinks reading Dostoyevski is an acomplishment must be borderline illiterate*. None of his works are a hard read. Dostoyevski is the acomplishment, not the reader. Almost all fiction is a passive medium, the "work" has already been done by the auhtor. Tens (hundreds?) of millions of copies have been sold, and his works are required reading in many high schools.

>I am glad to see "the kids" continuing to question & challenge

They are the children of (rich?) Brooklyn hipster parents at a Performance arts school[0]. Who exactly are they challenging? If anything, they are being congradulated and pushed along on the hipster path. There are Brooklyn hipsters who unironically use 1980's antenta phones. If anything this is a worn out trope.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_R._Murrow_High_School

*I don't mean to imply that you are illiterate, just that you haven't thought this through.

>Anyone who thinks reading Dostoyevski is an acomplishment must be borderline illiterate

It's not an accomplishment, but it's definitely more, as parent commenter said, "performative" than saying they read any popular author of today.

As you yourself pointed, Dostoyevski is a required reading in high school and as anybody who had the "pleasure" of attending school, knows required reading usually isn't something what appeals to the youth (killing joy from this activity is another problem).

> As you yourself pointed, Dostoyevski is a required reading in high school and as anybody who had the "pleasure" of attending school, knows required reading usually isn't something what appeals to the youth (killing joy from this activity is another problem).

That's true of a lot of students, but not everyone! A couple of classmates in particular come to mind who definitely, genuinely loved the books we were assigned.

Heck, while I didn't like most of the books we read, there were a handful I loved! Montana, 1948, for example, was amazing.

"they're not authentic they're just performing" is also a trope. I assume someone is being genuine until proven otherwise

What I think many people would argue about Dostoyevsky is that it is easy to read at a surface level, but invites critical thinking to reveal layers of subtext and deeper meaning. Maybe you don't agree, which is fine, but I'd suggest this is why some people may associate it with high reading comprehension.

I loved Crime and Punishment, but I struggled to grasp some of the long monologues in The Brothers Karamazov. It’s not hard to follow the plot, but because it deals with challenging ideas through monologues which completely stop the plot, I found it challenging to fully engage with. Hardly a very difficult read but not always an easy page-turner either. Maybe I just needed a better translation.

Not disagreeing, but I just want to point out Pynchon and Foster-Wallace as authors that require effort on behalf of the reader.

Admittedly, the reader effort is still ridiculously far below that of the author.

Quoting Fry: "It took an hour to write, I thought it would take an hour to read"

> They are the children of (rich?) Brooklyn hipster parents at a Performance arts school

Murrow isn't strictly a performance arts school, and it's not located in a particularly hip or excessively wealthy part of Brooklyn.

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