4chan became the home of the elite reader

Finally an article that doesn’t treat it as a terrorist site and states that /pol/ is its own containment board.

It's funny, man. I was on 4chan and reading Dostoyevsky waaaay back in 2008. Really wish we had a /lit/ back then :(

Edit: In case any newfriends are listening, I would also like to suggest the books of Philip K. Dick, including but not limited to A Scanner Darkly, Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch, Ubik, and the VALIS trilogy.

Very strange to hear /lit/ framed as a right-wing place based on my memories. I remember it more as left-wing /pol/ (plus useful reading lists), but I almost entirely stopped browsing around six years ago so perhaps it's changed.

this article breathlessly and uncritically praises 4chan for the home-schooling curricula/seminars posted on /lit/ while somehow denigrating "the left" as the cause of academic decline. here's the evidence for the latter:

> The inhabitants of /lit/ see themselves as the victim of anti-canon efforts, as the academy has sought to “decolonise” and expand the curriculum over the past decade.

key word expand: "decolonization" efforts are about adding more diverse perspectives in academia instead of accepting commonly-held perspectives and beliefs, not an attempt to censor classic lit.

the rest of the article can be summed up as: the same people who organize on a site which platforms white supremacists are... checks notes reading classic greek and russian literature which is still taught in schools? here's the lynchpin of their "education ecosystem" - a list of books that you'll read in high school english class: https://archive.org/details/3a-3c-14cefcc-02a-2f-85256ff-821...

> When the Atlantic article was reposted on /lit/, the board’s denizens – between angry segues about mass immigration and chemsex (as is to be expected on 4chan) – seemed to agree with its claims.

wonderful. pray tell, what were these "segues about mass immigration"? is it possible that those beliefs also underlie the desire to return to "english-speaking academy"?

> I must be the only 22 year old on the planet who goes to my college library to find books by John Ruskin,” one wrote. “These are follow up indoctrination thinking schools [sic],” another said of modern universities. 4chan’s book ecosystem, with its focus on the traditional canon, seems to provide a refuge for those disillusioned by the bare-bones treatment of literature in the English-speaking academy.

i had the exact same concern when i was in school, except it was non-white authors ("the english-speaking academy" seems to be doing some heavy dog-whistling here).

if the right is so disillusioned about education, maybe stop cutting funding for public education and start allowing more diverse perspectives? you know, to bolster education?