Hot take: book club debates used to be way more heated before the internet

I remember back in the late 90s at a Barnes and Noble in Akron, Ohio, our book club got into a screaming match over whether Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' was too dark to recommend to new members. A woman named Carol literally threw her paperback across the room. That kind of raw passion is gone now. These days people just post hot takes on Goodreads and move on. Nobody wants to sit in a room and argue face to face for two hours about symbolism in chapter 7. Has anyone else noticed the vibe shift since we moved everything online?

2 comments

2 Comments

abbyp6116d ago

The trick is to bring snacks next time so nobody wants to storm out.

evan54316d ago

But do you think the issue is that online spaces just don't punish you for a bad take the same way? In person you had to defend your opinion for two hours and if you said something dumb everyone would remember; online you can just delete the post and pretend it never happened. That immediate social cost is what made those debates feel like they actually mattered.