I have the reverse experience reading in public. Usually people are polite and curious but I'm reading something that weirds them out. Like the other day I was reading a collection of Louis Althusser essays, coworker asks about it, I respond with something like "uhhh, just some philosopher guy. I'm not sure how to explain succinctly."

Too late, guy asked grokkk which responded with something like "Louis Althusser was a schizophrenic French Marxist who murdered his wife in 1980." And I mean I wasn't quite sure how to respond to that because yeah that's who he was

Someone the other day was talking about how people in america are becoming more unhinged and mean in public life. Like 10 years ago no one would blink an eye at someone reading a book on a park bench, maybe if it was fucking Mein Kampf or Sasquatch Pounds My Ass by Chuck Tingle. Nowadays people are looking for an excuse to be a dick.

The performative male thing is further social conditioning for fascism, like tradwives were, its purpose is to pressure men into becoming more stereotypically masculine again, by equating men who change themselves for the sake of female affection (or you know just have feminized hobbies) with social predators.

There's a whole class of "getting mad at someone who is minding their own business" that we get acculturated into growing up. Once you step back and percieve it you can start to intercept it but I don't think you'll ever fully be rid of the impulse.

my mere existence stunts on the haters

nope sorry, that’s performative male tendencies. (that is to say, ableistly performing your superior attention span on my adhd ass)

(god i wish my brain would let me read outside of a hyperbolic chamber… )

Only time i ever judged someone for reading was a dude on a plane reading mein kampf

this is shadowboxing, no one is paying this much attention to you

it's because they have to displace their anger at themselves for being subliterate

i read ebooks in public on my steam deck in so people assume i'm a doofus g*mer while i am in fact a le epic and cultured intellectual

I once took Octavia Butler's Dawn with me to jury duty and sat shoulder to shoulder (so they could easily see the words on the page) and uhh the book gets to the part where they start talking about breeding program and im like 😩 i swear I didn't know this would happen

Maybe it's a nice fucking day and we should enjoy just vibing in the splendor of this miracle which we inhabit?

I'd rather do this than just be on my fucking phone for two hours?

Oh so you're better than me because you don't have 30 hexbear tabs open on your phone browser?

No but really, I should start carrying around the book I'm reading so that I can get a chapter in at lunch instead of reading the stupid shit you assholes say all day. I say this with love tho.

Did... did someone actually say this to you?

It reads like something made up, sorry if this is mean but i get got by obvious bits sometimes

It's so uncommon nowadays to find someone reading in public (since public libraries here barely exist) that wheenever I see someone I go: 'WOAH' even if it's like.. Dr. Faust or something so I never got the whole reading in public makes you cool or whatever, I just think more people should be doing so and it's amusing to see a rare one.

This is your own fault for reading in the mosh pit at a Metallica concert. Everyone knows that hardcore Metallica fans are illiterate.

And if you're upset from reading this comment because I'm trashing Metallica, you're a fake fan because here you are reading like some kind of nerd

No they don't. You're projecting or something idk.

If I'm reading off a Microsoft Surface in public, do I look stupid? I need to know.

Wow reading books full of stories at a cafe is weird, I say as I turn on desperate housewives for 4 hours

https://files.catbox.moe/az1b2z.mp4