Old Man Yells at Online Book Clubs

8/12/25

Listen I really do love books. Loved them since I knew how to read. I’m one of the only people I’ve met in person who also loves to read. It’s not that I’m growing out of reading or whatever, or latching onto something that I only enjoyed when I was a child. That has been the case with some things that I’ve had similar issues with, I will admit that, but I’m confident that this isn't the case right now.

As a precursor, I’ve been in a weird reading slump for the past couple weeks. Since I’ve recently had very little (and currently, no) work, my routine has been thrown off kilter and consequently, my motivation to do pretty much anything has plummeted. All I’ve had in me to do is listen to music and - forgive the use of this term - bedrot. I can’t even listen to new music, it takes a mental toll to make sure I’m in the right mindset to enjoy it ‘properly,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean.

So basically I’m not up for media right now and I’m bitter about it. This causes a positive feedback loop where I get myself more and more miserable until it inevitably flows out into a piece of writing that reads as though it could’ve been made by a 13 year old.

And you get to read it!

Isn’t it so difficult finding communities of readers that you get? Where you all vibe with each other? On each others’ wavelengths?

I’ve spent countless hours trying to shoehorn myself into places where I don’t think I ultimately belonged. Nobody's issue but my own, I’m not getting mad at anyone for not having the same interests as me or whatever.

I feel as though the main three types of book groups are /lit/ 30+yo straight guys, TikTok 15-35yo straight women, and the kinds of queer people who are into stuff marketed with identity labels rather than actual story. I know this makes me sound obnoxious (because I am) - bear with me.

Start with the obvious choices. I’ve never touched Twitter, I don’t enjoy the picture-focused posting style of Instagram, and even if I didn’t have anything against the way TikTok discusses books, the short form video format is far too overstimulating for me to want to be there in the first place. Pinterest leans a little too far into TikTok trends for me to want to use it as the hub for my discussions, partly given the younger userbase, which is also something that I personally am not looking for. I’ll admit that I have occasionally taken a recommendation from a random user posting their favourite books, but you have to be cautious of said random person spending too much time on TikTok (microtrend central) and having that leak into their recommendations. If nothing else, then as a long time user of the site, it’s far too glitchy and overmoderated for discussions.

The only other mainstream social media I know of is… Reddit and Tumblr. Good lord.

Two wonderful sites tainted by awful userbases.

Granted, Reddit isn’t that bad nowadays, the Reddit athetist archetype is long behind us. As long as you avoid the obvious alt-right pipelines and get ready to jump ship should your favourite one start to take the wrong route, you'll be alright; even then, the main hobby subs are generally safe. r/Books is okay, actually, but it just… irks me, I suppose. It’s fucking huge for a start, which can be seen as a positive or negative depending on the situation. For me, generally, it makes for more shallow discussion, and increases the risk of people outside of your ‘target audience’ finding your recommendation and giving it a negative review because of the main elements of its genre. You can find the occasional recommendation, but you’ll quickly notice the same couple things going around in each sub. Individual subs appear to largely be populated by the first of the three categories, and from that alone I don’t want to dig deeper over there.

Tumblr… what happened to that fucking site? Since 2022 it’s had the worst of both its 2016 self and Twitter refugees. As far as I can tell, most solidified book communities appear to be near dead, if not buried completely, and the few remaining readers are firmly in the third aforementioned category. Scarce will you find the actual plot of a book recommended to you from a Tumblr post. And I just don’t want to hang out with people via that site anyway. I use Tumblr myself, albeit rarely, but far too many people over there have it as their only outlet into the web and it shows so terribly. A shame, since it’s the only place that criticises TikTok in any capacity, even if that criticism is becoming moot as the distance from the average user and the real state of the internet grows. It’s sad.

Onto book specific places - Goodreads! Everyone knows Goodreads. The site with a little bit from each of these categories. I don’t like getting recommendations from algorithms - human-made posts are usually okay, I’m talking things like ‘based on your likes’ homepage widgets - and I don’t trust that the people there aren’t getting their next reads from said algorithms.

Where do you hang out with people on Goodreads? All I can think of is the book clubs, and I never found one that worked for me. The UI probably put me off more than anything else.

I don’t think any site that provides book clubs has a nice UI, really. Communication feels simultaneously too direct from person to person, and too broad to target anyone. Imagine having to ping everyone in a private group chat as every message is projected onto the front page of Twitter. That's how talking there feels. Everyone can see and no one will respond. 10,000 members and 20 are active. Somehow there’s too many and too few people at the same time.

I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned that one bookish social media Fable on this site? It had the same issues for me as the aforementioned except everything moved way faster. I can’t figure out what irked me about it. Was it the younger userbase?

God, everyone’s either too young or too old for me to like them. I need to get over myself.

…okay the most likely issue is that I hate group conversations and the pressure that comes from them. Roll that in with heavy subjects and the expectation of at least half-decent quality writing and I clam up. Not a great environment for my little shivering pea brain to try and open up in. I love having a static site page to throw my thoughts onto because there's no expectation for anyone to respond, and for me to then respond to that response, but… I don’t know, it gets a bit lonely from time to time. The only solution truly is for me to get over myself, and it took me this long to get used to posting my thoughts online at all. Please believe me when I say I used to be somehow far worse for this. It’s a miracle I post anything at all.

Odds are, I’ll get back into the swing of things given a week or two, and I’ll stop caring about these little things; I’ll get writing again, I’ll love it, I’ll love life once more, there’ll be no need to be melodramatic. For now, however, I am nothing if not a chronic whiner.

The reason I have not written about Halloween or my birthday is because I didn’t end up doing most of the things I set out to do. I still had fun, though. The only CD that I managed to get was Life Is Killing Me, which sits proudly on my shelf with the other three in my stunningly diverse collection. The chocolate cake was pretty good. I cut out 100g of the sugar in the cake and ~200g in the buttercream and it was still pretty sweet. The only book I read for Halloween was Audition, and as you may have guessed, I haven’t read anything since. It wasn’t that great to be honest. I… uh, I watched Lake Mungo? That was alright.

…fuck, what else did I plan?

Been really getting into video games lately. A friend recommended me Have A Nice Life and I have no idea why I chose not to listen to them for so long. Deep, Deep and Waiting for Black Metal Records to Come in the Mail were composed for me specifically. Unemployment is hitting hard I feel like I’m climbing the walls. Sorta giving up on getting some work over Christmas. Sleep schedule fucked. Gah.