
“Ready Player One” is the worst thing nerd culture ever produced - smacktoward
https://www.heypoorplayer.com/2017/07/28/second-opinion-ready-player-one-worst-thing-nerd-culture-ever-produced/
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ashark
Books that are cringe-worthily bad in every possible way are sometimes,
unaccountably, wildly successful and make their authors tons of money. It's
frustrating if you're a) an author, and/or b) care about the genre or topic of
such a book, but that's the way the world works and it exhibits no signs of
changing any time soon. I don't get it either. No amount of pointing out how
superbly awful they are ever seems to help.

~~~
Turing_Machine
> Books that are cringe-worthily bad in every possible way are sometimes,
> unaccountably, wildly successful

Actually, it's quite easy to account for it: not everyone has the same tastes
as you.

~~~
ashark
I don't mean things-I-don't-like—there are _lots_ of things I don't like that
aren't bad—I mean books that are the literary equivalent of some of the worst
films that make it on MST3K or Best of the Worst succeeding in a field of
direct competitors, many of which are in every way superior, and not on the
strength of any kind of cult following or reading-ironically or whatever, but
for... some unknown and perhaps unknowable reason. It's like Cry Wilderness
outperforming ET at the box office, and its fans not seeming to be in on any
kind of joke, but sincerely preferring it. Just baffling.

Or if Titanic, to deliberately pick a movie that's not gonna win the hearts of
many film snobs anyway, had had every single shot nigh-comically misframed,
weird scene transitions right in the middle of significant speech or actions,
a CG Titanic that occasionally floated _above and out of_ the water for no
obvious reason, extras playing all the speaking roles, and so on, had still
performed just as well and been popular among ordinary audiences, who
betrayed, in interviews, no apparent awareness that the film was totally and
obviously messed up in fundamental ways that ruined any kind of story or
message it may have been trying to convey. But that actually happens sometimes
with books. And then the critics go "wait... what? Did you... actually read
it? It's very, very bad. I mean, you _did_ notice that, right?" and the fans
say "you just hate fun! Get your head out of the clouds! People like different
things!" It's very confusing.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe this happens with books and not
with movies because movies—especially those with any hope of popular
success—pull you through the story rather by the nose, so it's more jarring
when they entirely fail than when a book does. Maybe some people are so much
better than me at getting lost in books that they're seamlessly replacing
dialog, entire paragraphs of text, whole scenes, plot lines even, with things
that don't suck, not even realizing they're doing it. I guess that'd explain
it, if they're unconsciously live-fanfictioning the thing in their head to
make it better.

~~~
tarboreus
I meet a lot of people who share this perspective. They're the ones who
remember one line from Harry Potter that repeats a word or who think the Da
Vinci Code was the worst-written thing that year. I always think that these
people must not read very widely, because these books aren't actually poorly
written. Were you to read ten randomly published books in any year, you would
understand that, actually, there are tiers and tiers of writing that are
actually bad. Typically, the books people target for cultural derision have
prose that is workmanlike at best but which have met with success due to tight
plotting or pacing, which is difficult to construct, or because the subject of
the book taps into something in the zeitgeist and expands some conversation
society is having with itself (Gone Girl or Fifty Shades).

The only NYT bestseller in recent years that comes close to your Titanic
analogy is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a book that sold on its title
alone and which I would not be surprised to learn not a single person has
read, including the author. Most successful books of the stripe you're
describing are more like a singlecamera situation comedy--they stick to a
basic but largely innocuous set of prose conventions that won't win awards but
allows the author to focus their efforts on elements their audience cares more
about.

~~~
ashark
Eh, I wouldn't put Harry Potter or a lot of other Juvi Fic in the "total
disaster" category, certainly. Hell, I thought The Hunger Games was
occasionally pretty good, and in a few cases almost managed to be _very_ good
(she kept managing to belabor the point on something that could've been left
sublimely understated—cutting just a couple dozen sentences from the first
book, at least, would've done absolute wonders) and I was pleasantly surprised
that its particular themes and story arc, through the last book, were so
popular with its target audience, though I remain confused by the "Katniss is
a badass hero with a bow! Yay girl power!" form in which the work entered the
popular imagination—did I accidentally read different books? See my previous
post's theory that perhaps some readers heavily rewrite things they read, as
they read them, without realizing it.

However, having participated in read-alouds from Fifty Shades for the LULZ,
I'd dispute its being good for any purpose other than comedy. No, not even
_that_ purpose. Those scenes are some of the worst of an already hilariously
bad lot, reading as if they were written by someone with a weak vocabulary
describing LEGO set instruction manuals. They'd be unacceptable as free
Internet writing of the sort (ahem, one supposes). They're damn funny though.

> The only NYT bestseller in recent years that comes close to your Titanic
> analogy is Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, a book that sold on its title
> alone and which I would not be surprised to learn not a single person has
> read, including the author.

A friend of mine read and _enjoyed_ it, in fact, though he likes (some) bad
fiction in a haha-I-can't-believe-this-got-published sort of way. He's also
the one who got us in to the reading-aloud-from-Fifty-Shades activity.

~~~
cholantesh
>They'd be unacceptable as free Internet writing of the sort (ahem, one
supposes)

Well, they started as Twilight fanfic...

------
AgentME
What I loved about Ready Player One was that it was an unapologetic
celebration of obsession and nostalgia. It was a plot contrived to create a
setting where those qualities were what was needed to save the world. It's not
particularly deep outside of that, and I don't really mind.

Geekdom is becoming more popular in popular culture, but RP1 does it in a
special way that I can appreciate. _The Big Bang Theory_ does standard sitcom
stuff and plays a laugh-track when recognizable "geeky" thing happens like a
character having a Nintendo 64 on-screen for a moment. RP1 has an infodump
about an easter egg and a glitch in a specific arcade game (... not entirely
different than some of the type of nonfiction I like) and then works it into a
contrived but fun plot point. It paints a world where many characters are
driven by obsession, and that this isn't a spectacularly weird thing they do.
(Yes, the book does take it to some amusing extremes.) Maybe it's the likely
asperger's syndrome in me talking, but I feel like obsession is a big thing in
my life, and it's fun to find a story that actually embraces that.

Yes, I know that the way the character often interacts by trivia-dropping is
grating outside of scenarios where trivia saves the world, and possibly still
a bit grating within those scenarios. I never thought those parts were being
portrayed otherwise. Yes, there's common problems with fandoms about
gatekeeping and lack of inclusion, and no, I don't think it's unforgivable
that RP1 doesn't address these. _RP1 's popularity is not a dismissal by
society of these issues._

No, I never thought it would be a good idea for human culture to stop creating
new media and cling to 80's stuff, or felt like the book pushed for that at
all. Maybe others read it differently, but I figured that the setting was like
that just so the book could focus on 80s nostalgia specifically with no other
media to get in the way while also having futuristic VR.

------
edkennedy
Someone forgot to have fun.

Yeah, it's trash, but trash can be fun! I think getting out of your head and
just enjoying something is important without needing to critically analyze it.
It seems this book was pretty polarizing, like The Last Jedi.

~~~
ashark
There's plenty of competently-written trash to choose from, though. Most of
the better genre fic falls in that category, and there's no shortage of it.

Incidentally, I think it's fair to describe The Last Jedi's polarizing effect
as having _very different causes_ from something like RP1.

~~~
eropple
Diametrically opposite causes, even. TLJ is a story about moving on from and
getting over the past. RP1 is about obsessing over it and clinging to it.

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Overtonwindow
I thought the book was a really outstanding trip down nostalgia lane, and a
great way to bridge the past with the future. However, that being said, I
think the movie (from the trailers at least) appears to push things too
futuristic.

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rrauenza
Site is overloaded ... here's the direct youtube link:
[https://youtu.be/BcTxIT6RyGc](https://youtu.be/BcTxIT6RyGc)

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cannonedhamster
I listened to the audio book. Didn't seem like the worst book ever, seemed
like a book made to guarantee a bunch of royalties. Wasn't the worst thing
I've heard/read. I've read Ayn Rand which was definitely worse, but is still
beloved by many. And here we are. Different people enjoy different things.

~~~
dragonwriter
The claim in the headline isn't that it is the worst thing ever, just the
worst thing produced by nerd culture.

The Ayn Rand comparison seems off the mark, because while they may have been
embraced by a segment of nerd culture, they are not products of that culture.

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hitekker
For those who have seen the trailer, consider this:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5Lz14wu1uw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5Lz14wu1uw)

