this post was submitted on 30 Mar 2026
695 points (98.9% liked)
Microblog Memes
11207 readers
3242 users here now
A place to share screenshots of Microblog posts, whether from Mastodon, tumblr, ~~Twitter~~ X, KBin, Threads or elsewhere.
Created as an evolution of White People Twitter and other tweet-capture subreddits.
RULES:
- Your post must be a screen capture of a microblog-type post that includes the UI of the site it came from, preferably also including the avatar and username of the original poster. Including relevant comments made to the original post is encouraged.
- Your post, included comments, or your title/comment should include some kind of commentary or remark on the subject of the screen capture. Your title must include at least one word relevant to your post.
- You are encouraged to provide a link back to the source of your screen capture in the body of your post.
- Current politics and news are allowed, but discouraged. There MUST be some kind of human commentary/reaction included (either by the original poster or you). Just news articles or headlines will be deleted.
- Doctored posts/images and AI are allowed, but discouraged. You MUST indicate this in your post (even if you didn't originally know). If an image is found to be fabricated or edited in any way and it is not properly labeled, it will be deleted.
- Absolutely no NSFL content.
- Be nice. Don't take anything personally. Take political debates to the appropriate communities. Take personal disagreements & arguments to private messages.
- No advertising, brand promotion, or guerrilla marketing.
RELATED COMMUNITIES:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Author here, I don't give a fuck, as long as the book was bought/is read. Stop fetishizing books or start fucking them.
I do wonder why this person wouldn't just use a e-ink reader, though.
To answer your question, I think that it's about value.
A book can be read by multiple people over time, so it can have a bigger lifespan and usage than a single lifetime. By destroying it, you cut that potential. For example, with what OP did, you might loose a part of these books, which make them worthless.
Beyond that, you have made a destructive modification on an object. Usually, there is only two outcome possible after this. Either you made it better in some way (like people who mod they cars or, to stay on topic, people who draw on the paper edge of a book) or you decreased the value of the object (if you were to resell it, this book has now very little value, except if it gain some notoriety for some reason).
I don't think we should strive and encourage the destruction of value or voluntary spoilage. This mostly struck a nerve as most of what we do is fight entropy (and that requires energy).
We are surrounded by products and we may sometimes loose the context of how something is made and what it took, especially when we are living in a consumerist society. Also many "made thing" are close to worthless and sometimes absurd ("who would need that?"). This and trends like fast fashion accelerate this feeling of spoiling on a mass scale, making this voluntary acts of destruction even more irritating.
One last point, book burning and destruction is usually done to erase culture and people, so it's related to very bad events and it feels deeply wrongs.
But, of course, if OP is honest about doing that to be able to read something that he would not read without (99% sure it's for the même), and the books modified in questions are not prescious or rare then I agree that it is not a big deal. In the end this is done for the laughs, it will not trigger a big trend and cause the destruction of precious books. But I just wanted to explain the triggered side and try to answer your question hoping it was honest.
PS: I not a native English speaker and you are an author so please forgive me for my spelling mistakes, I hope you and other still get my point across. Thanks
I am not a native english speaker too, it's okay. I understand how it can be triggering for people who make a living out of it (book stores, librarians), but when that same interest becomes a gatekeeping fetish or a reason to take a shit on other medias (which rely on writers too! And a fucking lot of other art forms!) or other ways to come to reading, then I loose my shit. Especially when the focus is the medium and not the content. So many books are just printed shit. So many books are just outrageous propaganda, or a manifesto of their author's utter mediocrity. It's outrageous to put books on a pedestal just for the sake of it.
And english speakers are lucky, because they have a somewhat sane approach to reading. In France, it's a clusterfuck. Books are only a fetish that is seized and gatekept by the collaborationist bourgoisie, and now the biggest publishers have been bought by a fascist billionaire, who's using that very same bourgeois book fetishism to push his nazi agenda to the mass, by giving much more visibility to little nazi fucks. And because books are respected just for the sake of it, then the nazi propaganda is accepted as is! What a fucking scandal!
Pas de soucis, je pense que j'avais en grande partie compris ton point de vue, c'est pour ça que j'ai fait mon possible pour être mesuré dans mes propos. Je suis d'accord qu'il n'y a rien de sacrés dans un livre à proprement parlé et je pense que je partage aussi ton point de vue et pétage de plomb 😁
Ça va paraître très ironique ou malhonnête vu la position que j'ai défendu mais je ne lis presque pas de livre aujourd'hui (papier ou autre). Du coup, je ne suis pas vraiment au courant des dérives dont tu parles, mais merci de les mettre en lumière. Tu aurais des liens pour que j'en apprenne plus ? Je sais qu'il y a beaucoup de soucis avec l'audiovisuel ou le journalisme en France sur ces sujets là, mais je pensais naïvement que la littérature était justement exonéré de ce genre de problème.
J'ai une dernière question, peut tu me parler de tes livres ou au minimum me donner un lien pour en découvrir plus ? Un peu de promotion ne fait jamais de mal ☺️ (et tu peux répondre en anglais pour toucher un public plus large).
Merci de ta réponse, je te souhaite du succès dans tes projets et une bonne journée !
Mon travail actuel est destiné à un public gay ou féminin, donc même s'il a été nominé au prix du roman gay 2025 (Capax Infinity, Belgique), je ne vais en faire ouvertement la promotion en raison de sa nature explicite (et je ne vais pas te demander de me prouver que tu es majeur•e en partageant des données sensibles sur internet).
Actuellement, Bolloré contrôle Hachette édition, le plus gros distributeur de livres FR (y compris de manuels scolaires!!!) et les éditions Delcourt (bandes dessinées). Bolloré contrôle aussi les points Relay, lui permettant de faire la promo et distribuer ses petits fachos dans toutes les gares du pays. C'est comme ça qu'ils ont réussi à nous faire bouffer la merde de Bardella comme étant un best-seller, par exemple, avec la complicité des plateaux télé (évidemment). Bref, ils nous font de l'astroturfing à échelle industrielle.
En effet, l'auto-édition et l'indépendance sont maintenant les seuls moyens d'exister sans tomber sous la coupe d'éditeurs collabos ou impotents.
That sounds maddening as hell. That seems like self publishing would be the primary viable option. I'm so tired of Nazis ruining everything.
It's crazy that this ideology is still so alluring when you have the weight of (relatively recent) history to show where it leads. We don't really have the excuse of elevated levels of lead in the air to justify this hatred and violence...
Great response to them. But I want to tell you as a native speaker of English. You don't get to preface with "I'm not a native speaker" anymore. It appears your license to say such things expired a long time ago. 😁 I wouldn't have known any different had you said nothing. Any spelling mistakes you have above can be considered normal mistakes for a native speaker. 🙂
Thanks a lot for your kind words! I felt a little bit of pressure as I assumed that as an author, he might know a lot more than I do and see broken sentences that I can't 😅
I feel like there is a lack of understanding how or what about e-ink. My partner only grasped the concept that it's not an emmisive display after the 5th time explaining. And some friends still don't seem to understand the difference between an e-reader and tablet. (they are extremely tech-illiterate)
If I extrapolate this, there have to be a lot of people who don't want an e-reader because 'they don't want to look at a screen'.
Just it's a slow screen that's better for reading in the sun.
Don't have to convince me. I probably said something similar but it just doesn't connect. They probably just think there is only one kind of display. I never really pushed it further to be honest. .
just popping in to say that, as somebody who is very affected by looking at a screen before going to sleep, my Kindle is one of the best value items that I've ever had.
Well, let them read on paper, then.
As a regular visitor to the library and a low-key home archivist, I care.
Doing something like this to a book, even if done masterfully, drastically reduces its lifespan and makes it possible to lose parts. And one book can be read way more than once.
It is simply irresponsible to treat something, anything, that can serve you for decades, in a way that makes it practically single-use.
FINALLY I'VE SEEN SOMEONE ELSE SAYING THIS!
The reverence some folks have for stacks of thin pieces of tree is crazy. Still remember running into this TAing in grad school, where people's feelings about novels were more about codex fetishism than the actual work.
I'm not here to kink shame, if that's your deal then whatever, but at the end of the day a mass produced, physical book is just an object. If you paid for it, you own it and can do whatever you want to it. Want to cut out all of the pages and frame them so you can read a story standing up looking at your wall? Go for it. Want to chop it in half like the image here? Sure, go nuts. Want to make a model house with paper mache using pages from House of Leaves? That sounds dope, I'm in. Model church (or better/more subversive) with pages of the King James bible? Fuck it, we ball.
I personally make an exception for small print runs and hard to find books, but if you can buy it from a Coles/Chapters/Barnes and Noble/whatever it's fair game imo.
I mean might be related to writing and the printing press being two of the most important inventions in history, if I had to hazard a guess. Transfer of knowledge through books was a complete gamechanger for humanity.
I understand the history and impact of printed media. But let's be honest - a book you're buying in 2026 is generally not a rare tome with limited copies, with an artisan's attention paid to its crafting as an object. It's just another mass produced item, following a path that generally looks like 'purchase -> use -> discard (whether that's to another reader, a used book store, or a shredder)'. They can cycle for quite a while, sure, but eventually most books end up in a bin.
Given this, I personally feel a book is subject to the whim of its current owner, and that's ok. Want to keep it in pristine condition with an eye to maximum amount of cycles before bin time? Can't fault you for that. Want to take advantage of its physicality to make it more convenient for your use, like in this image? Fair play. Want to use that physical material for something more creative? Fuck yeah dude, go for it.
Where I pause a bit is just tossing it into a shredder once you don't want it anymore. Does that logically follow from my approach here? Yeah, but it does seem like a waste compared to the other things you can do with it.
Edit: a question, actually. With all of this in mind, how do folks here feel about collage, blackout poetry, cut-up technique, etc.?
My kids both prefer paper books to e-readers.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I don't care about your children but good for them, I guess. It's never about the medium, it's about the content, so if you like to read on screens, paper, cut books or toilet paper, it doesn't matter. Only the content matters. Audiobooks are okay too.
New research suggests it is slightly about the medium (for the kids, idk about adults it wasn't discussed). Physical books are better for attention span, apparently because they have "friction", i.e., you have to turn the page yourself so you "work" for the information, which makes information "valuable" so you hold onto it.
I guess we can have crank-powered e-readers where you have to work to turn the page?
Your brain works differently listening to audiobooks than reading. So it's not necessarily a substitute, in that you may not get the same out of the text.
Having said that, my wife is a bit ADHD and struggles to read books, but is addicted to audiobooks. 😅
Man, people like you are why others hate reading. You hurt my business by thinking that the medium choice grants you some form of moral/intellectual superiority, and you hurt other's enjoyment by boasting about it. Stop looking at the finger and start looking at the moon.
People, read books on the medium that you are more confortable with, be it screen or paper. Treat your books however the fuck you want. Listen to books if you don't have the time/focus to read. Be a sleazy fuck and watch the movie/series about the book if you're not really into it. What? There's a video game about it? Play it.
It's never about the cup, it's about the wine inside it. Confront yourselves to new ideas and stories, because that's what it is all about, not "carving mental holes in your books to put your mental wee-wee inside, because paper is sacred".
Wanna imagine things with your brain but can't be bothered to read boring stuff? Play tabletop roleplaying games, it's even more effective because you're actively engaging in it.
Got aphantasia, you were born without the capacity to imagine what you read as you read it? Watch the movie.
Got dyslexia? Bored at the gym? Stuck in traffic?Audiobook.
Etc etc.
If you have one fucking thing to take away from this rant, it's : it's not about the cup, it's about the wine. If you can't get that, you're not a reader, you're a fetishist and you're hurting the one thing you care about (and probably would read the most toxic shit and swallow it just because it's printed on paper).
Bro nobody here cares about your business
Yes you do, you're even answering to a thread dedicated to my business.
Buddy I have no idea who you even are nor what your business is
They are an author, obviously.
Then why TF are you talking to me?
Just so you're aware, your posts in this thread come across as very belligerent to me. I'm trying to ignore the tone that I perceive, and to clarify.
My understanding had been that the brain worked differently based on how it was getting text. I did a bit of DuckDuckGo and it turns out that further research shows that these differences are not that big:
https://benjaminfranklininstitute.org/books-vs-audiobooks-is-reading-always-better-for-your-brain-than-listening/
I am extremely belligerent against people who gatekeep joy and self-cultivation by confining it to text on paper only, because by doing so they spit on a lot more of artists and engineers' faces.
Books are valid, audiobooks are valid, comics are valid, movies are valid, TV shows are valid, TTRPGs are valid, video games are valid, etc etc.
Especially video games, since they are at the crossroad of all art and engineering forms (drawing, 3d modelling, music, programming, writing, acting, voice acting, animation, etc etc).
My take is that this person being an author probably had this very same discussion thousands of times.
There's also a nice screen rant by John Green (author, but I have yet to reada any of his books) somewhere on YouTube on the exact same topic.
I have no idea who you are, aside from what you've stated in these comments, but you clearly have a great passion for the core concept of what stories are capable of.
Just wanted to make it known I respect that passion, and am uplifted by knowing it exists out there somewhere. Cheers for that. 💛