• @[email protected]
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    3210 months ago

    I don’t know. She sucks you in with the atrocious writing and two dimensional characters who are all just stand-ins for an opinionated author, but she really seals the deal with the fetishization of rape culture and how it inexorably ties in with hyper-capitalist American culture. It’s really the whole package.

    • @[email protected]
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      810 months ago

      I can’t defend any of that, and I’m ashamed to say, that crap worked on me for a bit as a man barely a boy, in the 90s. What helped me was looking at other movements like scientology and Charles Manson.

      Just trying to say, don’t throw someone in the trash just because they read trash.

      • @[email protected]
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        2510 months ago

        There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."

      • @afraid_of_zombies
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        310 months ago

        Fountainhead worked on me a bit. I still think integrity and innovation are important, but I bet I would have gotten that way even if I hadn’t read it.

        I don’t make weapons, I don’t work for Twatter or Faceboot, I do make an effort to keep refining and upgrading designs instead of endlessly recycling the old, I do pull out dead useless code. I don’t win every battle and I don’t even fight every battle. And very generally speaking I do think if you do work you are proud of you will be happier.

        At the same time you should not assume you are the smartest person and if everyone is doing X you need to at least consider that they are on to something.

        See? You don’t need a 400 page novel. A paragraph works.

        • Flying SquidOPM
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          210 months ago

          Yes, but your paragraph has less rape, which Rand would consider a minus.