slaves, tell me about 50 Shades of Grey

my wife reads some really really dumb romance novels. she knows they're dumb, and has good taste in actual literature (and has avoided 50 Shades specifically because of the Twilight connection), but she enjoys them, and i sometimes get laid as a direct result of that, so the idea of saying to her or someone like her "oh you find that titillating, how BORING" and dumping them or just being condescending because of that is pretty ridic to me.

likewise if they don't waka flocka

Well then clearly your answer to my question would be "yes." I mean I don't know, maybe mh DOES want to date someone who finds whatever this is titillating.

I don't have any desire to read 50 Shades of Grey, and I'm not thrilled with it as a book but I'm seriously not going to stop associating with people just for reading it.

I really hope this isn't a serious line of conversation because wow.

some dude and vg otm

soccer moms are the worst

it's boring, not-sexy, and not anywhere near as thrillingly transgressive as the fans would have you believe, i mean "controlling bastard spanks college co-ed" is not exactly breaking new ground

What makes me reflexively hate this tril just like I hated its progenitor series is that people who read other typical shitty romance novels DON'T think they're being transgressive, where as people who have made Fifty Shades famous are all "Ooooh this is so DARK, it's even more exciting because it's NASTY and transgressive, that's so hot, just look at all these things I would scorn and/or be disgusted by if a real-life practitioner brought them up to me."

You don't understand this whole other world now that you've read this, you just brought it into YOUR world that's safe and all cleaned up for you and made it safe and clean, too.

It gives me Outsider Rage somehow.

I mean have these people never heard of that Anne Rice pseudonymously-written shizz or what

so what you're saying is you don't like the kinky fuckery

It's like that band Fuck Buttons, man! They act like they're all avant-noise, but they're really tuneful!

when you download this book it should first automatically play the cream of wheat vid imo

as an intro to the real world

Or like, alt.sex.stories.text

lol

Hurting, don't you diss Fuck Buttons. ;(

so many verbs in that post

kink buttons

Or like, alt.sex.stories.text

lol

― mh, Tuesday, May 29, 2012 4:29 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ha i tried to make this joke/point a couple different ways

there is some kind of tipping point here going on re: the internet's reach into certain subcultures (slash fic, bdsm itself) and being a bridge into wider square culture. james is internet-literate, started as a slash fic writer, "researched" her subject therein, but the masses of purchasers of this stuff must be very un-savvy about either, or they wouldn't be buying it

Unless the book's success provides a kind of permission that otherwise wouldn't be granted. Doesn't 'Twilight' have zillions of middle-aged fans? Now we have 'Twilight' with kinky fuckery. I guess I will not condescend to even critiquing this. If this gets you off, so much the better for you. It's no worse than standard porn imo.

agreed, but there's a nice little blind where I don't have to see the people I work with looking at standard porn and all day long they're walking around with their noses in 50 Shades

yeah, i don't see anything particularly objectionable about this book, its audience or its success. as a "phenomenon" it's strange and a bit surprising, but no more so than any other internet enabled pile-on.

plus people like porn

Thanks for the insight

and for the sarcasm

I know it's not the same thing, but: I read all of the Twilight books. And hated them. My best friend was read them too...and while she mostly hated them, there was something about that world that she kind of liked...and she ended up joining an online community for Twilight fans, started reading all kinds of horrible fanfic, and made a few online friends. It didn't change her intrinisically except this was now a thing she liked, that she talked about with other people who liked it too. She was still the same person I was friends with before. You know? People can absorb themselves in really crappy things and not be horrible people for it.

It's a Twinkie. You're not eating it because of its nutritional benefits. I'm sure half the people who read the dumb book know how bad it is. I don't know that we should assume that we're the only ones who know better.

Sorry I'm journalling now, I'll shut up

Still really thrilled that estela mentioned me.

No, that's a good point. I doubt very many people think that 50 Shades is good, but they read it, nevertheless. I'm only turned off by its cultural ubiquity – I find its popularity mildly distasteful in the same way I'd find public Penthouse oogling distasteful. That probably marks me as a prude, and so be it.

i wasn't being snide towards you, i hope you know, i'm just enthralled by the all terrible similes in this book. xp

I doubt very many people think that 50 Shades is good

Now, see, I've seen multiple people on my FB timeline post that they do indeed find it "good" and, in some cases, "the best book they've ever read", unironically. Those people are out there. And, y'know, I don't begrudge my friends for liking what they like, but if one of them told me, in complete sincerity, that this was the "best book they'd ever read" - well, I'd have some thinking to do about how much I'd ever trust them again wrt to book/music/film recommendations.

I know it's not the same thing, but: I read all of the Twilight books. And hated them.

It IS the same thing, and I read those books, too, and I hated them, and so did p much everyone I knew, even though we all read them because lol publishing and being in the children's lit world and etc.

They also gave me outsider rage b/c of a lot of things, but majorly because of the reinforcement of mainstream/safe/approved values (in the original case a lot of sexual mores and religiously based conservative ideas) in the guise of giving you an "out" from those exact values. It's a bait & switch, and to me a really offensive one, profiting financially from an other, a forbidden world or bunch of ideas that might result in actual change if they were shared with any honesty, which they won't be, and also the profit of strengthening the stranglehold of the mainstream position because consumers of the media think they've glimpsed an "outside" and now they know what's there, when really they were just shown another scene painting.

I'm not putting this very well.

kinky fuckery for dummies

laurel I hear you loud and clear and you are v much OTM imho

why do you guys read things you hate? idgi

wait, I thought the point of these books being shit wasnt really about the validity or otherwise of the sexual dynamics, but THE TERRIBLE GODAWFUL INSANELY CHILDISH WRITING SKILL ON DISPLAY.

Well, I'm not going to read this one, but I had other reasons for reason the other series.

*for reading

lol shakey, surely you among all ilxors know the ego-gratifying qualities of hate

I mean from what I have read on this thread, I couldnt get turned on by this book even if it described my perfect fantasy, because the minute I got to an "ack" or "cripes" or "icecream dropped in my belly icecream" I'd be laughing too hard.

it's also kinda lol that so many people (especially dudes) are really getting high and mighty about how women have been flocking to some crude and artless erotica because, y'know, we're over here watching porn that has serious cinematic merit

Yeah tbh I couldnt care less about people finding the book a kinky read, for that reason. I *do* care about a completely not-edited, shitty fanfiction book getting published and selling like this because I hate fanfiction and the fanfic scene and want to set it all on fire.

yeah the mainstreaming of it is in and of itself pretty noteworthy and awful, just saying

we're over here watching porn that has serious cinematic merit

I only watch it for the interviews

amazing angles iirc

Yeah see I think if people want erotica there is already A HUGE AMOUNT of it out there (and lots of it is awesome!) and likewise if they want power-play or BDSM or to experiment with pain in certain contexts or w/e there is a lot of ground already broken for them by people who had to go outside mainstream thought and/or media and/or boundaries to create it or legitimize it or whatever. But the fandom around THESE books doesn't cognitively lead to discovering the real material, it just shoves junk food in the part of the self that was starting to have some ideas about maybe looking for something different.

If I dig down a couple more layers of logical complication, I think that is basically evil--boring, banal evil, redirecting people away from wanting anything they're not already being offered for someone else's profit.

some dude, it's the mainstream, bookstore-display, talkshow popularity & acceptance that's remarkable, not its shoddy sexiness per se.

p.s. i'll have you know i have downloaded some very artful porn in my time, thanks a bunch

the solution is obv to rid the world of soccer

soccer and hfcs

But the fandom around THESE books doesn't cognitively lead to discovering the real material, it just shoves junk food in the part of the self that was starting to have some ideas about maybe looking for something different.

If I dig down a couple more layers of logical complication, I think that is basically evil--boring, banal evil, redirecting people away from wanting anything they're not already being offered for someone else's profit.

― how did I get here? why am I in the whiskey aisle? this is all so (Laurel), Tuesday, May 29, 2012 3:26 PM (6 minutes ago)

eh, i see it as the sale of junk food to people who really, really like and want junk food. somebody's just managed to find a good way to inject some "racy" kink-sex into the equation. i imagine that if this book were different in any appreciable way, it'd be a good deal less popular. most books are a good deal less popular, after all, and it's not like there isn't other, more genuinely subversive erotica available out there.

Well, yes, there is that. Which is the best argument for pretty much dropping people who are really into junk food imo.

i keep trying to say this but idk if it really matters: the phenomenon of the books' sudden popularity is more complicated than it looks.

the media meta-analysis is "what is with this bdsm stuff being so huge now?!" but that's not really accurate. this is not "actual bdsm" emerging into barnes&noble, it's slash fiction

i'm sort of waiting for a salon article about for-real bdsm ppl rolling their eyes or getting huffy at all this, if it hasn't already been written.