Critiques of adolescent self indulgence and utter lack of subtlety are entirely accurate, but you’re being charitable. Not even the humour was memorable. It’s also atrociously written. Easily one of the very worst books I’ve ever read, hyperbole aside. Insufferable. I’m amazed whenever I read about anyone over the age of 13 enjoying this book. People’s standards are in the motherfucking toilet. I have problems with the “young adult” label but I’ve read numerous other YA books that seem like Shakespeare in comparison.
Also hilarious to hear that it “triggers the left”. But then again most right wingers I know tend to be very stupid, so perhaps it checks out that the left would find objectively bad prose more objectionable than the right.
Having listened to the audiobook version, because Wil Wheaton narrated, I don’t remember the story at all, other than there were a lot of references that I got and Wil Wheaton narrated.
I’m not sure whether to blame the forgetfulness on the meds I was on at the time, or the book itself. Probably both.
The presenters of the Three Bean Salad podcast recently discussed how it seemed to them that the 80s in the USA were typified by the likes of The Goonies or Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, while the UK brought us the likes of Kes, instead.
it was a “popcorn” read. Not mentally taxing, loud and dumb. Probably the same reason people enjoy “Fast and Furious” movies. Things go vroom and you don’t have to think about it.
I’m right there with you. The 90s were a little better for us because mom had slogged her way through college and got a professional job, but the 80s was miserable and I found little to no comfort in the culture. It’s not like radio stations were playing Joy Division, they were playing Whitesnake and Motley Crue and shudders fucking Van Halen nonstop. The teen movies were all rapey af and most kids’ entertainment was a holdover from the 70’s except Nickelodeon and I can’t count the number of times I was banned from watching it because of how adults were depicted in You Can’t do That on Television! and how satanic Unico was (not kidding… but it is creepy as hell). Cartoons were all ads for pretty shitty toys and they all kind of sucked anyway. If I had even had access to a copy of D&D I would have been sent to some xtian re-education camp. Honestly, when Roseanne debuted it was the first time I saw people like me in any format. The 80s sucked.
I read it over a weekend and enjoyed it while reading. But wow…as soon as I started thinking about it, I realized how terrible most of it is. The main premise of the book is you can win in life if you are obsessive and look down on anyone less obsessed than you. In short, this book supports toxic gaming culture.
I only read it because me son was reading it and convinced me how good it was (especially because of all the historical pop culture references he thought I’d like). We had a long, long talk about this book later on.
Yeah, It was fun and especially for me as I’m spending much of my time time in a furry VR metaverse.
I’m an old gay GenX furry and in so many ways I’m the right age to have all my nostalga blended up and deep fried like this but it really got a bit old. I didn’t hate the experience and did enjoy it but just over time it soured as it really feels like cultural fast food. Like those snacks made up of other snacks and then deep fried. You might enjoy it at first eating but it kinda makes you sick.
Really what gets to me is just that cis-male straight gamer stink that grates on me at this stage of my life. (Especially post-gamer gate)
Ready Player 2 and really could feel the lack of skill in the author in how badly the characters were handled. The concepts were fine but nothing I couldn’t get from a much better writer.
Apparently the tenth anniversary of this book’s publication was in August?
I guess no one really saw fit to commemorate that event, but if people are still compelled to write new hate-pieces about it even now, the guy must have done something right.
(I hesitate to add that a large swath of the many, many old hate-pieces are available for free.)
Mod Note: People have varying tastes and likes. I, for example, have a newfound fondness for the SW prequel trilogy after they were fleshed out in The Clone Wars and Rebels series. You are welcome to disagree, voluminously if you like (though don’t do it here and derail the topic!). However, calling another user’s standards or choices “abysmal” or otherwise implying your take on art is the only sensible one, definitely falls outside the “be cool” spectrum of our guidelines. Don’t do that.
As always, @anon61221983 says it better than I do, with the help of WW.
I started to read the book shortly before the movie came out, and didn’t get very far before I became horribly bored, so I never finished. The movie completely lost me with the virtual race that was the first part of the puzzle to solve. The contest had been active for years at that point, but not one singe person had ever tried going backwards at the start? Tell me you’ve never met a gamer without telling me you’ve never met a gamer. That puzzle would have been solved on race #2, at the latest.
IIRC, Ready Player One was pretty heavily promoted on Boing Boing, so I think the density of people here who have an opinion about it, and share, write, or look for articles about it is probably pretty high.
I eventually stopped taking book recommendations from Boing Boing and especially from or for Cory Doctorow, after being consistently underwhelmed.
I would say, people don’t even ask whether mainstream culture is good; the criterion is “how well does this product market itself to me?”
Ready Player One is a hyper-accelerated expression of that mindset. “What if you took just the trailers for all your favorite media brands and smashed them all together, without having to sit through any of the tedious content?” It’s like how every six-year-old comes up with the idea of a cake that’s all frosting, because they haven’t learned the right questions to predict why that isn’t a good idea.
Consumers don’t know how to frame the thought that Ready Player One isn’t good. It correctly dispenses reward pellets when you push the lever – an unusually large number of pellets, in fact – and that is what consumers mean when they say they like something. To ask if it’s good would be like asking whether you enjoy reward pellets, and what kind of a question is that?
it was a “popcorn” read. Not mentally taxing, loud and dumb. Probably the same reason people enjoy “Fast and Furious” movies. Things go vroom and you don’t have to think about it.
