I can understand reading amongst other people reading but... I don't think I'm lonely enough to watch somebody else read. Maybe people just read along and engage in the convo when the streamer engages? Idk, seems pointless either way xD

If I have the time to watch someone else read I might as well use that time to go read myself. I mean a read-along seems like an okay idea but having the streamer on and both reading the same thing? I'm way to dang slow of a reader to have that be useful either.

Rubie wrote:If I have the time to watch someone else read I might as well use that time to go read myself. I mean a read-along seems like an okay idea but having the streamer on and both reading the same thing? I'm way to dang slow of a reader to have that be useful either.

Oh! I wonder if that's the answer! I wonder if it's something people use when they have a book on their to-read list (or homework assignment) and they have trouble doing it, so they put on this stream and pick up the book themselves to read on their end, and then when they get discouraged they can look up and see someone else still reading. Or even turn it into a race where they motivate themselves by trying to finish before the streamer...

I was wondering why on earth this would be a thing.
But you may have come up with the answer.

Makes more sense. Now I feel like trying it out to see if it would work for me XD

Akili Li wrote:I mean, it is a very very common thing in my family to enter a quiet house, wondering if anyone is home, walk into the living room and see six people all quietly curled up on a cushion or sprawled out on the floor or cuddled up together on the couch or perched sideways in a chair and they're all reading their own books. And that's "being social" for our family (except for that one sister who's an extrovert. Everyone else does this and considers their social duties done for the week).

We do that too!
Well, we are only two adults and a kid, but as a couple we've been doing this since the beginning and as parents we enjoy the luxury of having a young reader.
Sometimes he wants to be read aloud though. But he's still young.

In college I had a roommate (and classmate and friend) who did this too.
People were surprised we did not own a TV.
We could sit in the evening on the coach, each with her own book, sometimes remarking something but mostly in silence.

Yes, I did it a lot at university with my roommates, too!
It's surprising how common it is -but because it tends to be the quieter people who have this habit, you don't hear about it as much.
It's just not as visible.

Yes, the noisy people is the one you hear.
That's why I've never been a believer in movements based on assemblies...

Honestly I've never found a form of government I'd trust entirely.

One of my teachers back in.... I want to say 1995? Anyhow, he used to tell us that when you compare forms of government, the important thing was not to look at how well they each did compared to each other when they were all working at their best -you had to compare how well they each do compared to each other when they've all gone wrong and they're in their most corrupted form.

I thought it was depressing but really smart. He was a clever man.

Which reminds me of a theorem (I can't remember the name) which we studied in Decision Theory.
In short, it proved that every system is corruptible BUT those in which only one individual controls everything and makes all the choices.

So, yes, there is going to be corruption.
The best you can do is measure how bad it's gonna be.


PS: Just to make it clear, political dictatorships are corruptible too because the dictator does not control everything.

I've not heard that theory, but I do feel like there's no system which can't be corrupted somehow, so on first blush I'm sceptical. (Skeptical? Sceptical? Hm.)

I mean, even if it's just one person, as long as that one person is corrupted, then the whole thing is, so....


Oof, how did it get this late? I still have so much more to do today!