Skip to main content

2 Massive Trend among Current Readers


I am going to tell you a trend among people who are extremely centred around efficiency, productivity & stuff like that. However if you are a reader (or atleast has some connection to books of any kind) & if you have ever went over YouTube to get some book recommendation, then probably you are already aware of the trend. But hold on. Let's not get hurry. First let me share a tiny story which will make it easier for you to understand the heart of the trend. 

The story goes back to early 2010's. YouTube was the hottest buzz word all over the world. Every field was going through dramatic shifts. Lots of industries decimated & lots of industries started to thrive in leaps & bounds. People left jobs & became YouTubers. A group of readers saw this as an opportunity & started talking about books over YouTube. But they didn't like calling themselves YouTubers, so they  started calling them "Booktubers". This marks the rise a whole new industry called "BOOKTUBE".

Booktubers started talking about all kind of books, like novels, biographies, memoirs, science, philosophy & history. It was rejuvenating because for the first time in human history there is an industry that celebrates knowledge & talks about it boastfully in front of the world. It was also good in a way that it was able to attract even non-readers into reading, because those booktubers were talking (reviewing/ analysing) about books so cheerfully in a video format with decorative backgrounds, which was really really cool. Everything was going well untill the rise of "Self-Help" books. 

Trend 1 : 


It's not that Self-help books were not there in the industry. But it was sort of niche (if not totally hidden). As some of the booktubers started talking about Self-help books, all of a sudden the views started to skyrocket. Whether you talk about developed countries like USA or developing countries like India, the demand for Self-help grew everywhere like a wildfire. So booktubers started to snatch this opportunity.  Instead of talking about novels, biographies, social events, science & philosophy, they decided to talk about self-help books more & more.

Trend 2 : 


That's not all. There is one more seed that booktubers planted in the minds of readers. It's the art of "FINISHING MORE BOOKS". In order to meet the rising demand of Self-help books, booktubers started to read 2/3 times of what they usually read. They would set their video thumbnail like "I completed 100 books in a year", "I read 7 books in 7 days", "Self-help books have changed my life". So readers started to sense the competition, got excited about it & participated, thinking that it will also change their lives upside down. 

Now the question comes; how far these  Self-help books have helped the reader community ? Secondly, how much "reading 100 books a year" has changed the lives of readers ? As you can sense from my tone, the answer is NOT so positive. Let's start from Self-help. 

This is a genre of books that mostly talks about productivity, efficiency, belief systems, work life balance & many more. To most readers these books are captivating, inspiring & motivating because it teaches them tips & tricks to grow in a modern capitalist society. To be frank there is nothing wrong about this genre of books. They have huge potential to transform lives. Afterall, people write these books after lots of observation & life experience. But what makes everything worse is when trend 1 meets trend 2.

People aren't just reading self-help, they are swallowing self-help, day in & day out. Its kind of a illusion among readers that the more self help you consume, the more fantastic & enriching your life will be. It also gives them a sense of accomplishment after finishing 5 self-help books in a month. It's not accomplishment, it's cluttering your mind & welcoming confusion. Instead of integration & application of learned knowledge, the focus is on NUMBER, so that they can move to YouTube & declare that they have completed 100 books in a year. When one booktuber does it, hundreds of readers start doing it & end up in a mass epidemic. It's ironic that readers are living in such a state of delusion. 

I will close this blog with one question "what's next?" 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

3 Ways to Pick Non-Fiction Books for a Fun Reading Experience

If you are reading this then I am assuming you have come accross few books in past & looking forward to lift your reading a notch higher.  So what do you think about reading ?  How that experience of holding a book & reading it all by yourself inside a calm room sounds like ?  Fun, right ?   Hell no.  Opposed to scrolling Netflix & Instagram, the idea of putting down your head over a book already sounds quite geeky, which could be described as the opposite of fun. But is there any way to make it fun ? Ofcourse. You can have a coffee. You can sit over a comfortable chair with a comfy cushion inside a home whose doors give way to a cool green balcony. That's the decoration part. But there is something more important than decoration & that's the secret.  It's fun  ONLY IF YOU PICK THE BOOKS RIGHT FOR YOU . Read that sentence again.  I didn't say "Pick the RIGHT BOOKS" I said "Pick the books RIGHT FOR YOU". Got it ? Now that's what ma
1 comment
Read more

An Underrated Aspect of Waking Up Early : Backed by Experiment

Welcome !  This is a blog post that tackles an issue almost 80% people deal with : WAKING UP EARLY.  Now given the kind of lifestyle our generation is exposed to, it's no wonder why sleeping on time & waking up early feels like an ordeal of infinite magnitude. Sadly, like many others, I have felt it all my life & rarely succeeded.  Now there are hundreds of explanations about how to do that effectively. There is the role of diet, exercise, surrounding temperature, sound etc. But there is one parameter that's arguably most dominant :  LIGHT, specifically SUNLIGHT.  Prof./Podcaster, Andrew Huberman is by far the biggest supporter of this notion on social media. He has repeatedly emphasized the role of SUNLIGHT when it comes to waking up early (& also sleeping early).  According to science, when we are exposed to light of higher intensity there is reduction in melatonin (sleep hormone) & rise of cortisol (hormone during activity). So, better the intensity better th
Post a Comment
Read more

Concept of Marriage : Getting Clarity through Confusion

Marriage has been a deeply confusing topic from the beginning of civilization. As soon as you hit a certain age, you have to make a decision. A big scary DECISION. Getting married or not ?  Now here I have cited most of the common reasons why people marry. Hope you will agree. But that's not the point of this post.  The point is to get clarity over why we do it. And I think, there is no better way to understand something without questioning the very foundation of what we think to be correct.  So, without further ado, let's dive in & think through some questions, which I believe, are hard but worth pondering over.  Ready.....Steady.....Go. 1) Some do it for physical, mental & emotional fulfilment  Don't you feel fulfilled now ?  How do you know marriage will make you fulfilled ?  Is this fulfilment just an IDEA or a real thing ?   2) Some actually don't need it presently, still do it so that they will have a child who will take care of them in older days  What if
Post a Comment
Read more