>Sneering at others because their cultural tastes don't match yours does nothing but help you feel superior to others for a few moments.
Taste is something one develops, not something one is born with. Taste on its own, is like an asshole: everybody has one. Just like "personal opinion".
>And I say this as someone who reads a lot of fiction, subscribes to a literary review, and treasures my library of printed books.
But who also treasures the unintellectual idea of every cultural taste being just as good as any other, and anything to the contrary being "pretentious".
Trading insults back and forth isn't going to be very conducive to a productive discussion. Why don't you tell me a little about your theory of moral values in cultural expression and consumption and I'll tell you a little about mine?
My instinctual position is that one's character (moral, aesthetic, civil, political, emotional, etec) is strongly influenced by the cultural media one encounters. I think encountering the wide range of human emotions and contexts available in fictional literature makes one more resilient when faced with adversity, and better able to make an informed decision that will lead constructively towards one's desired outcome. I also don't think literature is the only way to be exposed to that range of emotions and contexts.
I think the shift from interacting with a predominantly printed media to an interactive/hypertextual media has been a net negative for society, although I'd struggle to define the exact metric on which it's a net negative. I think the impact on attention span would be one of those negative impacts, but I'm aware of no hard evidence of such an impact, and would ask citations if someone made such a claim in debate. I've witnessed friends and loved ones, through their habits of interaction with online media, end up in a worse place than they would were it not for online media.
I have a handful of friends with whom I exchange books and book recommendations, and I've noticed and been saddened by noticing that most of what I get recommended is somewhat pulpy sci-fi and fantasy, and while I recommend my share of that I also recommend a lot of books with, for lack of a better phrase, more "aesthetic value". Some of the books I've been pushing on people in the past few years, with varying success, include: A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa, The Great Gatsby, Mind and Nature by Gregory Bateson, Autobiography of Red by Anne Carson, (v.) by Anastacia-Renee, and Winter Mythologies and Abbots by Pierre Michon. They're all excellent books!
But you're right, I am somewhat of a moral relativist. I think it's very hard to objectively compare different cultural values or cultural habits of media interaction. I think it's easy to fool oneself that one's personal preferences are morally superior to one's personal dislikes, and I'm fairly hesitant to listen to someone propound on that topic without seeing evidence of some fairly rigorous introspection and attempts to overcome those inherent, inevitable biases.
Taste is something one develops, not something one is born with. Taste on its own, is like an asshole: everybody has one. Just like "personal opinion".
>And I say this as someone who reads a lot of fiction, subscribes to a literary review, and treasures my library of printed books.
But who also treasures the unintellectual idea of every cultural taste being just as good as any other, and anything to the contrary being "pretentious".