Have you thought about why people read anything?

I’m not talking about things they are forced to read because of social media doomscroll-encouraging algorithms.

I’m talking about things they read intentionally.

A book, a blog post, an essay, an online article, a magazine column etc.

Why do people read them?

Scott Alexander says it’s due to one or more of these reasons:

  • it teaches them something (like the one you’re reading now)
  • it appeals to their confirmation bias. it either approves of their ingroup, or bashes their outgroup, or does both satisfyingly (“my God good, you’re God bad!”)
  • it makes them laugh, or at least chuckle

Scott says the third one is the biggest reason people read.

I’m skeptical of that claim though.

If that were true, then why are there so many horror novels and murder mysteries. Or even romantic or detective novels? None of these do any of those 3 things above.

It’s because all of these make people feel something. And people like to feel something. Anything.

Horror novels make them feel fear. Mysteries and detectives make them experience the satisfaction of solving a problem. And romantic novels make them feel loved and desired.

And by reading these novels, they get to feel these emotions without the downside that comes from experiencing them first-hand.

You can experience the thrill of fear safely from the couch while reading a Stephen King vampire novel without actually standing in a room watching helplessly as a 2000 year old Dracula rips both of your parents throat and comes at you next.

That was unnecessary. But you get my point.

Same with mysteries and detective stories. You get to watch the mystery solved from the protagonist’s point of view. It’s like you yourself put together the clues and brought the bad guy down. It’s so satisfying because in your real life you rarely get such an opportunity to be the hero in a high-stake situation.

And in a romantic novel, you can experience the feeling of being desired, or desiring some one intensely, and the feeling of being a romantic, like in the movies, without the risk of having your heart broken and becoming a sorry-ass mess that is Devdas.

Now the question is.. do you really want to experience all these? Do these help you in any way? Do these even make you happy?

The Scott Alexander mentioned above said that one of his favorite humor author is Scott Adams.

And this Scott, in his life advice book said to read funny books. I’m certain he meant “read only funny books”, because else where in his podcasts and paid subscriptions he has often said that he doesn’t watch horror movies, or even fun, but violent movies like that of Quentin Tarantino’s… because of the violence and blood shed.

And his reason? They don’t make him feel happy. And it’s paramount for him to feel happy as much as possible. That’s what he said in his book in the first sentence of the chapter titled “Happiness”:

The only reasonable goal in life is maximizing your total lifetime experience of something called happiness.

After having watched a million such movies, TV shows and read a bunch of Stephen King and Dan Brown novels, and many that I don’t even remember now, I can only agree. They didn’t only waste my time, they didn’t make me happy either. Such crime!

And even now… just because I’d watched those movies and read those novels… despite being several years ago, I tend to watch scenes from those movies in youtube.
“hateful eight scene”, “it movie scene”, “departed scene”, “breaking bad scene”, “heat shootout scene”, “death proof scene” (don’t judge me) et cetera.

And whatever feeling they leave me with after, I now realize I don’t need them.

On the contrary, I remember feeling joyful after reading Terry Pratchett, PG Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, watching any of the many great Tamil humor movies, and hollywood stuff from Jim Carrey, Robin Williams etc.

So the second Scott is right. Read and watch only funny things. Because the goal in life is to feel happy much of the time.

And the first Scott is right too. People will read anything if it is funny.

So the takeaway here is…

As a reader, read only funny, light-hearted stuff that make you cheerful. Same advice goes for movies and TV shows as well.

As a writer, if you want your stuff to be read, sprinkle humor. You can absolutely learn this simply by reading a lot of funny authors, and specifically by reading/watching some bits from them just before you have to write something. Find your flavor and experiment once in a while to expand your list of favorites.