i like nice paper.

Everyone's all "ohhh 2026 bring back physical media" until I start talking illuminated manuscripts and then suddenly we're not on the same page anymore

Actually we are on the same page. We've been on the same page for a week because these things take forever to make

Something new is always ruining literature, something new is always destroying the minds of young people and making people stupid and incapable of critical thinking, something new is always killing the creative spirit, and it's whatever thing is annoying the article writer the most at this particular moment.

Literature never recovered from the printing press

It used to be that every book was a work of art, scribing it and remaking it as it broke down meant that you knew it had to be worth the trouble. But since that ruffian Gutenberg, people can just publish any old thing, and all writing is junk now. Also they're teaching the peasants to read and write and of course they have no taste so it's all just trash. Back in the day you could find unique works without having to trawl through a shelf of books of the same 'genre' following the same 'tropes' because you only had access to five books total to the chance for crossover was small; these days there are so many books out there written by peasants for peasants that finding something special requires actually looking for it or asking about it or knowing what sort of 'genres' you like instead of grabbing the first thing you see on a display shelf. Utterly destroyed literature, the printing press did.