What did you believe in when you were 16? What did you read?
I believed that I needed to get laid.
>>7803677
That I knew everything.
I was an edgy faggot and read the Anarchists cookbook
>>7803690
>I was an edgy faggot
Same. It causes me immense pain every day knowing this. Did you ever rationalize it or does it haunt you?
Your pic describes 16yo me pretty well.
i remember realizing how stupid and sheep like society is after 9/11
ugh I remember liking xkcd. Having finished my CS degree I can say with certainty that the creator is a massive faggot who thinks he's a genius because he can reference basic college math notions. His mentality embodies absolutely everything I hated about other CS students.
>>7803698
Sure. It haunts me when I think about some of the stuff I did when I was younger but I'm not the same immature person anymore. I just have to remind myself I was young. I wish I would have been a better kid though.
Existentialism, Nietzsche, Camus, Dostoevsky.
Idk how edgy I was.
I...I still like Every Frame A Painting and South Park
I'll never be a true patrician, right? ;_;
I believed that I was terrible but everyone else was somehow even worse. Although even then I thought that holden caulfield was a whiny bitch
Those beliefs haven't changed much really
also why the fuck is matthewmatosis in that image (especially alongside bioshock infinite)
>>7803719
I dunno about that but if being a patrician means not liking Stephen Fry then I don't want to be one
>>7803719
not if you care about an image somebody made consisting of things that they personally dislike
>>7803715
i just looked at his front page now, the current one is literally a picture of a linux shell with bash script in it
its so masturbatory
the guy isnt notable in any field at all, he went to some 5th tier state college or something
1984
At 16 I was doing literally nothing.
Not that I am doing something now.
>>7803677
I read pulp fiction (Alistair MacLean, Jack Higgins), horrors (Barker, Masterton), post-apocalyptic sci-fi. I'm glad that phase is over, although I still have a soft spot for those pulpy short stories from the 50s to 70s.
>>7803687
this
4 years have passed and it's still everything i believe in
>>7803717
was exactly the same
>>7803760
i still wear only black tho
Generic "student left" who thought parroting the establishment made me somehow anti-establishment. It's a shame by friends failed to grow up as I did!
>>7803939
de sade
>>7803939
I'd recommend he get some pussy lmao
>>7803677
Obvious bait, OP: /pol/ is in fact superior.
Dang, it feels to be a part of the /pol/itical /lit/erati.
But if you want a serious answer; I was a full-blown anti-theistic, pro-LGBT Tumblrite until around the age of 20. Now I look back upon those days with shame.
There's a special place in Hell for those of us who helped degeneracy along.
I was a racist with sympathies for Nazism and White Supremacist beliefs. Also extremely sexist and homophobic and transphobic. Thought of myself an IRL troll. Use to browse a lot of /new/ and then /pol/ growing up in my teen years. Discovered 4chan when I was 14.
I'm 22 now and am what many would consider a social justice warrior though I prefer to think of myself as an progressive centrist
Commennce the (you)'s
when i was a teenager i read plath and camus and kafka, but didn't really understand it fully.
>>7803973
>>7803973
Thanks for the (you) my man
>>7803677
I read 1984 over and over again when I was 16. I definitely believed that I was smarter than the majority of people.
Youth is a terrible time.
>>7803677
Interstellar? Every Frame A Painting? Redpill? Trump?
Are we supposed to be 17 now?
*holds up spork*
At 16 I was an Obamadrone who bought into capitalist memes like "social issues are more significant than economics". I thought European labor movements were too far left, and assumed all communism was equatable with Stalinism.
I just read YA back then.
I find it interesting that a lot of teens are drawn to the far right. Any former /pol/cucks here want to help explain that phenomenon?
>>7803715
xkcd is better than most internet creations
>>7804056
It's always been like this. The far right attracts angry young men, because it gives them a locus for their frustrations (le sjw cucks, negroes etc)
>>7803677
My favorite authors were Kafka, Hesse and Brecht. Personally I claimed to be a Marxist, but hadn't even looked into the theory.
How can I say what I liked if I'm still 16?
every frame a painting is actually good, the rest is shit
>>7803677
I believed in whatever would make people angry. I don't know when it started exactly but in seventh grade I realized that I derived great pleasure from annoying other people, but it had to be done without touching or outright insulting them.
The Nostalgia Critic. Homestuck. Watchmen. Hunger Games and other standard YA. Lots and lots of Wikipedia. Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along-Blog.
Politically I was some weird type of liberal capitalist authoritarian. I wanted a unitary American government which could keep down the bigoted "rednecks" and "ghettos" who made me uncomfortable.
>>7803986
you know I gotchu f-a-m
>>7803677
If, at the age of 16, you didn't realise that all semi-political ideologies had their own shortcomings and would never be feasibly implemented, and if you didn't realise that life was meaningless and it was perfectly fine to construe fake meaning to it although being aware of the lack of authenticity, and if you read shit tier books, than you're objectively inferior to how I was when I was 16
>>7803690
this pretty much
>>7803698
i wouldn't say it haunts me because i understand wehre it came from - being a friendless loser with no interests in highschool- but it does sadden me that my youth was wasted sulking and cusisng people out and not even doing that as part of some edgy community like metalheads or punk rockers. it was just a lonely angry existence, i'm glad at the very least i've moved on.
>>7804073
MODS
>>7803677
I read anything related to psychedelics, which I was obsessed with. Now after having tripped many times I still find them interesting and occasionally read books related to them but I have other interests and read all sorts of stuff. I'm glad I was like that when I was 16.
I remember thinking I was a communist (although looking back I wasn't excessively obnoxious about it), and I only ever read pop-history books on ww2/Korean war. Wasn't a bad life desu
>13
>"communist" with no actual grasp of communism
>15
>racist /pol/ libertarian
>a lot of the stuff in OP
>19
>degenerate leftie ancom
I don't know many others who share this path
>>7804205
looks like your next rightist phase is going to come around like trump is the moon and you're the tide
>>7804072
I really liked hesse too
I was a libertarian.
I'm sorry.
>>7803677
I was an FDR-eqsue New Deal Democrat with more social conservative values. Mostly I read history, Lovecraft, Conan stories, and bad 40k novels.
I was just budding into philosophy, didn't believe anything, read Sophie's World, Plato and the Platypus, watched a lot of School of Life, and refused to fall into any particular philosophical viewpoint because I knew I didn't know enough.
>>7805333
>implying that wrong
>>7804205
Pretty much the same for me tbqh except without the first stage.
>16
>edgy faggot atheist + Satanic Bible reading sperg
>19
>Red-pilled Ayran man from 4chan; really just a woman hating libertarian.
>21
>get laid, get friends, start reading books
>Become degenerate Commie
I read "Mr. Pickwick" and "Neon Bible"
I became an idealist and had a liking for tenderness and the rural world.
I still have those ideas but they became more corrupted due to growing up and reading way lesser than before. Discovering 4chan was a blessing and a curse
>>7804068
That's the same with the left, except for straight white guys
>>7805531
lel
>>7803677
When I was 16 I was too busy playing video games and trying to get laid and party.
I managed to avoid most of the stuff that befalls young pseudointellectuals, though I'm a communist, which is supposed to be the ultimate pseud.
>>7804056
It panders more heavily to their life experience than leftism, which is more sympathetic to minority groups.
>>7805565
This desu
>>7803677
>CultOfDusty
What a fucking cunt..
Only things on here I bother with or like are Vsauce and PMRants.
>mfw I see EC outside of YouTube
>>7804056
It is ultra easy to be on the Right; zero critical thinking or reading is required.
You can blame everything that you don't like about yourself or the world on [Insert Group] and find people that will share your view or pat you on the back for it.
Being a white man means your are already the best of the best in society so you don't need to do anything to improve yourself; just snark at others that you don't like. Right wing politics is basically designed to appeal to your ego, which of course is massive when your a teenager.
The weird thing about right politics is that a lot of people sort of have a half-hearted, satirical connection to it; in the back of your mind you know its all bullshit but that allows you to fully embrace it.
How the fuck should I know. That was 10 years ago. I didn't read that's for damn sure. I played vidya and smoked copious amounts of reefer. On weekends I'd smoke reefer and drink amaretto with schoolyard chums and go home and play cs 1.6 and laugh everytime I actually killed someone because I was so fuxed up kekekekekeekekek. I used to look at people with gf's and get angry because I didn't have one (wait 3 years dumbass, then you will realize how stupid you were). HooooOrah
I read Thomas Aquinas and The Divine Comedy.
>>7805599
>It is ultra easy to be on the Right; zero critical thinking or reading is required
>You can blame everything that you don't like about yourself or the world on [Insert Group]
this is b8
>>7805615
No it isn't; anon asked for an opinion from a former teen reactionary so i gave them one.
I thought I was tough but there was always someone else tougher than me, I had to learn that the hard way by those beatings
All Quiet On The Western Front, Guerilla Warfare, Night,(lol) . war was always portrayed as a twisted rite of passage. I got over it . so i changed my notions and moved on towards chasing a career in Law Enforcement, or something dangerous.
>>7805620
I see now.
I would disagree that blaming problems on another group is in anyway unique to the right; with leftists it's whites, Jews, capitalists, men, or etc. It's just the expression of different class's means of class warfare.
Maybe you speak of the particulars of your own experience, but my experience is different. How old are you now? Your experience might be very different on account of when, since there's been large (counter)-cultural shifts at the far periphery of the right.
I think a lot of teens are drawn to the far right because it emphasizes (quite obviously true, in retrospect) truths which the mainstream denies and which, having access to those truths, provides a simple but, compared to the mainstream positions, robust explanation of the world around them. Further, many come from homes void of close family connection, and especially many have no connection to community. (This also seems to explain the fetishizing of traditional religion by young reactionaries.) It's a perfect set up for capturing the energy of disaffected, marginalized men in a society with declining sociosexual mobility.
Every frame is a cool channel
>>7805658
I'm 24 now and yes I was speaking in terms of my own experience; also by right I meant far-right not Libertarian or general conservative.
>I think a lot of teens are drawn to the far right because it emphasizes (quite obviously true, in retrospect) truths which the mainstream denies and which, having access to those truths, provides a simple but, compared to the mainstream positions, robust explanation of the world around them.
Absolutely, mainstream discourse doesn't talk about anything that people outside of the "Middle Class" will find helpful so you turn to new avenues to find answers to your own problems.
Right politics offers an extremely easy avenue for answering questions you have about why things are going wrong, for me personally it was a very deep hatred of women that attracted me to the right, where I started to develop more racist tendencies.
>I would disagree that blaming problems on another group is in anyway unique to the right; with leftists it's whites, Jews, capitalists, men, or etc. It's just the expression of different class's means of class warfare.
Your correct the it isn't unique to the right but the people the left blame are usually distilled from more in-depth political theory rather than conspiracy-esque blaming of say the Jews.
Thats not to say the left isn't full of people that just blindly hate and who haven't picked up a book in their lives.
>. Further, many come from homes void of close family connection, and especially many have no connection to community. (This also seems to explain the fetishizing of traditional religion by young reactionaries.) It's a perfect set up for capturing the energy of disaffected, marginalized men in a society with declining sociosexual mobility.
This is an extremely good explanation I think, the right is excellent at providing a sense of community which is what, ultimately, was the thing I was missing most in my life.
>>7805333
My economics teacher is a full on libertarian. He is the most cringe-inducing teacher I have ever had the displeasure of getting taught by. He spouts straight up propaganda, to the point of putting up his signs when he ran as a Libertarian, honestly I don't know if that's illegal or not but to me it's like I stepped into braingwashing center or some shit.
>>7805721
>the people the left blame
Just wanted to call this out by itself. That's my point; politics is just warfare by other means. In this case, class warfare. Now thanks to the internet there are 4GW elements to it.
>the people the left blame are usually distilled from more in-depth political theory
It may be the case that the left has apparently sophisticated rhetorical mechanisms for justifying which groups they blame, but contrast this to the witch hunts of Europe c. 1600. The Catholic Church had very sophisticated rhetorical mechanisms for justifying which groups (witches, e.g. social misfits and other marginalized people) they blamed.
OTOH, you must be familiar with the literature on antebellum slavery apologetics? Those offer "in-depth political theory" (as well as biological and anthropological science, akin to the left's use of academic social sciences) for their conclusions as well. Not conspiracy-esque, and if the Civil War had held off a couple more decades evolutionary theory would have really radicalized the subject of slavery apologetics, I reckon.
In sum, politics in general is shit. Everything is shit.
Hopelessly optimistic about society and hopelessly cynical about individuality. Wanked over Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Kierkegaard and the stoics, but very actively hated Nietzsche. Was very involved in Theravada Buddhism even though I bragged about practicing it far more than I ever practiced it. I basically moved past my complete nihilistic intellectually superior edgelord phase and into a slightly less edgy existentialist phase at that age. I sympathized heavily with the left and followed left libertarianism strongly.
Basically I thought I was smarter than everyone else by thinking I wasn't smarter than everyone else.
Kek i used to read Pynchon, Gaddis and Wallace when I was 16. I fell for the meme before I even discovered /lit/.
Now I'm 18 and starting to branch out a bit. Basically spent my two previous years reading only /lit/ meme-tier books.
>>7803677
Well if I can recall what I read around that time period, mostly nonfiction. I was just starting to into my interest in philosophy so I was reading some introductory books on the subject at the time. I felt a special affinity towards Nietzsche, which still persists two years later.
One particularly cringey thing I remember about that time period, was reading the Satanic Bible, and actually finding it viable. I even dated a LaVeyan Satanist towards the end of that year. I was definitely an edgy atheist, which I still am, just with a duller blade.
As for literary stuff, I didn't do much reading on that end. I read some Jane Austen and Wuthering Heights. Tried reading some actual philosophical works starting with Camus but that proved too inaccessible for me at the time. I also remember picking up The Divine Comedy and not getting too far into it.
>Tfw too pleb to comprehend intellectual works, too patrician for nonliterary text.
Looking back merely two years is so goddamn embarrassing.
>>7803715
>His mentality embodies absolutely everything I hated about other CS students.
Fucking spot on. Shit is only one level above The Oatmeal.
I was a Hayek/Friedman/slightly-sympathetic-with-Rothbard-tier lolbertarian. Not even a Nozick-tier libertarian. I am still atoning for my fedora past by reading proper philosophy.
Also, some existentialism, but Camus and Sartre, rather than Kierkegaard and Heidegger unfortunately.
>>7803964
There is essentially no difference between a SJW and a progressive, SJW is just a derogatory term for a progressive.
>>7805766
The Catholic church never blamed witches, they specifically thought it was superstitious and tried to suppress it. The mania of witches arose in the renaissance and became a big problem in protestant countries.
>>7803677
A lot of the stuff in that picture.
I don't know why Matthewmatosis is on there though. He usually gives pretty insightful and well researched reviews.
Anyway, I was a very racist and edgy leftist who pretended to read and know a lot of things but really didn't. I was very lazy and hypocritical but with a big ego at the same time. Not a great time in my life from a personal standpoint.
>>7803677
>What did you believe in when you were 16?
I had Catholic conservative views but wasn't sure about my beliefs in religious terms and I couldn't articulate them very well. Catholicism is strange, you really need to read a lot to actually understand it, not be religious in itself, but articulation of philosophy and theology before other groups is complicated.
I was edgy because I had a hard time in primary school and was really ugly (I fare good enough to grab a coffee with some qts from time to time now which is moving forward).
I was really into miniatures and video games so Warmachine, 40k and Fallout.
>What did you read?
Aside my mandatory school reading which was actually a lot of great classics, not much. Lovecraft, Poe, Herbert, Tolstoy, Bible from what I remember. I started getting into reading that year so I was reading on average a book a week for 2 and a half years (21 now).
>>7806076
Also actually nothing from the OP
>>7803677
the only thing I was then was anti feminist.
Although I suppose I still am, now im just an isolationist.
It's pretty nice.
I discovered anime and never looked back.
>>7803677
Communist
Marx, Orwell
>>7805607
You made this whole post to say you have a gf, admit it.
I was into stuff like the beats, Robert Anton Wilson, Bukowski, Hunter Thompson, Post-left anarchy and situationism. I still am into most of it tbqh, but I've way beyond that.
I had a great first philosophy teacher who also was kind of a MILF. Even now I'm attracted to girls that look like younger versions of her
>INB4 female philosophy teacher
She used to talk with me about life and what I was going to do and I thought she thought I was good at philosophy because I liked her classes. (At the time philosophy class was a revolution for me, coming out of the very weird phase of adolescence to the on just before adulthood where talking to grown-ups is acceptable and they begin tosee you as an equal)
I envisioned myself becoming a philosopher yet three years later I barely read some Plato. I can't do it /lit/, I can't read philosophy, it flies over me.
Fuck I now realize most of you are in your early 20's. What the fuck am I even doing here.
>>7806131
he never implied that
>>7806160
I am rich
I am handsome
I am young
I have an interesting, well paying job
I have a cute girlfriend
I read good books all day and meet my friends in bars and clubs
I'm actually NEET and alone this is bait
I drive my own car and my parents are proud of me
I travel often and speak fluently several languages
I will live a good life at your expense
>>7806160
You only realise this now?
>>7803677
I was an edgy Libertarian
>>7806126
>Communist
I became communist when I was 15-16. I still consider myself a communist, but back then I felt sincere/unironic abuot that, now I'm a bit disillusioned and I've came to a point that I hate the 'progressive liberal left' more than even the far-right.
>>7806160
Marc you still here?
>Age 16
Edgy atheist Nietzsche reader.
>Age 18
Started reading Murakami to get laid.
>Age 21
Became interested in modern fiction, still pretty pleb-tier: Palahniuk, Ellis, Kesey, Capote, Kerouac...
>Age 24
Started reading history, political theor and 19th century novel
>Now (age 27)
Into Spanish civil war books, still 19th century novels, occasional essays, Latin American Boom.
at 16in 1999I was a John McCain fan, a traditionalist Catholic, into fantasy, and I just wanted to get my dick sucked/became deeply involved in my gf and working at a vidya game store
at 33 im into contemporary lit, /fit/ness, and just want the government to be as small as possible. I have no philosophical pretensions outside The Lion King and go to a liberal protestant church.
>>7803677
Pic related sums it up pretty well. I at least had some beliefs back then, now I'm just empty.
>>7805658
lel
>>7806057
Didn't mean they didn't burn witches and "heretics." Sure the popular witch hunts we picture in our heads today were in Protestant and Reformed Countries like Scotland, but that was preceded by centuries of Catholic inquisitions and witch hunts. Catholics like Conrad of Marburg were just as murderous as Mather. They did it for a longer period of time on top of that.
>>7803677
That's literally just a collage of popular internet tropes.
What was the point of the image again?
>>7806387
As I've said, there were no witch hunts back then, or at least nome that were officially supported by the Church or secular governments. It was considered to be a superstition hence why you have legislation that specifically bans witch hunts, for example one from Hungary, 11th or 12th century.
And the inquisition has always been the most benign and law based court, the number of people convicted of murder is around 3000 for various crimes over centuries.
>>7803677
>when you were 16
b-but anon, I thought we all are 16 here ..
also your pic doesn't make sens , i get it's meme vibe but it would be impossible for someone to subscribe to every thing on that list, it's just contradictory
fixed
>>7803677
that fucking image is so triggering
obviously made by some /pol/tard for intuitive counter shitposting
>>7803719
South Park is hilarious dude, miles ahead of shit like Family Guy
>>7806182
I ended up growing out of it through maturity, reading some history and more then one horror story from older relatives about communism. Now I'm an An-Cap.
Whats wrong with vsauce
Far right, and still am. seeing sandpeople and niggers coming here and being literal pigs fills me with disgust. i want my all white country back. at any cost
>>7805812
>Basically I thought I was smarter than everyone else by thinking I wasn't smarter than everyone else.
I still feel like this sometimes. How did you make it stop?
>>7803677
I was stupid version of nihilist (and thank any god that 4chan didn't exist in this time) and I didn't read.
>>7803736
...how old are you anon?
>>7803690
This
>13
>Republican like my daddy
>16
>most of the stuff in OP, racist libertarian
>19
>traditionalist, nationalist, open to the idea strong central government
interesting
>>7803677
>Not having a good laugh with darkmatter
OP, please.
>>7806395
By now most ppl are just collages of internet tropes. Thanks god /lit/ is here to direct us to high end branded text content we need to actualize our personal brands.
>>7803964
Liam?
I thought school was a waste of time and everyone in my hick town sucked, so I spent all my time reading.
I was reading long difficult books like Gravity's Rainbow, Ulysses, Infinite Jest. Now it's rare that I have time to read a book over a few hundred pages.
>>7809318
fuck man...
>>7803677
>11
my dad is some sort of new age UFO-obsessed right-wing hippie survivalist who blames all the world's problems on Jews. I sincerely believe everything he says. I don't get along with anyone besides some relatives.
>13
I discover atheism through the internet. Yay Science is awesome phase, followed by disappointment at what now seems like a hollow, meaningless existence. Later that same year I move with my grandparents
>15
Unhealthy obsession with hating SJWs and Feminism. Meme libertarian/ancap.
>19
pessimistic about the future. agnostic, left libertarian degenerate
>>7809419
your dad was right.
>>7803677
pretty accurate OP but you need to add a pic of Marx, Zizek, and hmmm yeah, Bernie Sanders to that pic.
>>7809430
nah, by now he's just a sub/pol/ mgtow enthusiast who smokes weed all day and hasn't held a job in years.
>>7808051
There's no real way out of it, imo, you just have to roll with it
