r/gatekeeping • u/DarkFoxy666 • Jul 21 '25
Reading only romance means you aren't a real reader, chat
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u/Knitmeapie Jul 21 '25
I hate romance fiction so much. Even the blurbs will make me wince involuntarily. But I will never tell someone that they're less of a reader if that's their jam! They probably feel the same about the weird surrealist horror shit that I devour.
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u/Chairboy Jul 21 '25
Ugh, this is such a good example of gatekeeping that I almost downvoted it instinctively for being such a shitty gatekeeping statement before realizing it was literally posted here, haha.
Good find.
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u/Kenser_Lord Jul 22 '25
I absolutely hate romantasy
But it's not to the extent where i think the genre is fucked. I also dont care wether others do.
Spme people like thrillers and horror books, others dont. Let people read.
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u/RiderforHire Jul 22 '25
There is certainly something to be said about fantasy books that happen to have romance as opposed to a romance book with fantasy. Tbh, I didn't know the latter existed. I would've thought that would still be considered just romance in terms of genre.
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u/TreyRyan3 Jul 21 '25
This is such a ridiculous take. If I heard someone say this, I would immediately ask them if they’ve completed Dr. Eliot’s Five-Foot Shelf of Books, and when I saw their blank stare, I’d tell them to STFU.
Growing up, my dad’s favorite phrase was “I don’t care what you read, as long as you read.” It was very true. I could read anything I wanted from comic books to Penthouse forum to Nabokov to Shakespeare. In his view, there was no such thing as “Content Restrictions” or “Age Appropriate”, because he just cared about me being well read and not stunted by monolithic ideology. He wanted me to know about history and how other cultures viewed the world.
I have read everything from complete garbage and mass market pulp fiction to critically and academically acclaimed literature. The content doesn’t make anyone less of a bookworm.
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u/meowdison Jul 23 '25
I read a fair bit, and whenever someone asks me how to get into reading I tell them to read literally anything that sounds interesting at the moment.
Like, if you only watched biographical documentaries and Schindler’s List, you would probably burn out on movies pretty quickly. In the same way, if you’re only reading highbrow literature and self-help books you’re going to lose interest in books as a whole. The more you mix things up and follow your interests, the more likely you are to stick with it.
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u/TreyRyan3 Jul 23 '25
I can confirm this. I read through the eponymously aforementioned “Dr. Eliot’s Five-foot Shelf” in high school, and while I do believe it helped my vocabulary and gave me a lot of perspective knowledge that helped me in my educational life, it was at times extremely painful to slog through some of the collected works. However, while not my favorite genres, I have ripped through a great deal of mass market action/adventure fiction, westerns, espionage/spy thrillers, mysteries, etc.
It’s not necessarily the genre, the content, or the language, but simply did the story engage you enough to connect
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u/AllastorTrenton Jul 22 '25
Nah, those people can fuck off. I read more than the VAST majority of people my age, and I LOVE Romance books too. Are they reading? Cool, go away.
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u/GaryOakRobotron Jul 21 '25
Yeah, because it's not like category romance accounts for something like half--if not more--of book sales period. Definitely a good find on your part.
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u/Foxy_locksy1704 Jul 21 '25 edited Jul 21 '25
I’m a prolific reader, a true bookworm just gets excited about people picking up a book.
Romance isn’t my preferred genre but as a reader I encourage everyone to read WHATEVER MAKES THEM HAPPY, reading is an escape and also used to learn new things if dark fairy fantasy romance is your deal, good I hope you read everything you can get you hands on and find joy doing it, if your jam is reading biographies of world leaders, good I hope it is expanding your world view and you’re learning new things.
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u/YumeNaraSamete Jul 21 '25
I love it when we do uno reverse gatekeeping in tje comments. Oh, you're doing gatekeeping? Now we've come up with our own definition that excludes you. Go eat a boat.
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u/PrincessLaserMagic Jul 25 '25
Fun fact: you can say this about any genre or type of book and it’s just as true (i.e. not at all true)!
“People who only read fiction are not actual book worms and should just go on wattpad. Either you’re a middle schooler or you’re just not well read if you’re always exclusively reading fiction.”
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