Why do so many readers lack the ability to separate fact from fiction?

I've wondered this every since I could read.

It's getting worse as time goes on.

Some people and some cultures have no concept of fiction.

In their view anything written is either true or it is lies, and lies should be abhorred.

ThatsTheGuy said:

I've wondered this every since I could read.

It's getting worse as time goes on.

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OOOÒOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

You would be a remarkable person indeed if you could demonstrate what fact or fiction is. Over history many have tried to define it and been inadequate. M. K .Ghandi even tried and did an an experiment to show how it was impossible. So, would it be fair if you were challenged to define it? Your implication is that everyone should be able to. I'd like to see your definition. I spent years looking into it and got nowhere.

oggbashan said:

Some people and some cultures have no concept of fiction.

In their view anything written is either true or it is lies, and lies should be abhorred.

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I wrote a LIT series in a universe where KING KONG and JURASSIC PARK were documentaries (plus aliens) but I think most USA consumers of mass media eventually figure out that cartoon characters do impossible stuff.

I don't think LW trolls are driven by failure to discern fiction from fact. Rather, fictions veer too close to some personal traumas, real or imagined. LW trolls feel a burning need to strike out at the irritants, i.e. authors. LW tales tend to be dramatic. That's painful to the trolls, who really are a tiny portion of LIT readers. Shall we feed their pain?

Do you think this is true here?

I don't see evidence that readers think stories here are true.

I do see the blurring of the fact/fiction line in another way here. Some readers (and authors) pronounce moral judgments on the propriety of this or that type of erotic story, implying that what's acceptable in real life ought to guide or limit what's acceptable in erotic fiction, and that there's something wrong with people who like this or that type of story. My view is all you have to do is turn on the nightly television to see that real life moral standards in no way govern what TV shows people create and watch. People love to watch cheating and mayhem.

Why do so many readers lack the ability to separate fact from fiction?

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Is it so surprising, given that neither our politicians nor our media of any political stripe can tell the difference, either?

TarnishedPenny said:

Is it so surprising, given that neither our politicians nor our media of any political stripe can tell the difference, either?

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What? You can't mean Mr. Trump?
Hasn't he been teaching everyone who and what a fake is? Or, is that a fiction?

I have had more comments that seem to deny that I have written fiction in the Fetish category.

I can write SciFi or Non-Human, include ghosts who can seem solid, and most (not all) are prepared to accept those stories.

But Fetish? If it involves even mild FemDom, or a woman who over-reacts like a male asshole? The comments can be fierce. 'She should be divorced, killed...'

oggbashan said:

Some people and some cultures have no concept of fiction.
In their view anything written is either true or it is lies, and lies should be abhorred.

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I was once located in an office doing a technical writing job. One of the young ladies (<20, I think) was convinced that what she read in the newspaper was nothing less than the truth, "'cos they ain't allowed to lie, are they ?"
It too four of us, over a period of a couple of weeks, to illustrate what constitutes "news", and what is a blatant lie.

Sadly, there are still a great many like her today.

Handley_Page said:

I was once located in an office doing a technical writing job. One of the young ladies (<20, I think) was convinced that what she read in the newspaper was nothing less than the truth, "'cos they ain't allowed to lie, are they ?"
It too four of us, over a period of a couple of weeks, to illustrate what constitutes "news", and what is a blatant lie.

Sadly, there are still a great many like her today.

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I had a friend at college whose only reading other than textbooks was cosmo and a couple of other fashion mags. She wasn't stupid, she majored in some finance subject, she just wasn't interested. At all. It was very scary.....

How many viewers still think Matt Dillon, Ben Cartwright and J.R. Ewing are real people?

weftandwarp said:

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What? You can't mean Mr. Trump?
Hasn't he been teaching everyone who and what a fake is? Or, is that a fiction?

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I mean the whole hoary lot of 'em - right and left.

Roger Whittaker once said that politicians are like bananas. They're all yellow, they hang together in bunches and there's not a straight one among them. I agree, and think the media are as bad.

I'm dubious that this is true.

I think the more likely scenario is that the categories on Lit aren't well-designed, and readers are more willing to suspend disbelief for their kink than they are for things that are most definitively not their kink.

If you're watching a porn movie for something that's not your kink, and evaluating it simply by how much you enjoyed it as a movie, you're probably going to end up considering it a pretty shitty movie.

That's one of the reasons we have categories, because if the only value your story has is to arouse the reader, and your subject matter is intrinsically unable to arouse the reader, then you're probably going to be left with an unhappy reader.

For stories which don't neatly fall into categories where you can assume a reader looking for the kind of story you're offering, authors bear the responsibility for signalling effectively what kind of story it is, or have to deal with the effects of not doing so.

In LW, in particular, I think a lot of people are there for what I'd call "justice porn" or "mercy porn", the idea that, respectively, the universe is a just place in which everyone is rewarded and punished appropriately for their actions, or that no matter what someone does, it's possible for them to receive forgiveness and be granted a happy ending.

The problem, of course, is that the two are diametrically opposed, and a reader might not know what variety of porn he's reading until page 10 of the story, leaving him irate that he wasted his time on something that is very much Not His Kink.

it's like music, everyone hears something a little different. most people merely mimic what others are doing. Our capacity for penetrating word meanings has been diminished ever since Bill Clinton got away with his "meaning of the word IS".

People that have a poor imagination, and lack the ability to temporarily suspend their beliefs will never grasp the concept that fiction isn’t factual. Those people tend to judge whatever they read against their core beliefs of what is acceptableKant

Maybe, you're just good at what you do?

Have you ever read a book by an author and thought... Christ, there's no way he or she wrote that without living it. Or looked at George RR's work and though, 'he HAS to get off on underage rape to write that'.

I'm guilty of making those assumptions, but the reality is, I write things I don't overly relate to. Some of my work has elements of my life in it (usually the painful parts), and when an author adds in authentic emotional responses, that can lead a reader to assume there's some truth or desire in what's written.

But I think that's a mistake to make. An understandable one; but a mistake. I write things in fiction that, if they happened in front of me, would land me in a fist fight.

I say, take it as a compliment, if someone's confusing your writing with reality.

It happens all the time now.

I mentioned this on another thread some months ago, but I was watching clips from the sitcom 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' on Youtube and was amazed reading the comments at the sheer level of vitriol directed towards the character of Cheryl David, Larry David's wife, and later ex-wife when they divorce.

I just kept thinking, 'Do these people know that Cheryl David doesn't actually exist, but is a fictional character on a sitcom written to make people laugh?'

RetroFan said:

It happens all the time now.

I mentioned this on another thread some months ago, but I was watching clips from the sitcom 'Curb Your Enthusiasm' on Youtube and was amazed reading the comments at the sheer level of vitriol directed towards the character of Cheryl David, Larry David's wife, and later ex-wife when they divorce.

I just kept thinking, 'Do these people know that Cheryl David doesn't actually exist, but is a fictional character on a sitcom written to make people laugh?'

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I don't think there's a single person who watched GoT who didn't actively hate Joffrey. Same thing, right? Yeah, we know he's a character, but we fucking HATED that guy.

While I suppose it may be a tribute to his acting, James Woods played a role in "The Onion Field' that made me refuse to watch him in anything else.

jaF0 said:

How many viewers still think Matt Dillon, Ben Cartwright and J.R. Ewing are real people?

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I had an Aunt for whom JR was a very real person.

jaF0 said:

While I suppose it may be a tribute to his acting, James Woods played a role in "The Onion Field' that made me refuse to watch him in anything else.

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Now there's an Actor of real talent.

ThatsTheGuy said:

I've wondered this every since I could read.

It's getting worse as time goes on.

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It comes from reading The New York Times.

So much of it is now fiction.

I've learned to be careful about who I tell that I write erotic fiction. Amongst certain groups of people (mainly men on a certain dating site I won't name), that tends to lead into, "Wow, you must really love to fuck! How do you try all the things you write about? Can I help you try them?"

They generally don't believe that I *haven't* tried most of the things I write about, and sometimes get pretty vitriolic about their refusal to believe. It's worse since my husband and I opened our marriage, because of course a kinky, polyamorous woman must fuck and be willing to fuck everything that moves.

I've even tried pointing out that I'm not a werewolf--or a man--as refutation for having experienced everything I write. (One of my published, now out of print series was about a gay vegan werewolf and his male mate, the sexually submissive alpha.) Their response is usually along the lines of, "Well of course you aren't, but you still must have done all these other things, right?"

I take it as a tribute to my writing prowess. Obviously I'm so good that my stories immerse them in the reality of my tale and they're sucked into the quicksand of my alternative reality where everything I write is so real that they are as one with my characters and their worlds. I wish!

Did you literally mean fact or fiction or the intolerance to anything that doesn't fit their perception of reality? I have noticed a lot of negativity and downright hostility toward some excellent stories that wasn't justified. A well written story is still a well written story regardless of whether it happens to be your cup of tea. A certain amount of "literary license" should be granted to any story submitted on Literotica.

Ezrollin said:

Did you literally mean fact or fiction or the intolerance to anything that doesn't fit their perception of reality? I have noticed a lot of negativity and downright hostility toward some excellent stories that wasn't justified. A well written story is still a well written story regardless of whether it happens to be your cup of tea. A certain amount of "literary license" should be granted to any story submitted on Literotica.

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Both.

1. I have had comments that the story lines are impossible because one of the characters (usually female) was abusive. She would have been divorced and/or arrested for such behaviour so the story couldn't have happened. (Clue - it didn't. It was fiction.) I don't get such comments on SciFi and Non-Human but on realistic stories set in a recognisable time and location. I suppose it could be seen as a tribute to my writing that anon thinks I am recounting a real story about real people, despite my disclaimer at the start of my stories.

2. Perception of reality

I have had a comment that London wasn't like that in the early 1960s; that no young woman shaved her pubic hair then; and that the word 'pussy' wasn't in use.

That comment was from a woman who was too young to know the early 1960s and had never visited London. I know what London was like then - I was there and active on the fringes of the pop scene. Pubic hair? Shaving came with mini-skirts because hair could be visible under pantyhose or around panties. The word 'Pussy' for a woman's sexual parts dates back as far as Shakespearean time - in England.

That was an extreme example but I have had other comments that the story couldn't happen in real life because... The criticism is usually not justified because I based it on real events and people at that time. What I knew and experienced is unlikely to be the same as someone much younger in rural Mid West US. I know - I was there, as a Lit-legal adult. If I didn't do it I knew people who did.

Another comment was that a character couldn't just get a date-rape drug. That made the story impossible.

Sorry. All types of illegal drugs are easily available in the UK and can be delivered or collected from a specified location within less than an hour. You just have to know who and how to contact them. If you don't know? You can find out by asking your circle of friends. If they don't know, they probably know someone who does know. I don't use illegal drugs, but in my town I know where the dealers are likely to be found and when. So do the local Police. They aren't seriously concerned about the low-level street dealers. They want the supply chain and the bigger criminals.

But some readers have no idea that most stories on Literotica are the product of the authors' imagination. They think that all stories 'must be true - it happened to the writer'. I don't want to experience many of the activities in my stories. I write fiction. The stories may be inspired by events, people, places etc. but the results are complete invention.