Books with the worst morals/messages?

[CountVanBadger]

What book(s) do you think has the worst moral or message you've ever heard?

For me, I'm gonna have to go with this one:

It's a book about a kid who gets sent to a school that teaches monster children how to blend into human society. It sounds derivative but inoffensive on the surface, but then the author really starts beating you over the head with the "don't let others people tell you how to live" message. The problem? A lot of these monster kids want to kill and eat people. So the teachers are painted as being ignorant and intolerant for wanting to teach kids not to eat people, and the kids who go along with the lessons are soulless conformists.

Raise your hand if "conformity is a worse crime than cannibalism" is a sentence you didn't think you would read today.

 

[Peagreene]

Ready Player One. No one cares that you can recite War Games.

 

[Worthy39]

Trump vs the Illuminati. There were no morals or messages, it was just an awful movie. And if there was a message anywhere in it, it was that dancing at aliens will allow you to fly into the sky.

 

[foxoftheasterisk]

Not a book, but A Hologram For The King has a pretty weak moral (and plot). It basically goes "everything in this guy's life is going wrong, and there's this big lump on his neck. then he gets the lump checked out, and it's cancer, so he gets it removed and then everything is going right again."

Like, okay, so the message is "cancer is bad"? Gee I definitely needed a whole movie to tell me that one. Definitely isn't the main thing anyone knows about cancer.

 

[Peagreene]

But I did like its message. Dependency on the collective and conformity with same foster complacency and stagnation, over which individualism triumphs.

Yikes, that's a fucked-up message. Hyper-individualism is toxic.

 

[SouthernMaiden]

Sort of a small thing.

But I recently finished the first warrior cats book. And wow, the first one makes you feel bad about spaying and neutering your cats.

Something that literally every cat owner should do. I mean I get it, but dang.

 

[sleepandeatallday]

Raise your hand if "conformity is a worse crime than cannibalism" is a sentence you didn't think you would read today.

technically it's not cannibalism cause monsters and humans are of different species...

 

[Eldoria]

Well, I haven't read it... just read the review. I think WH40K is a good fit for this thread. I mean, what do readers get from a completely nihilistic universe? There's not even peace after death. As a game, WH40K might be fun to play. As a story, readers might feel bad after closing the book. This is just my opinion

 

[AliceMoonvale]

Sort of a small thing.

But I recently finished the first warrior cats book. And wow, the first one makes you feel bad about spaying and neutering your cats.

Something that literally every cat owner should do. I mean I get it, but dang.

My favorite author!

And you should feel bad! Some people need a good kick in the ass sometimes.

I always spray and neuter my cats as to not contribute to the problem, the very problem that caused the situation of all my cats having been abandoned/neglected kittens on the streets or in dysfunctional houses.

 

[Peagreene]

The commune will provide? The village will provide? Mommy will provide?

Yeah why not.

 

[CountVanBadger]

I always spray and neuter my cats

 

[CountVanBadger]

No one's heard of any of those. I'm getting pulled into tedious nonsense over trite garbage about a slacker who lives vicariously through video games. And why? Because I charitably and piteously found something good to say about the trash.

Doomed. We're doomed.

 

[ShrimpShady]

Not a book and hardly even related to the thread, but it reminded me of a childhood memory of watching Winx Club on the TV and hearing one of the characters proclaim out loud "I learned that not everyone is born equal", and to this day I don't know if I hallucinated that or not

 

[ShrimpShady]

Agreed, Shrimp.

That statement is balderdash. It implies that some people are.

No one is born equal.

 

[SirTainlysleepy]

My twisted world had a pretty fucked up message ig.

 

[Rookieqw]

Atlas Shrugged. The author genuinely believed that the wealthy could exist without ordinary people and prosper, instead of resorting to self-bickering and backstabbing over nothing. Check the RL experiments of such societies. If the CEO of the railways disappears, the people will simply choose another CEO. It won't crumble.

And yet tons of people buy into this shit. Well, so long as no one tries to implement this in a country, it is funny to see them trying to build a utopia and fall.

It is the same as with a Machiavelli. People treat him like some genius-level schemer; when the one scheme he joined failed, he was severely punished and then larped as some genius to convince people to buy his books. The quality and usefulness of his material are the same as a self-help book for the rich today. Judge the source before learning material, people!

 

[SirTainlysleepy]

Atlas Shrugged. The author genuinely believed that the wealthy could exist without ordinary people and prosper, instead of resorting to self-bickering and backstabbing over nothing. Check the RL experiments of such societies. If the CEO of the railways disappears, the people will simply choose another CEO. It won't crumble.

And yet tons of people buy into this shit. Well, so long as no one tries to implement this in a country, it is funny to see them trying to build a utopia and fall.

It is the same as with a Machiavelli. People treat him like some genius-level schemer; when the one scheme he joined failed, he was severely punished and then larped as some genius to convince people to buy his books. The quality and usefulness of his material are the same as a self-help book for the rich today. Judge the source before learning material, people!

Machiavelli didn't even attempt a scheme. He was accused of conspiracy but still claimed his innocence under torture and was shortly after released and exiled.

 

[Peagreene]

120 Days of Sodom. Mein Kampf. Juliette. Clockwork Orange. American Psycho. Cats Cradle. In Praise of Folly. The Virtues of Selfishness.

What a sizzling hot take that Mein Kampf is problematic.

 

[Bimbanana]

imma steal this, thank you

 

[Lmae]

Never mutilate yourself to appeal to jealous people.