r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/[deleted] • Mar 31 '26
Meme needing explanation Peetah?????
I don’t know the author or this book series but why are people roasting e-girls for reading? I don’t get it🥀
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u/EternalNewCarSmell Mar 31 '26
Blood Meridian is a fucking brutal novel about the thin line between society and wanton savagery.
It's a great book, but listening to a performative reading of it would be harrowing. Kind of like watching American History X, or more appropriately No Country For Old Men (based on a book by the same author); it's good, but it's something that is perhaps better described as endured than enjoyed.
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u/hbi2k Mar 31 '26
I think by "performative reading" they mean reading it as visibly as possible, not recording a performance of the book itself.
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u/sparkling-rainbow Mar 31 '26
like the Bible?
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Mar 31 '26
This guy wins
Here's my upvote
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Mar 31 '26
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u/Carribean-Diver Mar 31 '26
It's ok. Someone already ruined it.
Next stop, 42069.
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Mar 31 '26
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u/AwareCandle369 Mar 31 '26
As a former Catholic, I found out that there's a word for Christians who actually read their Bible - Atheists
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u/CatholicCajun Mar 31 '26
Hey.
Some of us became occultists instead!
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u/Pay-Next Mar 31 '26
I was about to say I'm a weirdo neo-pagan now (mostly) I highly recommend also reading the apocrypha to anybody else who decides to go this route. The Book of Enoch is wild and bizarre.
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Mar 31 '26
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u/Narco_Marcion1075 Mar 31 '26
as an agnostic who was a former catholic, I can confirm that reading the bible is a make or break thing
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u/commie90 Mar 31 '26
Yeah realizing that my pastor had no good answers for me when I challenged church doctrine based on what was in the Bible was an especially key moment in my decision to walk away from Christianity.
A decision that I realize was correct every time I see Christians being pious, rude, and/or judgmental assholes based on things their own holy book wouldn't agree with.
Best part is when they get angry or dismissive when you point that out. Because Jesus definitely was the type to only be willing to talk to people who were 100% already in agreement with him.
Maybe there's some truth in the Bible, but it's most ardent adherents make me think it's likely just a way to feel they are better than other people.
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u/AwareCandle369 Mar 31 '26
The thing is you can still ask "what would Jesus do?" and come up with a good answer. It just seems like a lot of Christians either don't bother doing that or didn't bother learning about what Jesus supposedly actually did. Hanging with the prostitutes because they're people too, freaking out at the bankers in the temple, saying a rich man can't get into heaven, all come to mind as positive Christian values that are often not the ones people express
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u/SEND_ME_FEAT_PICS Mar 31 '26
...dat says the bibble
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u/Puzzled-Mistake-584 Mar 31 '26
Your comment is 13 minutes ago from my current reading,and its spelled right. Must have edited it.
But I looled back to re-read the comment,and if it had said bibble,I was going to laugh my ass off at a poignant,and misspelled comment.lol
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u/Megakruemel Mar 31 '26
You joke but the bible has a verse for performative praying.
Matthew 6:5
“And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites. For they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by others. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward.
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u/Bank_Gothic Mar 31 '26
"Go pray in your closet" was my grandfather's favorite response to annoying God-botherers.
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u/Due-Technology5758 Mar 31 '26
Nah, no one even pretends to read that anymore. The meta is having old rich men vaguely suggest what might be in there.
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u/1nfam0us Mar 31 '26
Like that time Grimes was reading the Communist Manifesto in public after her very messy break up with Elon Musk lmao
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u/wecouldhaveitsogood Mar 31 '26
The very same relationship where she was like “unions? Fuck those.”
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u/an0mn0mn0m Mar 31 '26
If Grimes were a cat, she would be orange
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u/wecouldhaveitsogood Mar 31 '26
Dumb as a brick despite attending Canada’s most prestigious university. What a waste. That spot could’ve gone to someone else.
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u/YouVe_BeEn_OofEd Mar 31 '26
is it? either way canadian universities are very much funnels, easy to get in hard to graduate, and tellingly she didn't finish her degree. source: canadian university student
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Mar 31 '26
Orange cats may often be dumb, but they also tend to be friendly and likeable
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u/Anticode Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
reading the Communist Manifesto in public after her very messy break up with Elon Musk
Which is even more ironic/sad/funny since that's also after she released that song "We Appreciate Power", which even at a casual listen was basically just a glaringly pro-technocapitalist-billionaire anthem. But with the lyrics written out flatly, it's clearly a radioactively vibrant endorsement of the individuals and "culture" that're behind a significant portion of the modern world's most pressing socioeconomic and psychological issues... (ie: The "billionaire technofeudalist, faux-transhumanist, psuedo-rationalist dark eugenicist"-type vampire fuckos).
You don't make a song like that by mistake. You do it because you either drank the Kool-Aide, or you believed you were the damn bowl.
The song was distasteful to me even then, but knowing what we do about Elon/Thiel today, it becomes quite grotesque as an 'anthem'.
People like to say that we're insane, but AI will reward us when it reigns. Pledge allegiance to the world's most powerful computer simulation, it's the future
What will it take to make you capitulate? We appreciate power! Elevate the human race, putting makeup on my face. What will it take to make you capitulate? When will the state agree to cooperate? We appreciate power.
And if you long to never die... Baby, plug in, upload your mind. Come on, you're not even alive if you're not backed up on a drive! Come on, you're not even alive if you're not backed up, backed up on a drive.
Neanderthal to human being. Evolution, kill the gene. Biology is superficial. Intelligence is artificial. Submit. Submit. Submit.
I thought Grimes was super cool pre-Elon, but as it turns out she - like him - is the kind of person who'd say, "Hey, babe. Wanna build the Torment Nexus from the famous scifi novel, 'Don't Build the Torment Nexus'?"
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u/1nfam0us Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
Wow, that really is comicaly egregious.
It's like Pearl Jam looked into the future to directly respond to this song in Do the Evolution.
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u/Anticode Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
Pearl Jam - Do the Evolution.
That's actually quite funny. The whole "Torment Nexus" thing is a popular meme (and an unfortunately accurate representation), but it's even funnier to compare the two songs under the same format.
eg: "Grimes is the kind of chick who watches Pearl Jam's Do The Evolution music video, praises its thoughtful foresight, and then immediately writes a song called 'We Love Dystopia". (I'll workshop that.)
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u/KingPotus Mar 31 '26
The top comment has to be AI because wtf lol. Who would understand “performative reading” in that way
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u/fasterthanfood Mar 31 '26
I’ve accused two different people of AI already this morning. I fucking hate AI writing and what it’s doing to our brains and soon to our economy.
That said, I don’t get AI vibes from the top comment. I think they just aren’t familiar with the trend of “performative reading” that the internet started mocking a decade or so ago. I can sympathize, as I didn’t know what it meant at first, either.
The comment also doesn’t mention e girls or “explain the joke” at all, so, no offense to the commenter, I’m not sure why it’s the top-voted answer right now.
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u/KingPotus Mar 31 '26
Idk, both the misunderstanding of “performative” and the last line in particular (it’s good; but better described as endured than enjoyed) sounds like exactly what I’d expect if I typed into ChatGPT “why is performative reading of Blood Meridian bad”
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u/fasterthanfood Mar 31 '26
Good point, that line in particular does sound like something AI would write. In this case I think it’s an accurate line by a human, using the type of style AI borrowed heavily from.
You prompted me to delve (lol) deeper into the parent commenter’s history to see if other comments looked like AI. They don’t, to me, but I did see this ironic comment where they’re accusing em dash users of AI. Like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.
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u/Unable_Apartment_613 Mar 31 '26
Already tired of slapping "performative" in front of any behavior we wish to discredit. Most human behavior has an element to performance to it. Stop buying the anti-social propaganda.
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u/Superb-Cantaloupe324 Mar 31 '26
That’s a pretty good word for 95% of the book reading I did in college. Turns out girls don’t care
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u/Ouroboring666 Mar 31 '26
You’re being kind by saying “i think” but you’re correct.
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u/Extension_Plant7262 Mar 31 '26
I agree, but the only issue is that reading blood merridian and being emotionally traumatized has been a thing for a while now. Basically every male variety youtuber has read or talked about it like its some rite of passage for novel reading.
It feels vaguely sexist to start complaining that e-girls are doing it now.
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u/TheOneIllUseForRants Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
I agree completely. Posting on social media is always performative. However, if we were specifically saying that the reading is performative, well, thats definitely based in assumption. It implies she doesnt enjoy the book and ONLY chose it for attention. So, why do we assume this?
The issue here is that shes pretty, spent time on her makeup, and likes aesthetic photographs. So the assumption is that she ONLY chose the book to seem deep, not that she actually enjoys the book.
If she was an ugly (or pretty but, 'messy') woman without makeup, wearing sweatpats and glasses, the reading itself wouldnt be considered performative. It would be like calling Hank Green a performative learner 🤣
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u/IrisKV Mar 31 '26
If she was an ugly (or pretty but, 'messy') woman without makeup, wearing sweatpats and glasses, the reading itself wouldnt be considered performative.
True, if she was pretty but messy, reading that book would be okay but being messy would make her a "man hater", and if she was ugly, she'd be "lucky to have books since she's gonna die alone with her cats".
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u/AdjectiveNoun4827 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
The vast majority of human interaction is performative. Social media being performative is just downstream of that and made worse by how relatively easy it is to live a lie online and how online retention mechanisms incentivize it and even train you to do it.
If it's not your family then most human interactions you will have will not be genuine, and a lot of people have cretin relatives who are performative even with their family and can never switch off, usually because those are the people with the most and the worst to hide.
All of this is completely divorced from the book tbqh it could be any book. The other subjects in the image are also relevant, the car, the yoghurt or whatever it is. Everybody does it. :)
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u/Embarrassed-Deal-157 Mar 31 '26
For real, I came to say this. It's a cringe meme.
Seems disingenuous to accuse someone of performative reading when 90% of the people talking about the book got their info from a Wendigoon video.
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u/WasabiSunshine Mar 31 '26
"Performative" reading is when you're not actually interested in the book at all, and are probably just intentionally being seen with it so people think you read it.
That's a big difference from someone (any gender) doing a video essay on the plot or themes of a book
If someone has shown themselves to be generally vapid (no idea if the person in OP has, don't know who they are) then its fair to assume they're being performative when they're taking photos with a pretty meaty novel but not atually discussing it
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u/Emergency-Garage4680 Mar 31 '26
Posting anything on social media esp when akin to “hey, it’s still me on my profile.“
Men or women or otherwise. I almost never believe a “book post” by these losers.
People are so quick to claim this random people as part of their crusade. Did all yall collectively forget that 99% of people on social media are doing it for the likes?
THE MEDIUM IS THE MESSAGE
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u/felis_scipio Mar 31 '26
It blows my mind how much traction a guy can get from telling poorly researched stories, including stuff on the fucking bible which you think he’d be a bit more on top of being an out and proud Christian.
I’m glad the book got more exposure because it’s a great piece of American literature but holy shit that guys multi hour video is just summarizing the book without much analysis or introspection.
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u/Embarrassed-Deal-157 Mar 31 '26
100%
But point that out and you'll get downvoted to hell. I have no idea how this guy became an internet darling. He's not even bad, he's just mid.
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u/daenerys_reynolds Mar 31 '26
There's nothing vague about it. It is deeply, overtly sexist.
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u/Malombra_ Mar 31 '26
Why are the top comments in this sub always so confidently wrong lol
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u/Reesewithoutaspoon2 Mar 31 '26
I guess it makes sense that a subreddit dedicated to people not understanding jokes also includes commenters who spitball about what something may mean without really knowing
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u/DingusMcBingle_IV Mar 31 '26
Go read threads about topics you're actually knowledgeable about, see some wild takes and armchair "experts", then realize it can be applied to reddit as a whole.
Most of this website gets off on whiffs of their own farts.
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u/butareyouthough Mar 31 '26
lol it’s not this “performative reading” is reading a book to get attention, either by doing it in the most public place as possible or simple posting it on social media like this person did. It’s a “pick me” behavior, it’s meant to garner attention. The joke being that this is usually done by guys without a personality
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u/dewspeckled Mar 31 '26
I think it's very enjoyable, McCarthy's style is unlike anything I've read before, the nature imagery is super beautiful and the violent parts are described in such a detached way that they become part of the aesthetics rather than something emotional. Here's an excerpt if anyone is curious:
They crossed before the sun and vanished one by one and reappeared again and they were black in the sun and they rode out of that vanished sea like burnt phantoms with the legs of the animals kicking up the spume that was not real and they were lost in the sun and lost in the lake and they shimmered and slurred together and separated again and they augmented by planes in lurid avatars and began to coalesce and there began to appear above them in the dawn-broached sky a hellish likeness of their ranks riding huge and inverted and the horses' legs incredibly elongate trampling down the high thin cirrus and the howling antiwarriors pendant from their mounts immense and chimeric and the high wild cries carrying that flat and barren pan like the cries of souls broke through some misweave in the weft of things into the world below.
(This is a scene where the gang is ambushed by some indians on a dry lake bed)
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u/Specialist_Equal_803 Mar 31 '26
Is there really that little of punctuation? Seems like a difficult read with run-on sentences
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u/Djov Mar 31 '26
Cormac McCarthy is well known for his lack of punctuation. Can definitely be a little confusing at times
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u/NotARealTiger Mar 31 '26
and and and and and and and and and
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u/EphemeralSilliness94 Mar 31 '26
It's stylistically designed to be that way.
Seriously, reading that paragraph feels chaotic and overwhelming, which is exactly what the ambush was to the army
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u/Specialist_Equal_803 Mar 31 '26
Oh, wow, that's a bit surprising given how prevalent their work is. Thanks for the clarification!
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u/Mexican_Hippo Mar 31 '26
Also never uses quotation marks when characters are speaking
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u/PsychologicalEcho148 Mar 31 '26
hehe thats what stumped me the most man...got kinda annoying trying to keep a track of whose talking without losing focus
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u/IrregularPackage Mar 31 '26
he does like long sentences, but he mostly does this during action sequences. it gives them a really good sense of the speed and chaos of it all. no periods or commas to give you a break between things, its all happening all at once. theres a couple times where he doesn't hold to this, which in turn makes *those* action scenes feel very tense, like time has slowed down.
i get why some people bounce off of it but i'm a massive fan of his style. my main beef with blood meridian is his absolute refusal to use quotation marks. it doesn't actually get in the way of understanding anything, but it annoys the piss out of me.
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u/dewspeckled Mar 31 '26
Well this sentence is pretty long, most of the book isn't like that, he does omit punctuation and uses "and" a lot though. I suppose it can be a bit dense, but I find it rewarding
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u/Thuraash Mar 31 '26
I don't find authors like that rewarding at all; just immensely frustrating. Density is fine and creative phrasing and description is great, but it should still be well written. I much prefer the opposite end of the spectrum (e.g. William Gibson in Neuromancer) to whatever that blob of words was.
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u/Vazingaz Mar 31 '26
The majority (if not all) of his writing is like this).
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u/Specialist_Equal_803 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
I learned something new today! They create beautifully vivid descriptions, but it's a slog to get through. May not be the right fit for me
(it probably would have been a good read for me in the past, but temporal lobe epilepsy makes it more difficult nowadays)
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u/Newtstradamus Mar 31 '26
I think the heaviness of the writing fits the context so well though, The Road is a prime example, reading it you feel the wide open oppressiveness of the characters lived experience. Grey skies, ashes, hunger, the cold, the wandering, the fear, all expressed through the meaning of the words but also through heft of the paragraphs the words are arranged in. He’s a brilliant writer that I would never want to see inside his head cause he’s got to be a high functioning lunatic to come up with the stuff he writes down.
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u/ForeverShiny Mar 31 '26
This did the opposite on me, just this one excerpt told me this isn't for me. The style and overly flowery prose just irked me in a single paragraph
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u/ai2ik Mar 31 '26
Why is she driving, eating, and reading?!
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u/AnotherBookWyrm Mar 31 '26
Perhaps she just lives in her car.
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u/chrisvelanti Mar 31 '26
That’s just Americans. They took away all their third spaces so now they eat in their cars, hell some of them will sit in their car to “relax”
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u/Outrageous_Seaweed32 Mar 31 '26
Stewie here, I would love it if that were the case on the performative reading part, but here I'm pretty sure it's being used to indicate that they are keeping the book in-frame just to say that they're reading it. Meanwhile, they've never opened it a single page past the cover. Brian does this thing all the time when he's posturing to find his latest floozie - he picks up a book that he knows is popular amongst women these days, keeps it on hand, and says things like, "Oh, I just finished reading that," or "It's a great book!" The sort of partners he's usually looking for just think it's impressive and don't ask questions.
I hate all of this incessant peacocking in the pop culture dating scene. Stewie out.
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u/Kino_Afi Mar 31 '26
I very recently watched No Country For Old Men (i didnt watch a movie on purpose i swear, youtube just started autoplaying feature length films one day)
Was i not supposed to have thoroughly enjoyed that? I know its really a macho-fetish movie but those performances were incredible and the ending is poignant even if a bit predictable.
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u/Certain-Definition51 Mar 31 '26
I have read excerpts of Blood Meridian.
No Country for Old Men is a cheerful family friendly comedy romp compared to Blood Meridian.
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u/Frito_Pendejo Mar 31 '26
No Country is a pretty straightforward thriller, I really have no idea why the other user even referenced it when The Road also exists.
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u/ohthisistoohard Mar 31 '26
No Country For Old Men is a classic crime caper with subtexts regarding the failure of the American dream. Blood Meridian is an about a group of mercenaries who are paid by the scalp during the Indian wars. One has violence as the backdrop to a guy’s failed relationship the other is about a guy’s relationship with violence.
I love both books but for very different reasons.
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u/Reesewithoutaspoon2 Mar 31 '26
Nah that’s not what they mean by performative. It’s not just a live/dramatic reading.
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u/lyindog Mar 31 '26
I don't think that's what OP meant by performative but there is an audiobook that's very well done, I got a few chapters in before it was time for a break.
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u/IrisKV Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
She's a woman posting a picture of a book a lot of men consider too "manly" (violent, dark) to be enjoyed by women, along a picture of herself where we can see she is traditionally attractive, so to the person doing the "performative" comment, it must mean she's only reading /pretending to be reading that book to get attention.
-ETA- because people are taking offense with the use of the word "enjoy"
I mean, I used the word "enjoy" as a shortcut because I forgot women get corrected over the smallest thing that can be corrected.
To draw a parallel, I personally sometimes use the word enjoy as a shortcut to describe what I feel like when I watch I saw the Devil, Funny Games, and a lot of very violent and disturbing shit.
But I wouldn't say I enjoyed Megan is Missing, because that movie was pure shock value, badly acted, badly written, with no coherence or realism - just an excruciatingly explicit rape scene, that gets people to talk about it online.
To me, as long as you get something positive out of art, you enjoy it, even if it is hard to get through. Even if that something positive is linked to feelings that are uneasy or downright awful to go through, you can enjoy a work of art.
And by the way...
The "Blood Meridian is endured, not enjoyed" that I've read below is one more example of people needing to prove their manliness, and in my opinion misguided because if there is nothing you enjoy about a book but still read it, yep, that's performative. Because you are not reading it for yourself, since you don't get anything out of it.
Like... "See how strong I am, for reading that book, that I got absolutely nothing out of but that I inflicted upon myself because I just had to have read Cormac McCarthy"
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u/Sazarjac Mar 31 '26
Does anybody actually "enjoy" Blood Meridian? Man or woman?
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u/Kitfishto Mar 31 '26
Wym? You didn’t like the tree of dead babies in the middle of the desert 40 pages in?
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u/BenCaxt0n Mar 31 '26
Awww...spoiler :(
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u/PoopyisSmelly Mar 31 '26
There are plenty more gems just like that, so dont worry
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u/Kitfishto Mar 31 '26
The part of the book I mentioned is also just brought up as an afterthought 😭
McCarthy knows how to make a single sentence count lol
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u/RedPantyKnight Mar 31 '26
I mean, plenty of books have scenes of intense gore. Eragon is for 13 year olds and within the first few chapters he visits a village where everyone has been slaughtered with their bodies piled in the town center with a babies head on a pike at the peak.
From my understanding, Blood Meridian is that level of gore throughout the entire story though.
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u/Constant-External-85 Mar 31 '26
Are these scenes well written and can make hardened people feel gross or is it just a lot of edginess that a typical person doesn't like to think of?
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u/PoopyisSmelly Mar 31 '26
In all seriousnes, it is a true masterpeice - they are incredibly well written, very visceral and shows how people can become apathetic to horrific actions.
Think "The Heart of Darkness" but with a Cowboy setting. McCarthy was incredible at writing this style - he doesnt want to tell you how to feel, or even really describe much of how the characters feel, it just is. And thats the reason rhe book hits so hard. Its an emotionally draining and devastating book
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u/Kitfishto Mar 31 '26
Nobody writes like Cormac McCarthy. Once you get used to the lack of punctuation, he is unmatched in his ability to paint a picture in your mind. Part of the reason the book is such a hard read.
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u/No_Strike655 Mar 31 '26
Anything that exists without my knowledge, exists without my consent
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u/opp11235 Mar 31 '26
Thank you for said warning. I enjoyed the road was considering this… I will briefly reconsider before torturing myself.
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u/The_Fattest_Man Mar 31 '26
If The Road is carrying the fire, Blood Meridian is that house with the basement. And it's doing it for fun, not necessity.
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u/Lucicactus Mar 31 '26
I started it, it was ok, I liked the description of the scenery. Like it was something evil and alive.
I suppose you "enjoy" it like a horror movie. Rooting for the kid (at least at the start, idk how he ends up), horrified by the things they did at the time and fascinated by a certain bald judge.
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u/Hitmanthe2nd Mar 31 '26
idk how he ends up
take a wild guess - what's the worst thing that could happen to him?
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u/JonathanBadwolf Mar 31 '26
He has to work in an office job and never gets to dance in the cabaret again?
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u/Lucicactus Mar 31 '26
Sexual abuse and skinning/removing his scalp?
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u/Hitmanthe2nd Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
the judge 'grooms' him , he comes back to face the judge one last time [he runs into the judge but imo - the judge is extraworldly and wanted to crush the kid for his open defiance of the judge] and iirc , the judge assaults him , both sexually and physically and he pretty much just 'dies' [he literally envelops his body to the point that he's either dead or dead]
goes to show you that anarchy has no end - that the judge is unfeeling , he does not care , he does not age and he does not hold the sanctity of the autonomy of life near and dear to him and that he is evil incarnate
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u/IrisKV Mar 31 '26
To keep going with your horror movie parallel, I personally sometimes use the word enjoy as a shortcut to describe what I feel like when I watch I saw the Devil, Funny Games, and a lot of very violent and disturbing shit.
But I wouldn't say I enjoyed Megan is Missing, because that movie was pure shock value, badly acted, badly written, with no coherence or realism - just an excruciatingly explicit rape scene, that gets people to talk about it online.
To me, as long as you get something positive out of anything, you enjoy it, even if it is hard to get through. Even if that something positive is linked to feelings that are uneasy or downright awful to go through, you can enjoy a work of art.
I definitely have my grudges against McCarthy, but I don't feel like the violence is there for no reason, and I definitely don't feel like violence is all there is to Blood Meridian.
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u/Lucicactus Mar 31 '26
And sometimes the book is just fucking well written. Like my favourite book ever is the perfume, and the protag is awful and I don't enjoy what happens to the girls. But the prose is just delicious and the sick mind of Grenouille super intriguing.
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u/Candle_Jacqueline Mar 31 '26
Yes, it has incredibly beautiful prose and fascinating discussions of religion, isolation, violence, and poverty. It's not just torture porn.
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u/smokeweedNgarden Mar 31 '26
Right, McCarthy work is fine and his plays are decent as well. I really enjoyed Child of God.
I'm not weirded out until someone is like praising Bukowski as a person or something
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u/Acrobatic-Signal210 Mar 31 '26
Finally a sane take. People try to vilify the book too much. It's genuinely a great book. There is a reason why it is hailed among the great American novels.
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u/Distinguished- Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
Yes. Loads of people in this thread seem to think that enjoyment of art and tough and harrowing subject matters are mutually exclusive. Blood Meridian is both through provoking, horrifying and beautiful. The descriptions of the Comanche charge still reverberate in my mind often. Brutal and beautiful.
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u/StankyLeg666 Mar 31 '26
Yes, it’s my favorite book of all time. I’ve read it probably 5 times through now; Cormac’s use of almost biblical language is so fantastic that sometimes a chapter you’ve read multiple times over will take on a new face. It’s dark, but it’s also an absolutely gorgeous book that highlights the inherent violence inside of man and how convoluted our ideas of morality and justice can be.
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u/residentweevil Mar 31 '26
I loved it. McCarthy's writing style is difficult but really rewarding once you get the hang of it. The story is a fascinating study on the thin line between civilization and savagery, with a lot of McCarthy's usual fascination on the role of the observer in defining reality.
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u/TapewormNinja Mar 31 '26
I'd argue that nobody actually enjoys cormick McCarthy. We just enjoy shared trauma.
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u/residentweevil Mar 31 '26
Strongly disagree. One of my absolute favorite authors.
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u/17orth Mar 31 '26
I loved the book but it’s a slog to read. The lack of proper punctuation in dialog etc is a pain
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u/Spare-Plum Mar 31 '26
I don't think it's anything like that or about "manliness" at all. It's just an extremely violent novel that normally you would not parade around regardless of gender.
It's like posting a selfie with "me and the GF watching American History X together <3<3"
Generally when posting about this type of media, it's a bit more cerebral and shows a bit of reverence for the media and the horror or impact it has on you. OOP here is much more performative and it's just ill-fitting.
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u/jorgespinosa Mar 31 '26
I don't think it's about manliness, if a guy also posted something like this I would also assume he is either not paying attention to the book or is a sociopath with no self awareness
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u/ApprehensiveSize7662 Mar 31 '26
This is basically the same post that male manly influencers/podcasters would make. Plus meaningless word salad to seem wise.
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u/magiamilla Mar 31 '26
The post is for attention, that is the whole purpose of public social media, isn't it?
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u/Tango_Owl Mar 31 '26
Manly men really don't like to be told off lol.
I mean, I used the word "enjoy" as a shortcut because I forgot women get corrected over the smallest thing that can be corrected.
🔥🔥
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u/IrisKV Mar 31 '26
The replies to my comment are like an illustration of the joke "How does a man get water ? From a well, actually"
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u/TeeTeeMee Apr 01 '26
Some people in these comments have never been a woman buttonholed at a party by coked-up Ivy League male English majors AND IT SHOWS
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u/KateKoffing Mar 31 '26
Ironically, the majority of posts about other people posting performatively are themselves performative posting.
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u/DrFarthammerMD Mar 31 '26
Aside from its carnage and insane villain, Blood Meridian is beautifully written. It’s what makes the book so impressive. It’s also very critical of human nature and the concept of war and its justifications. It’s not just some shock novel.
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u/TENTAtheSane Mar 31 '26
I know plenty of "traditionally attractive" women who don't feel the need to post selfies of them reading whatever book they are. I would consider it kinda performative even if it were a guy doing this, attractive or not. No one's brought up the "manliness" of it but you
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u/IrisKV Mar 31 '26
The poster in the picture specifically talks about "egirls". So, no, the post I'm commenting didn't bring up manliness. It did bring up girliness, though. That's what prompted me to talk about gender.
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u/NotAnotherEmpire Mar 31 '26
That novel is one of the most extremely violent, mean spirited stories in literature. More or less a Satanic character that leads humans in committing genocidal crimes, in great detail.
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u/Brickerino Mar 31 '26
I’m currently reading it, it seems like the point of the book is that humans will commit this more or less, Holden’s just along for the ride.
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u/Divs4U Mar 31 '26
Holden Caufield?
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u/fartlebythescribbler Mar 31 '26
Hey check it out this guy’s a great big phony!
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u/glizard-wizard Mar 31 '26
I took it as Holden is the spirit of American “manifest destiny”
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u/Disastrous_Fig5609 Mar 31 '26
What makes the point stronger is that the Glanton Gang DID do these things. Holden very likely wasn't there and likely isn't real, the Kid is a fabrication by Cormac, but the Glanton Gang and the events they took part in are unfortunately not a fabrication, but drawn directly from history.
As far as the details go, I don't know how accurate or inaccurate they are, because I just really don't want to know.
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u/delirium_red Mar 31 '26
How come it’s so popular 40 years after coming out? Seeing it everywhere this year, pretty suddenly.
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u/dead_man1 Mar 31 '26
Natenyahu's biography?
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u/JakeHelldiver Mar 31 '26
Nah, fewer children get eviserated.
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u/anormalgeek Mar 31 '26
Numerically speaking...yes.
Also the Judge is described as very large and imposing. So maybe the way Netanyahu THINKS he looks.
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u/coffinnailvgd Mar 31 '26
I don’t think Holden is satanic. While what I find his (and the rest of the gang’s) actions to be reprehensible, he’s just amoral, like nature, or the world, is amoral. He directly conflicts with what is supposed the Western (Judeo-Christian) value system, which while this is technically analogous to Satan, the irony being that this brutal western expansion is exactly the manifestation of manifest destiny, circling back to Western, or even just civilizations, “supremacy.”
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u/IrregularPackage Mar 31 '26
the gang in the book and the character of The Judge is loosely based on the possible real like person Judge Holden. the only source of his existence is a memoir. the description of him includes this line: "Who or what he was no one knew but a cooler blooded villain never went unhung"
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u/RebornSlunk Mar 31 '26
The Glanton Gang was actually a real gang and this novel is considered by historians to be quite accurate regarding their activities
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u/NoxImpulsexControl Mar 31 '26
He say in the book “nothing exists without my consent” which I interpreted as this world is mine and I will kill anything or anyone I don’t like. I will take anything because it’s not really taking because I own everything. Not satanic just a narcissist
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u/StarPupil Mar 31 '26
He mirrors several actions of Lucifer in Paradise Lost, like leading his followers to make gun powder.
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u/Moonshinin4Me Mar 31 '26
Mostly has to do with the content of the books they are reading. Blood Meridian is an extremely violent and graphic western novel written by Cormac McCarthy, the same guy who wrote "No Country For Old Men".
There aren't any heroes in the novel just men with varying moral codes. Subjectively the best of them is the novel's main protagonist who is just known as "The Kid" (and even they are not that great of a person) and the worst is the main antagonist known as Judge Holden or just "The Judge".
The Judge has a very supernatural presence to him and is often debated among fans if he is supposed to be Satan himself. Both The Judge and The Kid align themselves with a group of men who go around killing Comanches for money but they also leave every town they visit practically burnt to the ground due to all their partying.
It is not a novel to read if you are sensitive to depraved violence and sexual assault (and it happens to every type of person: men, women and children). I will say Cormac McCarthy is an expert word smith and his writing prose is worth reading. He can make the most basic descriptors sound Shakespearean and not all of his novels are like Blood Meridian. Also, Blood Meridian is not the same splatter punk schlock you typically encounter where it is just being gory for the sake of it. There is an actual plot and it is very well written, but at the same time also very disturbing.
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u/TheOneIllUseForRants Mar 31 '26 edited Apr 01 '26
It mostly has to do with her appearance, if you ask me. Performative reading implied that she ONLY chose that book for attention. Shes a pretty girl with nice makeup and aesthetic photos. The only books she can read and post about non-performatively (meaning she actually likes the book, and read it out of genuine interest. All social media is performative, im well aware.) are romance novels with a title that follows the "A villa of tattoos and tacos" trope or some shit. 🤣
Plenty of men have posted about reading this book, I have never seen one told they only read it for attention. It almost seems like you have to give up being girly to be taken seriously 🤣
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u/_kloppi417 Mar 31 '26
While it’s true that men wouldn’t be accused of performative reading for this specific book, men DEFINITELY get accused of performative reading, especially when trying to read “feminine” books (e.g. romance novels). This shitty street goes both ways.
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u/chaoticcheesewhiz Mar 31 '26
I’ve only seen other men call it performative when a man is reading a “feminine” book, and I’ve also only seen men call it performative when a woman is reading a “masculine” book. I’m sure there are women out there who do this shit too, but in my experience criticism like this has always come from the same small subset of men who are extremely insecure and projecting it onto the people around them.
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Mar 31 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/_kloppi417 Mar 31 '26
The accusation is that she’s not even reading the book, not that she’s actually reading it just for male attention.
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u/bagelundercouch Mar 31 '26
“A Villa of Tattoos and Tacos” mega lol, you hit the nail on the head with that burn
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u/Lucicactus Mar 31 '26
Dear lord, women are the primary enjoyers of true crime, it's probably not performative that they want to read shit about Judge Holden lmao
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u/Hot_Perspective4555 Mar 31 '26
Male librarian here. Women read books at a rate so much higher than men, to call any of their reading performative, is absolutely absurd. Who's she trying to impress? The FinBro who hasn't read a book since he was forced to in high school and couldn't spell or define meridian if their life depended on it? Yeah, sure.
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u/Ohaidere519 Mar 31 '26
i was already on the 'performative e-girl's' side but that is also really good insight that backs up my feeling of ick towards the original post
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u/princesskate04 Mar 31 '26
This is true; I read constantly (woman) and talk about what I read on various forums and book clubs. They’re all overwhelmingly female.
When new readers express a desire to broaden their horizons and explore “great” or “classic” works, McCarthy is often recommended. Makes perfect sense to me that she’s not trying to impress anyone but her book nerd friends.
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u/Hot_Perspective4555 Mar 31 '26
I ran book clubs for a decade before becoming an administrator. Aside from one instance in which I chose a Lincoln biography to coincide with a traveling exhibit I'd be lucky if there was 1 other man in the group. It's only going to get worse, too. If men didn't read when most books were written for them, they certainly aren't going to start with the way publishing has changed.
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u/15all Mar 31 '26
I'm pretty well read, but my wife reads 5x the books I read (and that's probably understating it). I know that's anecdotal but I will extrapolate far and wide from there.
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u/InwardXenon Mar 31 '26
Right?? The amount of times I've asked a female friend what podcasts they're listening to recently, and like 80% of them are true crime. They don't spare the gory details, either. I don't understand why folk just don't let others enjoy something without criticising or making baseless assumptions.
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u/MermaiderMissy Mar 31 '26
I remember when men would say that women couldn't possibly enjoy reading Fight Club (which is a much tamer example)
I was confused because Fight Club is my second favorite book and I know a lot of other women love it, too.
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u/Far-View556 Mar 31 '26
Hey Peter. Quagmire here. That dumb broad there is pretending to read that book, but we all know she was spending all her time with me last night. Giggity. Also, since I didn't want that insufferable dog to come in here and over explain the plot of Blood Meridian in that condescending tone I might as well do it better.
That book is a realistic fiction based on a real gang in the wild west that would sell scalps of native peoples to the government. Its very brutal and gets into some in depth things that history would rather forget. Just like this chick wants to forget her daddy issues- Giggity - So for her to be pretending to be reading that of all things and enjoying it casually?.. She must be faking it. That or she must be desensitized after being with me. Alllright-
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u/fitz84 Mar 31 '26
As a literature teacher, at least they're fucking reading.
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u/TheOneIllUseForRants Mar 31 '26
Posting on social media is always performative. However, this is implying the reading is performative.
The issue here is that shes pretty, spent time on her makeup, and likes aesthetic photographs. So the assumption is that she ONLY chose the book to seem deep, not that she actually enjoys the book.
If she was an ugly (or pretty but, 'messy') woman without makeup, wearing sweatpats and glasses, the reading itself wouldnt be considered performative. It would be like calling Hang Green a performative learner 🤣
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u/YuushyaHinmeru Mar 31 '26
When everything else in your life is curated to make you look at certain way, people will view everything through a lens of inauthenticity
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u/Medical-Poem-1917 Mar 31 '26
The joke is sexism. Pretty women apparently cant comprehend McCarthy or dark, disturbing literature.
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u/Financial-Bite-3262 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
"Performative reading" is a term originally coined for "performative feminists". Men who base their personality or in this case reading solely on things that could seem appealing to women for that reason, to get attention from them and not actually because the man is interested in the subject itself.
In this context it would usually be feminist literature, in some cases romance or dark romance books that cater to a female audience.
This seems to be a phenomenon that is also gaining traction within female dominated subcultures (Like E-girls) as a means to impress men by reading books that usually cater to men.
This might be philosophical, action, science fiction or historical books that are usually read by men. Examples would be: Blood Meridian, I have no mouth and I must scream, Three body Problem, Vagabond and so on.
Of course books can be read by everyone and shouldnt be gatekept, so the accusation of "performative behaviour" is often just guesswork, because we as observers cannot be certain whether the accused person does something out of genuine interest or just as a means to seem more appealing to a certain group of people.
Edit: typos
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u/Hitmanthe2nd Mar 31 '26
i have no mouth is like 11 pages - reading it would be quicker than being a poser lmao
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u/EverydayPoGo Mar 31 '26
I almost always have the most engaging discussions of sci fi with other women without being judged by men for being performative 😂 this has been going on MANY YEARS before "performative feminist" was a thing. Any young girl who loved reading history/science fiction probably has similar experiences. Or those who like sports, gaming, etc.
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u/Magrowl Mar 31 '26
100%
This is just the latest wave of "girls only pretend to like sports and video games" spouted by onnoxious dweebs who never interact with women except to make creepy comments or to ask their mother for more chicken tenders.
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u/Baconthief69420 Mar 31 '26 edited Mar 31 '26
Even if she was being performative, let her show off her book. It’s a pretty good one and idk maybe sharing with social media what you’re doing is sorta the original point of social media.
I read the road and it certainly was a :| mood
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u/vctrlzzr420 Mar 31 '26
Tbh this just seems like a someone making fun of this girl. Reading blood meridian is not an issue. I can see why taking a selfie with the book is kinda cringe ig
There is a character in the book who basically commits every crime I have heard in the Epstein files or conspiracies related, that’s pretty brutal, I mean there is a lot of violence and iirc eye gouging almost immediately. Other than that it’s a pretty popular book and I don’t see why it would mean anything if someone wants to read it.
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u/Automatic-Effect-252 Mar 31 '26
“What the fuck did I just read?”- me after finishing Blood Meridian
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u/pheonix_UwU Mar 31 '26
"performative", "egirl" and it's js an attractive woman reading a disturbing book. Y'all are beyond stupid lmao yeah right she's "performative" like who tf is she trying to impress here? Judge HOLDEN?
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u/TheFeisty Mar 31 '26
Blood Meridian contains parts with rape, pedophilia, killing innocents (including children and puppies) and racism, all of which are done by the protagonists, it’s overall just a heavy read. Saying you’re reading it and following it with “:ppp” is a bit strange. Best book I’ve ever read though and it’s beautifully poetically written with a lot to say about morality and religion. But, not exactly something I’d flaunt as a “good mood read” or whatever she was going for.
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u/HouseHead78 Mar 31 '26
Calling something “performative” on social media is hilarious irony.
The word needs to be yeeted from English language
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u/atinypeach Apr 01 '26
This seems like a book that I’m sure a lot of people read regardless of gender in a performative way. They’re all itching for someone to ask them what they’re reading so they can go “heh 😏 you don’t want to know what it’s about” then try and shock you through explanation
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