>People name drop 19th century philosophers and books like the motherfucking fist of the north star. They talk about how they love so-and-so some baroque (Obama?) music guy. And these are college kids whose majors are not necessarily in those areas.

Hmmm sounds like you should start by turning vegan and becoming a homosexual (or openly bisexual, I hear that's in vogue now).

u could read bookss and philosophy books that might help a lil.also listen to music

read lots of books, start with the classics.

Read some books, stop swearing, and fucking fake it.

read the "intellectual devotional" series of books.

each page is like a wikipage on a single topic. gives you enough overview to hold your own in a conversation.

or you could just read wikipedia.

You're going to turn into a pretentious dickwad, the type /r9k/ hates. You should stop caring so much about social standards and what people think.

JUST FUCKING ENJOY YOUR LIFE BRO, WOOO

Become interested in those things because they allure you, not to look smart you stupid faggot.

Read you dumbass

watch some italian films, la dolce vita and shit like that. Get familiar with classical composers. Go to museums. Learn. And ignore faggots like this guy >>3586638

the people you're dealing with aren't cultured either. people who legitimately enjoy that sort of thing hide their power level.

buy an encyclopedia. browse that instead of this. cultivate your inner whatever.

No problem, OP, I suffered/am still suffering from the same thing. Time will eventually fix it, and literature, schooling and social life only help. Games don't, but 4chan does, to some extent (don't overestimate it and spend 18+ hours a day lurking, however)

>>3586681
that's not to say you shouldn't try experiencing the things of the past we as a culture keep around because they're held in regard. but you shouldn't throw yourself into something you aren't interested in in order to have conversations about it with other people who aren't interested in it. and you shouldn't in order to be the sort of person who is interested in that sort of thing. if you are to do it you should only do it from a natural curiosity.

Here:

1. Listen to NPR (Classical Music, Book Reviews, Culture out the fucking ass on weekends), watch PBS

2. Read Classic Literature, or even, when someone starts the "Dear /r9k/ what book should I read?" go through and pick a few titles and hit up your library for them.

3. Go into Starbucks, I know everyone is groaning at this advice, but if you want to be a pretentious, cultured faggot, you have to step into that store to get a start. Check out some CDs and such, learn to drink some fucking coffee so you can go to the decent places and not look out of place.

4. Go to Rottentomatoes.com and go through highly rated movies and such, 99.99% of the time they're foriegn films, because American film critics suck Europes dick as much as possible.

5. and finally! Read the NYTimes, they have an entire section dedicated to culture and food (wine tasting etc), and all your book reviews and such are on their website.

Good Luck!

why learn western culture when Japanese culture is so obviously superior? ^_^

cant we just talk about tiberian sun?

>>3586733
>4. Go to Rottentomatoes.com and go through highly rated movies and such, 99.99% of the time they're foriegn films, because American film critics suck Europes dick as much as possible.

Only half-true. Some movies succeed because of the above mentioned dick-sucking (e.g. Pan's Labyrinth, which stole the cinematography Oscar from Children of Men, the clearly superior candidate) but generally speaking, only the best European movies (highest earning) are brought to market in the US and Canada.

I agree with you on the other points.

JUSUS FUCKLES THE ONLY REASONABLE MAN IN THIS THREAD IS >>3586638

FUCKING SHIT SON YOU DO NOT

I REPEAT

YOU DO NOT

FUCKING WANT

TO BECOME CULTURED

IT'S SHIT AND ENJOY YOUR TIME FAG

YOU'RE DOING CULTURE RONG ANYWAYS

it's not that hard. basically, go to wikipedia or some other encyclopedia and look up a bunch of famous people. maybe get a slight grasp on what they did. then name-drop them mercilessly. alternately, feel like you're inferior because of the first group doing that and feel incredibly driven to listen to lots of classical music, read philosophers, etc. those are basically the two ways to do it.

or you could just read what you like and not try and seem more cultured than you are, and try and find philosophers and literatures that are interesting and that appeal to you. and then read them. instead of forcing yourself to do some boring shit that you don't enjoy because some asshole on the internet (who hasn't read it) said that any cultured person has read it. what i'm saying is, do things because of your own intellectual curiosity, not because you want to seem cultured.

1. learn about practical and applicable things instead.
2. make more money than you know what to do with
3. laugh all the way to the bank and spend the last 50 years of your life becoming "cultured".

>baroque Obama
this one made me lawl

>>3586796

It takes like two months to become cultured, you just watch better stuff. No one is wasting there time in learning more about the advances of our people.

It's so terrible to enjoy art not made by XKCD these days, isn't it?

gtfo, and learn to appreciate things, fag

watch European movies filmed between 1945 and 1980. Not trolling either, American cinema seems like high-school theatre compared to the French, Italian, Spanish, Swedish and Czech film schools.

>>3586796
IT'S NOT ABOUT THE SOCIAL ACCEPTANCE, IT'S ABOUT BEING WELL-INFORMED, DIPSHIT!

www.wellcultured.com

>>3586886
*Should have written Russian instead of Czech. Also, European serious literature also used to be comparatively better developed than the American one, but I'm not going into authors because I don't read anymore. Not saying that American lit sucks, Phillip Roth and Raymond Carver are gods.

Hey, all else aside, you really should pick up that harmonica once and a while. It's a fun little instrument.

>>3586567
you do NOT want to be a guy who name drops 19th century philosophers and authors. those guys are huge douchebags.

Read history
History takes all of those subjects in and connects to tangible events.

>>3586890
That's the flaw in your reasoning, though. There's no inherent value to being "well-informed", as you put it. There's value to being well-educated, but the two are hardly synonymous. There is value in is experiencing things you enjoy, and most people can enjoy things that are regarded as "high-culture". However, the specific things people enjoy change greatly from person to person. Thus, it's really not wise to force people to read some canon that's regarded as essential - all it does is bore them and make them unhappy. People should read things they want to read and listen to things they want to listen to, but those fields should include some great writers and some great philosophers. Being "well-informed" or "well-read" or "well-cultured" in regards to some vague canon doesn't matter that much; that's not going to get you anywhere in life.

Read these
http://thegreatbookslist.com/otherlistsbloom.html
http://thegreatbookslist.com/otherlistsbloom2.html
http://thegreatbookslist.com/otherlistsbloom3.html
http://thegreatbookslist.com/otherlistsbloom4.html

Also, this >>3586681

>>3587002
FUCK harold bloom, FUCK your canon, and FUCK neoconservatism

tl;dr

THIS THREAD IS NOW ABOUT CABAL

Mootsucksoncockxblox

>>3587064

I hate Comcast.

Damn, i haven't played Tiberian Sun in awhile...

>>3586973
>that's not going to get you anywhere in life.
Being well-informed could be a stepping stone to almost anything. Also, I never included the word "force" or any of its synonyms in my silly post, I am just stating that it has its merits, and isn't as shallow as, for example, following the latest trends are.

>>3586973

It's just as valuable to know what you don't like. It's valuable to know how the things you read now were influenced by things in the past. It's valuable to get a broader picture so that you can truly appreciate what you like.

Also, a contradiction in what you said:

>People should read things they want to read and listen to things they want to listen to, but those fields should include some great writers and some great philosophers.
>it's really not wise to force people to read some canon that's regarded as essential - all it does is bore them and make them unhappy.

I don't see how they can't be seen as direct contradictions.

Name dropping is not cultured. know something, then have legitimate conversations, rather than "blah blah blah blah LOL HEGEL AND FICHTE"

>>3587127
>>3587127
>following the latest trends are
without that are :(

>>3586638
You mean the kind that /r9k/ was built for. This place was to be the /b/ for old /b/tards... You and I are both what you described to some extent.

a lot of references that people make are just from the same bullshit classes we all took in high school. we all read the same books as a kid, we all saw the same tv shows. peers, man. peers.

Look, just read shit you like. Watch things that entertain you. Life is too short to waste your time trying to impress a bunch of pretentious twats who haven't read or seen a tenth of what they name drop.

Which is not to say that classical film and literature are not entertaining. Everyone likes Akira Kurosawa. You'd have to try to be bored by Dostoevsky with all the murder and betrayal going on in there. But if something doesn't grab you, just move on--there's so much out there that there is bound to be something you'll like and that fits with being "cultured".

THIS is a function of general education. You get a lot of half-learned fuckwits that can talk general ideas all day long, but can't form a single proposition of their own, drawing inferences and synthesizing info. EXAMPLE: our current and previous presidents.

Better to be ignorant OP, the learned hoard can jerk them selves off perfectly fine without you; don't be an enabling cunt.

Fuck books; play that motherfucking harmonica like it's your job.

>>3588059
>>3588083
These gentlemen are right. Don't do something for your image, do it because you like it, because you want to know it - people who feel they got bragging rights because they can quote Nietzsche or listen to boring-ass American minimalist music (subjective opinion, in case you can't tell) tend to be insecure faggots who seek the validation of others because they themselves know they're not exceptionally educated in any way.

>>3588059
>You'd have to try to be bored by Dostoevsky
>Dostoevsky
>Crime and Punishment

I envy you

Step one to becoming more cultured is the realization of a world outside of the Top 40/IMDB 250/NYT Best Seller List.

It'll take years to form serious opinions on everything you listed, your best bet is to pick something you really like and focus on that more than anything.

>>3588219
I think he wants to. He just doesn't know how to do it.

>>3588343

I don't think you can bundle the IMDB top 250 in there with the others. Sure, they're all popular movies, and I'm sure there are much better ones out there, but at least they're actually picked by people who have watched a lot of movies, whereas the top 40 and NYT best sellers are simply the most popular. Almost always bought by people who don't listen to/read much outside of the popular stuff.

Whereas the top 250 is a good place to start with movies, there are much more accessible and "better" places to start with literature and music.

>>3588348
Well, I'm not really knowledgeable when it comes to literature, but I'm fairly well-versed in classical music and the visual arts, I could probably give OP a crash course of sorts, point him to essentials, but from my experience that stuff works much better IRL.

I dunno, does anyone in your family listen to classical music? Are you friends with one of your professors/teachers? It's not that hard to find literary/classical nuts around, most of them will be more than glad to share their passion with you, if only to prove how knowledgeable they are. If that fails, go to Wikipedia, look up classical music, then loot your local library and rip and listen to as much music as possible. It's not something you have to study to enjoy it, even more forbiddings stuff like microtonal or 12-tone music stops sounding hostile after a while.

Stop hanging round with pretentious pseudo-intellectuals. The kind of person you just described, sounds to me like people who just wait for the opportunity to show they have some esoteric knowledge, so they can feel superior. Fuck them.

>>3588059
>>3588219

faux-Leftist hipsters quoting Nietzsche is a riot, a welcomed spectacle, especially as one in the position to sage them.

Know what you like well and master it. Don't divide your efforts, unless you want to become a miserable dilettante douche in everything you do. Culture is like food: because some ass eats caviar, doesn't make him healthy or as strong as yourself if you don't.

*fuck caviar.

The ability to drop names and remember notable quotes does not make a person 'cultured' or even intelligent.

The kind of people you're talking about get their knowledge of names from books of collected quotes and their music from albums like '100 greatest classical hits'.

These are not the kind of people you should aspire to be.