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Harry Potter fans force relocation of £430m undersea cable to avoid Dobby’s ‘grave’
(www.theguardian.com)
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this post was submitted on 10 Aug 2026
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Okay yeah Harry Potter fans need to fucking stop. Just fucking stop. Read a book that isn't fucking shit.
Read literally any fucking book
Malania Trump's memoir it is.
I just threw up a little in my mouth.
With an Atlas Shrugged chaser.
Okay maybe have some standards. You know they're gonna go straight for mein Kampf.
Harry Potter fans aren't necessarily readers. Harry Potter succeeded because a media empire was built with it, not because it was a good story that spawned a lot of readers.
The books (especially the first) were one of the biggest best sellers of all time and an international success long before there were movies or any "media empire", saying it didn't spawn a lot readers is just ... dumb.
I'm pretty sure a lot more people have read the books than thre is Harry Potter fans these days, simply because most people eventually grow out of it.
Reading one book, or a single series of books doesn't make you a reader. I wouldn't claim to be a plumber just because I've fixed my sink a handful of times.
The idea that Harry Potter spawned a "generation of readers" is entirely manufactured by its publishers, there's no data backing that claim up..
Nobody said it was a revolution for reading or literacy, but just by sheer number the book still has still likely spawned more readers than any other books in recent decades.
I never read books as a kid for fun, until the 7th book came out when I was in high school. I read them all and never stopped.
HP definitely was one of the most commonly read books by most of my peers, and I'm afraid kids would have read much less without them (in my generation, before the movies were made)
I'm not saying that no one got into reading because of Harry Potter, I'm saying that it's not the spark of a reading boom, like you often see. This survey shows an ongoing decline in reading, which Harry Potter did nothing to budge.
It's great that some people got into reading because of a mediocre fantasy series about a rich trust fund baby's journey to become a cop, but they're outliers and again, fixing a sink does not a plumber make.
The first few books had zero merchandise because Rowling was against it. I know, talk about a change of heart...
Maybe someone should teach them to read?
Yeah, you know like the parents, and their teachers. J KKK Rowling has done enough damage.