18 
We’ve heard of hate-reading—the kind of reading you do out of disgust or loathing or contempt for the author. Now, it seems that a new type of reading style has emerged: call it “shame-reading.”
In a poll cited by The Daily Mail, 34% of a test group of 1,863 subjects admitted to having used their e-reading devices to read erotic novels. And 57% of the same group of adults said they had used theirs to hide the fact that they were reading young adult literature, like Harry Potter, and 28% to disguise their sci-fi book habit. Overall, 58% of respondents said they use their e-readers specifically to “hide” what they are reading.
These same adults filled nearly three-quarters of their bookshelves with autobiographies, political memoirs, and other non-fiction; on their e-readers, those genres accounted for just 14% of their reading material.
With so much of our technology working to connect us and allow our private lives exposure, the privacy afforded by the e-reader is an uncommon advantage. (If that’s, you know, what you’re into.) And shame-reading will likely only grow in practice, as authors discover this lucrative sub-market of the ebook industry and cater directly to it. [DailyMail - Image via preetamrai/Flickr]
Whoa, wait, hang on! Since when was sci-fi something to be shameful of?
Sci fi is… *deep breath* sssshhaameful
Yeh we bought my grandad a kindle for his birthday when it first came out. He is a major technophobe (refuses to own a mobile phone, even a nokia 3310 because he says he wouldn’t be able to work it) but he still picked up how to use the kindle pretty quick. Which surprised me because I don’t find the UI all that nice but anyway.
As you would expect there have been one or 2 problems/hiccups that need sorting as always, getting a new debit card, wifi dropping out etc, that my grandad doesn’t know how to do. So he asked me to sort it for him.
But, strangely, he didn’t seem so willing to hand it over. He would try to get me to tell him how to do it while he was sat right next to me. As you can imagine this was quite slow so eventually I managed to persuade him to hand it over, and he reluctantly did.
I soon realised why he was reluctant. He had quite a few erotic picture books… I pretended to skip past like I didn’t notice. However, due to problems with his account we decided it would be easiest to use my amazon account. I didn’t untick the box that said don’t send me email receipts.
Receiving emails of your grandad buying erotic picture books is not fun :\
I’m in a similar situation with my brother on his new Android phone… I unassumingly signed into my Google account when setting it all up, and now my top search query in Web History is “porn”…
Haha, sounds like it’s time to purge your web history and start again.
http://www.google.com/history
I’ve looked for about an hour about how to sneakily disconnect his device from my account, but it’s freakin’ impossible.
We all know that was your top search query before your brother got his phone anyway
haha
Why not try convincing him to create his own google account for some made up reason? Yours is compromised.. or something
Awwwwww, I know! I’ll tell him my account has viruses. 8|
Say porn related viruses, then say “No idea where they’ve come from though, some kind of android phone? Hmm, strange…”
And if he doesn’t make a new account RIGHT NOW, the phone will blow his palms into a billion pieces.
The perfect plan, he’ll believe every bit! Our job here is done.
Is anyone here a Warhammer 40K fan? Remember that untouchable in Ravenor who’s always reading erotic stories on his tablet?
The future is here.
Well, I suppose he’s not really hiding it since he will happily read it out loud if no one objects.
I wouldn’t call this “shame-reading”, just that they don’t want to shout it from the rooftops that they are reading erotic books. Otherwise sex is then “shame-sex”, everyone knows you are probably doing it, everyone knows what you are probably doing it like, and you are likely doing it to that person you are with – it is just that you maybe don’t do it openly in a public space, or give photos of yourself doing it to passing strangers. You are not ashamed of reading erotic fiction any more than being ashamed of having sex, that would be a hangup. It is just that you don’t want others to know the specifics of your ins-and-outs. But the fact that we want to know the specifics of others ins-and-outs is why we view erotic material – pure id, ego and superego at play.