Why is Lovecraft so popular in the mainstream Geek culture?

>>9478923
Because they're manchildren obsessed with Le spooky stories.

>>9478923
btw it's actually good

It does seem like pretty much everyone dabbling in horror has riffed on Lovecraft or his work.

>>9478956

Because all fear is ultimately fear of the unknown, which is what Lovecraft specialized in.

>>9478960
lovecraft hardly specialized in it. look at someone like m. r. james and then tell me that the puerile drivel lovecraft wrote could be called anything but trash.

>>9478923
The mainstream ran out of Stephen King and Clive Barker stories to resell so they've started on the quirky alternatives that inspired horror nerds in the 70's.

>>9478960
Inhuman, and the fear of the unknown, out there in the big universe, beyond our comprehension

>>9478979
I say this as a Lovecraft fanatic.

Cultural fucking inertia. Why is this not obvious to you? Lovecraft was freakishly prolific in terms of correspondence, they founds stacks and stacks and stacks of letters in his house when he died. He knew a lot of people who knew a lot of people, which means he influenced a lot of writers. He created a sort of inheritance.

His copyrights were voided and his work is now able to be freely marketed without any kind of actual effort of investment.
"Geek" Culture is an entirely commercial element and is derived artificially and branded in media for the profit of the media industry, and Lovecraft is easy pickings, mainly because he is easy to understand (although he is mostly misrepresented) and his work is actually novel and entertaining.
All this is wrapped up in a neat, safe package for "geeks" to mindlessly consume.
It's a shame because I really like Lovecraft and his work is perverted by industry kikes

>>9478923
Cthulhu became a thing in pop culture so a few people read the short story and started jacking off to the idea that they understand the meme. The Geek Culture Lovecraft extends as far as (maybe) Dunwich Horror and then there's a drop off. Also I know the Fallout franchise puts a lot of references to Lovecraft's work in their games so that could be part of it too.

>>9479107
That Skyrim DLC was entirely inspired by lovecraft. From unknown and forbidden knowledge that leads to insanity to the straight up tentacles and monoliths

>>9478975
I'm not interested in ghost stories. I prefer cosmic horror and beings that I can't understand

>>9479023
This.

tl;dr his cosmic horror is public domain just like gothic horror, Sherlock Holmes, etc.

>>9479223
what kind of horror isn't public domain?

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>>9478923
I think the 2005 Call of Cthulhu game helped spread awareness, along with the emergence of 4chan which was heavily skewed toward nerd culture.

I dont think he is. I think that maybe you can say the superficial elements of his mythos is perhaps referenced every now and then but as a writer he isnt popular amongst geek culture.

Ps here is my youtube channel about lovecraft

https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCKqtEaT66RWNe8uj2rZZv9Q

>>9479231
King and other folks that aren't dead yet; urban fantasy

I don't think it ever will be properly mainstream. How would they do a movie of Call of Cthulhu or At The Mountains of Madness? No one could pull off the overall tone in Hollywood.

>>9478923
see Houellebecq'a essay, he nails it:
HPL = chronically allergic to both women and money.
Just like all the neck-beards.
That's it, in a nutshell.

>>9479541
Then why did he marry?

>>9478923

Geeks dont read.

They know him from other media. Maybe they have listened to a audiobook of 'Call of Cthulhu', but thats it.

>>9479541
not as simple as that. read up on his "marriage".

>>9479541
also, he didn't like the swarthy foreigners very much either. that's got to count for something.

>>9479571
Geeks in the 70's did, which is why they were all inspired to write horror like that.

Please. R.L.Stein is the king of spoopy. Lovecraft was a fucking faggot.

South Park did more damage than good.

Most people fail to take into account the time and culture of when most literature was written. They have been over exposed to derivatives of what they criticize by shitty TV and Movies and think their opinion is informed or even matters. Grow up you sad fucking little losers parroting what you read in a blog or what your failed teachers/professors spoon fed you.

>>9479023
So you like him, but the popularity is driving you away?

>>9478923
Because he made an interconnected universe, which lets losers pretend it's like their comics and video games.

>>9479785
No
I like him and other people pretend to like him without knowing the first thing about him and (((they))) profit from the retardation of his work

>>9478923
Because cosmic horror.

isn't there a lovecraft story where the protagonist learns he's mulatto and goes insane from the realization?

wow what great literature.

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>>9480814
I'd go insane too desu

>>9480814
Do you mean the one where he realizes he's descended from a line of people who have sworn allegiance and mixed with an ancient underwater fishpeople civilization that worships the Old Gods? That's not really the same as mulatto Anon

People don't understand Lovecraft. I'm he would have hated the attention, the dude was patrician as fuck.

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://files.meetup.com/9161102/In%2520Defence%2520of%2520Dagon%2520-%25202%2520of%25202.pdf&ved=0ahUKEwj6tpKP9uDTAhVBMyYKHf0ODIcQFggqMAI&usg=AFQjCNH2Ivap68Zk5_r4b3scBq24pnWJfQ&sig2=6RjazNrGa7mSgBa3Qs6NQg
The above is his essay "In Defense of Dagon"

>>9480856
I think it's exactly the same, anon/

>>9480873
*Imo
I'm a shitty phone poster

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>>9480882
W-well then you're a big dummy

>>9478923
Hyperstition. The Landian tech-prophecy is assembling itself before our eyes. As belief or even just interest in Lovecraft accrues it fulfills. Enjoy life while it lasts, lads.

mere aesthetic and groupthink
they don't even read the stories!!

>>9478975
I love James, but I don't quite find them comparable even though Lovecraft absorbed a lot of his ideas as he did with others like Blackwood and Machen. James is typically dealing in the somewhat traditional realm of malevolent spirits seeking revenge or being conjured through the disturbance of antique artifacts. It doesn't quite reach the scope of Lovecraft writing that human beings are nothing in the eyes of incomprehensible cosmic entities imo.

A lot of Lovecrafts aesthetics have been aped by mainstream geek culture like Le scary slimy tentacles and Le indescribable horror but it almost always misses the point

>>9478923
He isn't popular amongst geeks except perhaps in a very superficial way, like, "oh tentacles so Lovecraftian!"

>>9479107
This.

>>9479491
There is no economic sense in making a film with a huge budget. Even if you tried to make it profitable it would be dumbed down to appeal to the masses.

>>9479541
No it isn't. Considering you read the essay I'm surprised this is your summary.

>>9479580
>he didn't like the swarthy foreigners very much either
Look at Paris, London, Malmö, Rome. HPL was redpilled as fuck.

>>9480814
>isn't there a lovecraft story where the protagonist learns he's mulatto
Basically at least two stories have that theme.

>>9481424
This.

Lovecraft was used as a fill-in joke in literary and nerd culture of the 70's and 80's. Something like:

"Do you like Lovecraft?"

"Yeah, I really love him"

Was comparable to saying this about Nicholas Cage today. Like yeah, maybe he did one or two things well, but ultimately he was doing something he was completely unqualified for, nearly everything he produced was trash, and people's love for him was ironic mockery.

Once he became well known due to some 80's-90's films based on his short stories people looked into him and found this ironic subculture they didn't fully understand and took it as serious.

Nobody fucking remembers this now because the people who like Lovecraft are early-30's shiteating redditors who'll gobble up anything vaguely related to "le ebin nerd culture" as sincerely as they can just to entrench themselves further in an adopted identity because they have literally nothing else anchoring their lives and weren't even alive when Lovecraft was a secret in-joke nobody'd heard of instead of a common name to throw around.

>>9480814
Maddening.

In all seriousness, Lovecraft is fantastic and deserves recognition. The muh Coofooloo normie stuff is only a tiny scope of what he did.

>>9481747
So you're at least 40 years-old and using phrases like "shiteating redditors"?

>>9479491
I'd argue that At The Mountains of Madness and Campell's "Who Goes There?" inspired The Thing

>>9481847
You would argue that because it's set in Antarctica and so is The Thing, without knowing that there was an entire genre of set-in-Antarctica horror stories at the beginning of the twentieth century.

>>9481925
>set-in-Antarctica horror
Can you list some? I don't doubt you but I'm curious since I loved both stories set there.

>>9481847
The Thing (I assume you mean the film) is totally taken from Who Goes There. It is worth noting that John Carpenter, the guy who made The Thing, is a big Lovecraft fan.

>>9481747
>Completely unqualified
He started teaching himself Latin at the age of nine. The dude was a prodigy.

Why is anything anything?

Lovecraft is popular with the rank and file, but many influential people in the "geek" world would love to get rid of him.

http://weirdfictionreview.com/2012/09/moving-past-lovecraft/

http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/11/12/world-fantasy-awards-banish-h-p-lovecraft-to-rlyeh/

He is just too inconvenient politically. Tolkien is the same, I give 10 years until SJWs begin to purge the Lord of the Rings from popular culture.

>>9481747

Have you actually read anything he's written? The fuck?

Sometimes /lit/ is seriously worse than reddit, and I'm not even sure how that's even possible.