what the heck happened to public libraries? : rspod

I regularly went to the public library in order to get a quiet place to study away from home.

The degenerates on the computers are absolute animals. An old guy sitting there watching asian girl fetish smoking videos and getting off on it, another old guy watching videos of half naked kids on youtube (no shit) and the librarians refusing to ban him for it. Kids loitering in the lobby. A few genuine neurodivergent types go and watch videos of bee hives on the computer . There's dedicated shrines to LGBT and anti-racism everywhere, and drag queen story hour isn't a meme it happens at least twice a year. A lot of conservative leaning people avoid taking their kids to the library for that reason.

People still go to the upper floors for the library for study. However, for a good 10+ years at this point nobody gets the books out. You could remove everything but the reference section cut down the floor space 80%, and fire 80% of the staff, and the place would still function the same as a quiet study area. Go take the free computers somewhere else as well, make that a separate government service. In fact, digitize the reference section and seal away the archives in boxes.

The entire place gets by on its reputation of being a "smart person thing", but it's just another bloated public service. The research assistants in the archive section make good money but do literally nothing all day. It absolutely is a useless money sink, but if you suggest privatizing it everyone makes out you're some Luddite because "hurr u don't like education and books".