I would say that I'm pretty sure that you can get a college degree without reading a book at this point; but, that would be misleading -- I know you can.
This is a bigger issue than we're currently acknowledging. The old adage, "You can't judge a book by its cover." has been replaced with, "I shall judge you for reading that book that I haven't read."
I've experienced this myself -- as I've said before. I'm also fairly sure that this is a relatively new problem. My roommate at college didn't shame me or report me for reading The Communist Manifesto, The Wealth of Nations, nor The Fountainhead. I was never shamed in the quad for reading the wrong book. I had read Mein Kampf before college; but, I'm confident that I could have read that on campus without anybody immediately assuming that I was a Nazi. Hell, even just a few years ago, I was reading a copy of Defending My Enemy whose cover was a photo of a neo-Nazi speaking in front of a Nazi flag, regularly in public and nobody said anything.
I think we all have some instinct about not wanting to give our time and money to the enemy. I feel it. It's not even that I have an aversion to giving somebody who I regard as a dickhole, who makes millions of dollars more than me, my money. I'm sure my $20 will someday buy Ibram X Kendi a fancy backscratcher. And, sure, I'd rather reread John McWhorter's Woke Racism than spend my time reading How To Be An Anti-Racist; but, even though I trust McWhorter as a source, it's always possible that he'll have a less than generous reading of his opponents.
I get that reading is, as Marshall McLuhan called it, a "cold medium." It's not as easy to read as it is to watch a YouTube video. That's probably why people shame others for the books that they choose to read, more than the movies that they choose to watch. Books are longer commitments. If I'm seen reading Marx, it's a reasonable assumption that I value reading Marx's views more than any multitude of things I could be doing otherwise. That's correct. The thing is, people jump to the assumption that since the book is valued by the reader, the reader must agree with it.
The thing is, people tend to make assumptions about other people based on how they know themselves. Since I know that I've read the Qu'ran and I'm not a Muslim, I don't feel comfortable dissing somebody online for reading anything. If my generation, and younger people, are used to only reading when they need to, and only reading perspectives that they think they'll like, they'll assume that everybody else is the same. So, they'll feel comfortable making assumptions about a person's character, and his or her views, based upon the books that he or she reads.
Namely, this is creating a push toward a culture where even curious people who are voracious readers will only read in darkness. People will feel justified, even virtuous for only reading their side of a matter.
That's dangerous. As John Stuart Mill said, "He who knows only his side of a case, knows little of that." What Mill also warned about is the creation of dogmas. Perhaps the semi-illiterates who like to shame people for reading certain books see no danger in the creation of a generation that hates Hitler without understanding him -- I do.
When a living truth becomes a dead dogma, we're in trouble. How many of you can tell the Moon Landing denier why he or she is wrong, but for regarding it as conventional wisdom? Maybe we can create a generation free of Moon Landing deniers; but, we'll never create a generation that doesn't think. If we stop being able to explain why something is right, we lose the ability to prove the falsehood wrong.
Maybe we don't need to work toward a culture in which people start reading more. I don't think that that's gonna happen. What we do need to do is put people in their places. "You're offended that there's a Nazi flag on the cover of the book I'm reading on this plane? Okay, noted. Fuck off and mind your own business. I don't care."
