Fifty Shades of Grey was badly written with a terrible plot and atrocious 'porn' so why do so many women/people like it?

asking this question is like asking why did so many people vote for donald trump?

sometimes you just can't account for taste.

personally with flavors of the month like donald trump and twilight or fifty shades of grey it always reminds me of the story the emperors new clothes. everyone just seems to go along with what everyone else is doing.

like sheep. or lemmings. they don't want to be the odd man out so they agree and go with the flow.

or as one of my friends put it, never underestimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.

The number of people who make reading a big part of their life has been steadily declining for many years. People began looking for other forms of entertainment and enjoyment and the wide majority of them favoured mindless escapism. Independent, analytical, critical thought is more rare today than probably at any other time in human history. People seek instant gratification - they aren't keen to immerse themselves in something that they actually need to unravel or ponder about in order to enjoy it. Shoddily composed books that are shallow and simple appeal to people who aren't interested in attempting to decipher a piece of text.

The Young Adult explosion of the 90's jettisoned a lot of authors to fame because young people who lacked a solid foundation in reading were able to pick up those books and hit the ground running. Many were created as nothing more than a convenient vehicle for characters that those authors hoped young people might identify with or idolise. The quality of the prose, the themes, the metaphors, the imagery, the dialogue - everything took a backseat to the primary goal of essentially providing young people with something to zone out to and veg out to.

The snowball effect made it possible for authors who never would have received the slightest degree of notoriety a few short years before to achieve fame, and in some cases, even acclaim, as remember, we're talking about these books appearing at a time when readership had fallen off considerably for nearly all books in general and many people praised these authors for rekindling an interest in books among young people. It's essentially akin to saying that playing mindless video games improves eye-hand coordination. It's a total cop-out. The fact of the matter is that these sub-par books which serve as the foundation for many of today's readers don't afford their readers the opportunity to experience the best and most wonderful aspects of writing. Many are variations on the same tired, staid old themes and subjects because the writers are looking to appeal to an audience rather than concerning themselves with creating the best pieces possible.

The evidence is clear in the endless slew of questions asked here about how to get rich from writing. When people were reading Dickens and Hemingway and Nabokov, they would have laughed these rubbish books on the shelves today right out of the room. But nowadays, people are intimidated by dense, deep, complex pieces of writing that weave tales and plots that don't necessarily progress in the same old predictable formulaic manner. Young aspiring writers who have been shaped by nothing other than useless, irredeemable bunk come to believe that the bar for writing is extremely low and that it always will be. Shite authors are churning out silly dreck that's essentially nothing but the dry run for the film they hope to see made from their source material. And of course, it's essential that these writers need to continue to plog on with their silly characters and plots, their imbecilic dystopias, their laughable pseudo-myths, their intolerable zombies and vampires as long as possible. Every rotten book has to become a trilogy - keep people hooked even though there's nothing worth coming back for.

If people are going to gravitate toward simplistic, straightforward, shock-value laden crap, then books like that will continue to succeed. It's escapism. And people like not having to think. They prefer to be told what to think and to ingest easily digestible fare.

People have been reading Poe and Shelley and Dostoyevsky for nearly two centuries. Do you think that come 2216 people will still be reading "Fifty Shades of Grey" or "Twilight" or "The Hunger Games" or "Harry Potter"?

God, I sure hope not. But if things continue as they are now, there's a very strong chance that in 200 years what people are reading will be even more sophomoric and worthless.

It filled a open niche. Not a lot of S&M romance fiction with a female soft core slant.

I have asked myself the exact same question and I think something you need to bare in mind is that everyone read's for different reasons. Some people read to educate themselves, some people simply read for entertainment and others read as a way of filling a void. Why do people like to read stories about people that don't exist? What's the point? Why do people care so much about fictional people? Why do more women read romance books than men? And the truth is, sex is always something that people are interested in and something people worry about, they like to see what other's sex lives are like and how theirs compares.

On the 50 Shades book, I've heard that the women who read this are mostly 40+ and late teens early twenties. So for the old women whose sex lives have sparked out, it gives them something thrilling. For young women who have become comfortable with sex and maybe looking to spice up their sex life they like to read things a little more edgy, something to keep their imagination fresh. I've heard a lot of women getting into bondage type sex after reading these books.

But I think quite a few people came to these books after it got well known. Not everyone knows or cares what good writing is. This is what some call 'trash' fiction. It's not necessarily bad it's just something fun to read, don't expect to much from it. So you get people who don't know anything about good writing say how wonderful it is, this then attracts others. You get people who expect a bit more from a novel and are shocked by the poor quality.

Thanks my opinion anyway and no doubt someone will disagree.

Because people are gross, inherently dull minded, carnal, uncultured bastards and that sort of smut is the only thing some humans can appreciate the full value of, whatever sort of value it has, if any. The sooner you learn of the licentious, decadent ways of the human crowd, the sooner you understand the demand for such utter $h!t.

Escapism, perhaps?

Interest and written at a 4th grade level are the main reasons. Had it been even a smidgeon intellectual it would have been and Edsel.

It's based on Twilight and they've seen the movies which went a LONG way to selling any copis at all.
Twiglight made Fifty Shades social rather than shameful to read. So instead of 'it's porn', it's, 'me and my girlfriends saw it together '

Just now I scanned a few pages and it seems to be written well, but I'm not educated in language so what do I know.