Recently I've been seeing a lot of people claiming that they disliked x book because they "couldn't relate to it". I assumed this was brought about in some way by the terminally online mindset (I'm not really criticising btw because I, too, am terminally online) but I was discussing Dead Souls with a classmate the other day and he said it was fine, but he didn't enjoy it as much as he thought he would because he struggled to relate to it.
Maybe it's Baader-Meinhof, but I can't recall seeing this criticism prior to the last few years and don't understand why it would be valid criticism in the first place. I just can't wrap my head around why not relating to something would make you dislike it or somehow make it bad.
So what's the deal?