Asklemmy

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It used to be common that people couldn't read. 100 years ago children worked in mines and factories. What is old is new again.

What do you mean "sudden?" It's been the bane of my existence since first logging into the Internet and discovering chat rooms in the early 90's, communicating solely by text.

Also, people jumping to extreme or nonsensical conclusions. Something like: "I personally don't like a cactus as a balcony plant." - "Aha so you think all plants should die?! I think you should die instead!"

Sometimes they will just make up stuff you supposedly believe and go ballistic on that. For some there really is no nuance and it's really tiering how this compromises more complex discussions.

Absolutely. At work I realized that if I have paragraphs in emails most people will just read the first sentence and ignore the rest. I have resorted to breaking paragraphs in to very easy to follow bulleted lists and that seems to help a little bit.

I think the most common reason for this is that it forces people to go out of their routine/comfort zone to understand something, which many people aren't willing to do, either consciously or subconsciously.

Sudden? No. Been dropping off since Reagan started the anti-education push his masters wanted? Yes. The illiteracy and lack of critical thinking skills have (intentionally) been instilled, or removed depending on your viewpoint, from the educational process worldwide. And as usual... the 'wealthy' "have a plan".

It may have something to do with a change in how we teach kids to read in the USA about 20 years ago.

https://www.apmreports.org/episode/2019/08/22/whats-wrong-how-schools-teach-reading

I don't know man, but I'll tell you this- I went to the UK to see a punk show and it got cancelled, so I went on the band's IG to see if there was a post as to why. There was, and as I tried to read some of the comments from users on the post my mind actually melted from how fucked up the spelling was. Not abbreviations, but just a shocking inability to spell very basic words. It's concerning

So many people just make up what they want to out of anything you say.

In general, or on Lemmy specifically? Because I've definitely noticed that some comment replies on Lemmy seem to completely miss the point of the parent comment.

This IS NOT new, and IS NOT a sign of bad things.

100 years ago, conservatives could barely even read.

The only thing that has been on sharp incline lately is logical fallacies coming out of them. They're literally regressing, though they've always been hyper-judgemental idiots who are fundamentally afraid of reality.

I recall hearing a long time ago that most news sites, magazines, newspapers, etc. tend to target a sixth grade reading level. So, I don’t know if there’s been a sharp rise, but it’s not really surprising considering how far beyond most readers should be.

I used to work help desk. Believe me, I know people can't comprehend simple shit anymore.

I've been a cashier for ages and a question that often pops up for customers on the payment terminal is "would you like to donate to X charity". How often people ask me what they should press, yes or no... I look at them ask them if they would like to donate to X charity and it's like a light goes on for them and they suddenly understand.

I've given up reading every word these days. I don't have the time or capacity.

After skimming I'll either go back and read something thoroughly, or move on to the next thing. 99% of it will be forgotten within the hour anyways.

However I won't comment (and I try not to pass on) on anything I haven't read thoroughly.

If I'm going to read every word (like a critical acclaimed book or article) I'm going to listen to it on my commute/wind down time.

Yes. I work in tech doing chat support. No one can fucking read. Or if they can, they suffer from selective reading where they just pick a word or phrase out of a message and fucking hone in on it like a missile strike and then they completely miss the context of what they were being told. They almost always have to have things reexplained because they just don't grasp reading a message and then understanding what it said.

Then when I'm online outside of work, I notice most people lack catching nuance when reading. This was especially true on Reddit and something I don't miss from there at all. Makes having a conversation online like pulling teeth.

I think the comprehension issues are partly to blame for writing issues: people don't understand what they're writing, and then why it's not what they're (probably) thinking.

If you see people apparently unable to understand sloppy writing, maybe it's just they're fed up.

Toss a good 'litchally' or 'emails' or 'backupped' into the post and I'm all but done.

Idiocracy is slowly becoming a documentary, and I hate it.

There's so much to read, it makes sense that our brains would start filtering things out.

Yes, I've noticed this too. A lot of this. I might not have English as my first language, but the signs point to grammar not being an issue, most often people complain I use words with looser connections to what I mean to say. With this, people act like my sentences are impossible math equations. They don't want to hear about how those can be solved as long as nothing breaks the rules of formulation. The cherry on top is when they say something demeaning like "come back when you can say something comprehensible", never "could you clarify?"

It's also possible that the method of communication is just changing. I've found that often I have more trouble communicating in written form than conversationally, and I wonder if that's because of zoom and video essays, not to mention shorts / TickTok becoming more prevalent. I've also had my writing degrade just because I don't have a place or reason to exercise it as much. So what I'm writing is perhaps less comprehensible because it's more like a stream of consciousness.

Or more likely it's both - people don't do long form or even "hard" reading anymore, and so find more complex text incomprehensible.

Yes, I've noticed a relatively large drop in reading comprehension among my close friends and family, and in the community in general. It goes hand in hand with the excessively banal small talk and their sudden inability to think critically. It's almost like they've been hypnotized or brain drained. It certainly is a cause for concern.

Yeah... But not just reading. If found that I have to explain extremely basic story plots or what happened in a movie to people. Like they never watched anything that happened in it.