For me it’s scanning vs. reading. Too often I’ll think I’ve read something, react to it, only to see after the fact that I missed something because I was in fact -not- reading but scanning. Email is an example. I get so much of it, I scan and skim, and inevitably get bit by this bad habit, often more than once a day. It’s a disservice to the person e-mailing me, I know, but there are a LOT of people and I suppose the (poor) rationale is that at least everyone is getting some attention. I know it’s better to get to what I can and things that I can’t just need to wait.

Remember when the internet used to be wall of texts. People used to write like writers do. Sentences and paragraphs that comprise a distinct idea. A collection of paragraphs that elucidate the point of view in their head… These days the style of writing online is some kind of line-by-line disjointed train of thoughts. Something resembling a collection of 140 character social media posts. I find it more difficult to grok. Impossible at times. It’s like people aren’t writing for readers. They’re brain dumping one liners off the top of their head.

I have noticed it, but it’s not happened suddenly.

My new job has 18 people in a training class where we are asked to read the content out loud. The amount of grown ass adults that will literally make up different words blows my mind.

I recently got into a long, really dumb argument. I used the phrase “lesser of two evils” and what seemed like fifty people (actually two or three) seemed to think that meant I approved of, strenuously endorsed, and would defend the actions of the “lesser evil.”

To me, this seemed like a basic misunderstanding of what the phrase meant, so I defined it. Their response to my definition was to say the same sort of thing they’d already said while claiming to totally know what “lesser of two evils” meant.

I lost my cool, and explained what the phrase meant again. One of the folks explained themselves calmly while the others seemed to think I was a congenital idiot because I kept repeating myself.

I don’t want this to get any longer, so I’ll just say that we were talking past each other. Nobody (well, except fr the one guy who stopped to explain what he meant) was really comprehending what the other person said. So everyone was a dumbass, basically. Story of my life, really.

At least, I think that’s what happened. Watch the asshole who called me a liar and an idiot show up here to not explain how I’m a liar and an idiot again.

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 think it has something to do with everything trying to get your attention, and waste your time for metrics.

We ignore signs because we don’t want to read another popup.

We skim text because we don’t want to know about your life story, just the chili recipe, thanks.

We skip or misread instructions because we’ve been doing the job for years, and we’re halfway on autopilot.

We can’t find a restaurant or shop right in front of us because we’re starting to learn to ignore bright colors and flashing lights.

We browse the internet while watching a movie because we’ve seen the same cliche Marvel movie before.

The problem is that sometimes we get so used to these things that we also do it when we shouldn’t be.

That kind of sounds like someone not being able to write / express themselves properly is trying to shift the blame on the readers.

This isnt new. Anyone who has been on a dating site or app in the last 20-30 years will have stories to tell.

The same applies with ads for almost anything. I can recall advertising a property to let in the early 2000’s, the ad started with the line “Non-smokers wanted for non-smoking property” or something similar, and I repeated the non-smoking thing or variations of it over a dozen times within the ad. A couple turned up to look at it, both carrying cigarette packets, one actually smoking on arrival…

Sudden? That’s been declining for years my dude.

I’m lucky if people understand the first bullet point in my emails. I’m luckier still if they keep reading, never mind understand my next point.

May I suggest that you don’t get a job in IT?

I am a documentation writer at my day job. I spend an obscene amount of time writing and rewriting support materials for our software to make sure the instructions are as clean as possible. The end users of the software are busy doctors and nurses so I get why they dont have time to read and just want quick answers from our support team. I get that.

What I dont forgive is how many times the support team will complain to me that a scenario or a feature isnt in the documentation, despite me bolding, bullet listing, and highlighting THE EXACT THING THEY ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT. I usually relink it to them and screenshot the relevant section.

People. Do. Not. Read.

Prior covid infection has a well documented negative impact on the brain. I.e brain fog. Fundamentally covid causes vascular damage (blood vessels are harmed) and the brain is highly dependant on blood vessel health.

Sudden? No. It’s always been very, very bad.

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.