Just as the title asks I’ve noticed a very sharp increase in people just straight up not comprehending what they’re reading.
They’ll read it and despite all the information being there, if it’s even slightly out of line from the most straightforward sentence structure, they act like it’s complete gibberish or indecipherable.
Has anyone else noticed this? Because honestly it’s making me lose my fucking mind.
I’m afraid there’s nothing new about this, it has been going on for a long time. What I do believe is happening is now that every idiot with a cell phone can jump of sites like lemmy or reddit, we are simply seeing a lot more examples of the problem. Pretty much like when camcorders became affordable to the general public, we suddenly saw all kinds of police brutality videos and some people thought this must be a recent trend when in fact it had been occurring all along.
One of my last comments on Reddit was about this.
The biggest difference I’ve noticed is that people have stopped reading sentences. They’ll read all the words and then upvote based on the feeling those individual words give them. They won’t consider the meaning of all those words put together.
And yeah, “upvote does not mean agree” is something Reddit has always struggled with, but it has definitely had exponential growth lately.
It has made me start writing more clearly. There are comments I’ve written that have been wildly misinterpreted from my actual meaning. Part of that is that I tend towards sarcasm, and it doesn’t translate well over the internet no matter how absurd I get with it. But I’ve also started aiming to use more simple sentence structure.
I’ve had the same experience with people (intentionally or otherwise) misinterpreting what I said to mean something completely opposite. And I call them out on it every time, like seriously did you even READ what I said or did you just see a few words and insert your own beliefs into what you thought I was going to say? I’ve actually had some people admit that yes, they did indeed quickly skim without letting the actual words sink in.
It’s really a shame that you’re reducing your writing to the lowest common denominator. Sure there may be times when there’s a reason for that (Earth not flat, dummy), but the rest of the time it drags down the whole conversation to a level where it’s difficult to have a meaningful discussion. If someone is really trying to grasp a concept but they’re missing it then of course you need to drop out of the technical jargon to help them get up to speed, but the ones who are there just to ridicule and troll simply aren’t worth the effort to explain simple concepts to (such as your opinion on women’s reproductive rights is meaningless, the only opinion that matters is that of the woman who is affected by the issue). Keep up the high-quality discussions and ignore everyone who doesn’t make the effort to keep up!
It’s really a shame that you’re reducing your writing to the lowest common denominator
yeah
At times I’ve been considering using spoiler mechanics to write a “simple English” reply, followed by the actual answer, hidden for only the more discerning reader to uncover.
Sure, there’s that. Also, sometimes I just write bad.
Haha don’t we all!
I was a strong advocate for rediquette for a long time, but the site kept attracting new people who didn’t give a shit about it. You can’t fight the tides of change, I guess.
The eternal September eventually gets you.
It helps to use only happy nice words. A happy sentence is an objective sentence, free from judgements or pronouns.
“You watch that stupid thing too much.”
Starts with a pronoun, contains “stupid”, ends with a judgement. It’ll make people furious and it’s not the content for them but the trigger words they scan for.
“Maybe we could go outside instead of watching TV?”
Same reasoning behind why you said it, different responses sometimes.
At work if I ask 2 questions in an email I’m guaranteed 1 or 0 answers.
Maybe because there’s 10 kinds of email replies at your workplace
Hah!
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.
I started preferring long form media recently. Audiobooks especially. Social media allows anyone to say a single thing that may or may not be legit, but since it’s bite sized information units they don’t need to back it up. Long form media requires a person to back up what they say, and having that barrier of entry filters out those who probably aren’t worth listening to.
Oh yeah. I love audiobooks, podcasts, and video essays.
Me too:) do you have any recommendations off the top of your head? No genre preference, just your favorite book or video essay?
I’m a sci fi and fantasy guy. I don’t think I have favorites, but I can list off some series. The Expanse, The Dark Tower, Dune up to Children of Dune, the series that starts with Ender’s Game, The Foundation series, the Space Odyssey series, Stormlight Archive, the Three Body Problem series, as many books as you want from the Discworld series, The Witcher, Children of Time, etc etc etc
I couldn’t name a single video essay by title. I just listen, I am entertained, and I move on. Anything by Folding Ideas is good. Those count as video essays right?
Anything you want to recommend?
Hell yeah. I just read Guards, Guards! by Pratchett and I’m working through LotR again. Dune is amazing, but I haven’t continued past the original so maybe I’ll read those next.
If you’re into history, I’ve been listening to The People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn, it focuses on each major historical event from the perspective of the regular individual person rather than focusing on the people who happened to be in power during them, and it’s pretty good so far. I also read Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky, and that was life changing. Those are two pretty political ones, though.
In terms of fiction Id recommend Cormac McCarthy – either The Road or Blood Meridian – The Road is a post apocalyptic story about a father traversing through the ashen environment with his son, while Blood Meridian is a brutal Western set in the 1800s. With both of these, it’s not as much about plot as it is about the poetry of the writing.
I haven’t read a scifi book in a minute, but I haven’t seen a lot of people recommend A Canticle for Leibowitz. It’s three separate-but-connected short post-apocalyptic stories that follow the gradual resurgence of humans after a nuclear event. It’s really subtle in that it doesn’t slam you with like a whole universe and systems like Dune, but it’s expertly written and hits some pretty thought provoking topics. Def underrated.
Those last 2 paragraphs sound right up my alley, thank you very much!
LotR is of course, incredible, and anything Terry Pratchett touches is gold
May I suggest that you don’t get a job in IT?
“I try to do a thing on my computer and I get an error message.”
“What does the message say?”
“I don’t know.”
The story of me helping people with computers.
To be fair, that’s learned helplessness.
How many times have you said ‘yes yes, just click through that, jeeze’?
There is so damn much horrible shitty UX out there; 90% of the time users are just trained out of using common sense, and you can’t blame them for it.
That other 10% though, goddamn. I swear if you moved their doorknob an inch to the left they’d starve to death in their home.
Also one my favourites:
„Nothing works, and this annoying message keeps popping up. I keep closing it, but it just comes back every time. Can you help me?“
Them: “All the PCs are broken”
Me: “ok, cam you see any lights on the monitors or on the front of the pcs”
Them: “i dont know”
Me: “ok I’ll come have a look”
walks down
Me: “Ok show me one of the broken ones”
Them: “ok well its actually just this one”
Me: dont get mad, they are just an idiot
Me: turns on screen
Them: “how did you do that?”
Me AAAAAARRRRHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGG “magic 😀” AAAAAAARRRRRHHHHHGGG
I once had six monitors shipped to us from onsite, complaining they were all dead.
Each one, just twiddle the brightness knob right on the front (yes this was the 90s, CRTs with analogue knobs…) and they were absolutely fine.
The amount of people who work on a computer every day and still don’t know the absolute basics is astounding.
I fully understand that someone who never used a PC doesn’t know their way around one, that’s absolutely fair, of course. But if they’ve used one for years because of their job, and are still not able to work out where that one file is…
That’s just inexcusable.Great job security for IT and tech support though.
I think some people are just wired to think in a way that makes the ways computers work difficult to understand. (Just like some folks don’t have an inner monologue or can only think in images, or can’t visualize anything at all). I’ve been the liaison between tech folks and non-tech folks in the same conversation with me needing to translate between both parties. They could not understand each other even in the same conversation.
I can’t find files because they’re buried in subfolders or split into separate drives because IT decides to change the structure of everything and who knows where where to find what if there’s not a shortcut to what I need on my desktop. Did they put it on X drive or G drive or H drive? What folders did it get buried in?
Windows search is trash at being able to actually find anything.
More like my computer doesn’t work. Error message at least implies the computer booted up.
The process of trying to get someone to explain their problem is so painful.
Well, I’ve had this happen before because the error is half a screen long with a bunch of random (to me) characters, only shows for half a second and it won’t let me screenshot it and isn’t always repeatable because it already showed me the error message, so why would it again?
I hate when that shit happens.
I feel called out 😅
I feel this.
What is the actual point of publishing knowledge bases and documentation if nobody reads them?
“I understand your issue, can you please provide me w, x, and y so I can proceed? Also did you try Z?”
“Sure, I tried Z! Here is W”
That’s better than average tbh
Preach
Or customer service for that matter.
I help companies sell products on Amazon.
One sold protein powder. Product title says “25g of protein”. First bullet point says “25g of protein per serving”. Main image of the product clearly shows “25g protein” on the label. Second image makes it more clear with “25 Grams of Protein Per Serving” in big bold letters. The A+ content (images in product description) repeat this information in big bold letters as well. Both the image gallery and the A+ content showed a picture of the supplement facts panel. The top rated review for the product called out that they liked the 25g of protein per serving.
Customer messages me, “How much protein per serving? Doesn’t say anywhere on the listing.”
Rage. Instant, immediate, and intense rage.
My time in retail and working at a liquor store have shown me that a significant portion of the general population are just straight up illiterate, mostly illiterate, or functionally illiterate. I had to stop allowing myself to get upset when customers would ask dumb questions for the sake of my own sanity.
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.
THIS. I literally got called into an HR meeting because one of our clients threw a giant fit claiming a large, world ending, apocalyptic problem, because of an issue that I already reported on which is literally above his hissy fit message sent on a Sunday morning and he got mad because I replied on Monday at 9 AM literally sending him the screenshot of me reporting the problem to him.
Yep. I’ve noticed this in maybe the last 3-4 years. I’ve actually wondered if i’ve started getting dyslexia.
I think realistically it’s more to do with the way I use the internet. I scan articles rather than read them unless it’s something i’m really interested in. Google search results, half of them tend to be bullshit so i’ve gotten good at scanning them at insane speed.
Yeah, I literally began typing this response before finishing your post.
…
It’s like with increased information we’ve learned to scan for relevance a lot better, but at the expense of overall comprehension.
Like it gets us by, and gets us through the excess in time.
But, when emotions fly? It’s getting volatile.
Massively! I used to read loads of books now I struggle to get through them at all.
I find it easier to listen to a podcast and scan the internet barely taking any information in from either. I have to really concentrate to do either now. I am working at it. Treating reading articles/podcasts as more of a hobby where I try dedicate some time to it where that’s my only focus.
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 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 don’t think it’s a reading comprehension problem, it’s some sort of cultural problem. These people are reading what we are typing, but that’s not what they want to talk about. So they will take anything, even tangentially related and disprove a component of it so they can reframe the conversation back to what they wanted to argue about.
I actually find myself doing similar things. Essentially I will write out a long winded comment, then realize that the person I am replying to has nothing to do with what I wanted to say. Instead I was paraphrasing all of the comments, coming up with a point I wanted to make and then ramming it round peg square hole style into someone else’s comment tree. I have been deleting a lot of comments before even hitting the post button in the last 6 months or so since I realized I was doing it.
TLDR: A lot of people online are not arguing in good faith.
Lol, Lemmy is still small enough that I know the thread you are talking about. It was a political discussion, yeh?
If I remember right most of the people who argued with you were from hexbear, which tracks lol.
Yeah, that’s the one. I figured I’m small potatoes so no one’s gonna bother looking it up. It never even occurred to me that someone might have already seen it lol.
It’s measurable.
In my country we have a central test for kids at various age, and reading comprehension is also measured. Every age group is doing worse and worse every time.
It’s mind blowing to me, as a kis I didn’t understand the point of the test, like you read an A4 page or two and answer questions about the text, that is literally in the text right there, it felt pointless. Well as it turns out it’s not.
We are literally getting worse and worse understanding what we read. The future is scary.
Lol I remember taking a state mandated reading comprehension test. The text was literally directions on how to assemble a grill.
You’re on Internet. Many people are not native English speaker.
Secondly, people are saying this kind of shit litteraly since anciant Greece. You’re late to the party. They complained about it in each and every place of the western world at every time we have written records to read that shit. It’s seriously amazing how this trope is one of the most consistent of the history of mankind. And it doesn’t depend on the language obviously.
Iirc, even the Greeks bemoaned the written word because it harmed physical memory and made out brains weak because we could just consult tablets lazily instead of memorizing everything.
https://blogs.ubc.ca/etec540sept13/2013/09/29/socrates-writing-vs-memory/
Socrate said that apparently. Fortunately they weren’t all idiots so we now know that they would also say stupid things.
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.
I’ve been really mellow since I caught covid and I like it. I’m finally happy. It’s like when Homer put the crayon back in his brain because he realised that being smart made him miserable.
I wound up the same after picking up a weed habit as an adult - very mild persistent brain fog, and my memory has been affected, but I’m happier, and my wife is happier as a consequence. It’s not ideal, but I value happiness over peak mental performance.
Bro
Can I see the documentation? Couldn’t find it and am curious :)
Pro tip: google “COVID brain fog”
Source?
Some of it’s the food too. Folks be hoofing gluten and corn syrup all day long. I saw a homeless guy in the park just sitting there eating a block of pudding mix.
Sudden? No. It’s always been very, very bad.
I don’t understand, what are you trying to say? :(
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.
Man this pisses me off to no extent. I put in a lot of effort into my work. Craft very detailed emails with everything spelled out, clear as day. Only to find out time and time again no one is reading my emails because they’re too long, yet they have questions about certain aspects of the project… THAT WERE ANSWERED IN MY EMAIL.
Axios has this formalized in a style they call “Smart Brevity”. I’ve started using it in some cases and it really does improve readability. Their own use case is breaking down complex and evolving news stories, but it applies to a lot of situations.
