Asklemmy

Hmm. In the country where I'm from, absolutely, that's the case. The average level of IQ there is incredibly low, so it's not really surprising.

Generally on the internet? Well... kinda yes. Of course, I know there are many cases thanks to social media garbage that are making people unwilling to read and use their brains to think, thus degrading their abilities to pay attention for a longer time, which would be required for reading even just a moderate length of text. Yes, I'm fully aware of that, and that's a tragedy for today's generation.

So why "kinda"? Apparently I tend to follow topics that actually require a certain level of intelligence, and the communities there usually have adequate reading and comprehension skills.

But yes, long story short, that's the trend unfortunately. People just read less and less, and with that, their skills are degrading as well.

Yes, every time someone disagrees with me they are clearly demonstrating how bad reading comprehension has become in the modern day. It's so hard being as smart and correct all the time as I am.

I can explain. I'm dyslexic and my particular form negatively impacts reading comprehension (it made my masters thesis next to impossible). But whilst I have the reading ability of an 8 year old, I lay a mean pipe and have many children. Essentially dyslexics are just out breeding you. Soz

No, this talk of "poor reading comprehension" is always such nonsense. Arrogant, defensive nonsense. It's always peddled by people who get huffy when someone disagrees with them. Instead of considering anything wrong about what they said, they conclude that what they wrote is perfectly fine and the issue must be with whoever is criticizing them. And of course the issue is their intelligence. "Surely, no one would disagree with me if they actually understood what I meant! Those heathens ought read a book!"

When people clamour on about reading comp, I always just wonder: How could anyone be that naive? To think that human communication, stripped of the face, the voice, the presence, the context, the body language, reduced to text on a glowing plastic pop tart, would be so straightforward? How do you not see the myriad ways a single line can be interpreted? How do you not recognize the influence of all these different backgrounds, cultures, and experiences can have on how a single line is taken?

How the fuck can you reduce all of the nuance in language and text down to, "Oh, I guess you're just an idiot"? And how many of you are eager to jump on things I say here, such as that word choice "idiot"? As if to say "That word wasn't in the OP, you don't get it!", as if it wasn't a deliberate choiced based on my interpretation of OPs claim, and as if that doesn't just demonstrate the ambiguity of text? Or whatever other protests you'd make - I can think of a dozen things I wrote already that could be misread. I trust you to get it, and I truat you to ask if you don't.

This shit is never simple! Stop reducing it to "reading comprehension" and deflecting all culpability from yourself while simultaneously disparaging others' perspectives. If language were that straightforward, it wouldn't be complex enough to handle human experience.

I think this may also have to do with a large number of people who have English as a second (or third or fourth) language on the internet. I think when producing online articles or (linking to them) we should keep this in mind.

I’ve noticed a very sharp increase in people just straight up not comprehending what they’re reading.

what's you sample size, where are you sampling from, and what are your methods?

I've noticed a lot of people using words in sentences that make zero sense. If they can fit any if the "ists" or "isms" in it they will even if it has nothing to do with what they are talking about. If you call them out for it they call you a dumbass. I just proceed to let them eat their own words with a simple dictionary link. I especially notice this in those "woke" people and lgbtq people. (Not hating on your sexuality you guys just can't use the correct words 90% of the time)

5G. They take your data. It penetrates brain tissue. You read and understand, but don't see it, because they take the understanding. To train their models. Reading is free, so you are the product.