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.
What?
Fuck this is actually funny
Tbh, that was my response lol
I understand what you mean, but I haven’t noticed people not comprehending basic information. Can you give examples?
As a lot of people have already pointed out it’s mostly prevalent in arguments. Like a comment I made on a video about lane splitting on motorcycles.
The video was explaining why lane splitting is safer for cyclists and shows a cyclist get rear ended at a stop light. The title of the video was “Most people don’t understand lane splitting”
I simply commented “No we understand this specific scenario but to continue driving between stopped traffic is completely different”
All the replies to my comment were about lane splitting at a stop sign/stop light. The very thing I specifically stated I understood.
Well that’s sort of a bad example. What your explaining are two separate things. Filtering (moving to the front of a stopped lane by moving between vehicles stopped or by stopping) and lane splitting (moving between lanes at highway speeds).
Iirc filtering is safer but splitting is like way more dangerous but I’d have to look it up.
Legally they are the same.
Depends on where you say legally.
I have to say I find it ironic that all replies here are about the lane splitting too.
lane splitting is legal on the highways in california, I don’t know about on all streets. it sounds like maybe you shouldn’t do it on streets where you’d run into stop lights, or generally anything more complex than the interstate. personally I’m always careful whenever I see a motorcycle.
why is lane splitting safer? intuition suggests that treating a motorcycle like a car and giving them the same space or more would be safer, especially since you could predict what they’d do better since it would be the same as a car
When all the cars have stopped, that’s the safest time for the cyclist to slither up to the front of the line. At 20 mph on a crowded freeway, it’s a little more dangerous but legal in CA as long as they don’t go more than (iirc) 20 mph faster than traffic. At 65 mph on a still-crowded LA freeway, having a bike race past you doing 90 can be disconcerting to say the least. At least you know if they cause an accident and you’re injured, they’ll probably be your organ donor.
One reason I’ve been told lane splitting is allowed is because motorcycles are air cooled and stopping for prolonged periods in a traffic jam can be bad for the engine. Also by allowing motorcycles to move forward it frees up space for more cars, though that seems like a small impact.
I’m not trying to be rude but did you understand what I said? Lane splitting at a stop light/stop sign/stopped traffic is safer for the cyclist. Lane splitting and continuing to drive between the lanes of stopped traffic is not.
I agree with those replies, your message is not clear.
Good evening Ozzy !
when hits you with the ozzy stare 😬
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.
to use more simple sentence structure.
to use simpler sentence structure.
use smol words
Why use many word, when few word do trick?
use less word
word less.
Brief
One of my favorite Redditisms was picking out incredibly obvious sarcasm with massive downvotes. Bonus points if replied to with a huge angry essay.
And due to the voting patterns, I learned to be suspicious of my own comments that were highly upvoted. I started to see it as a bad smell. My best work was the controversial stuff.
My biggest upvotes were always jokes. If I tried to make reasonable points about anything, or god forbid, shared my experiences - I was downvoted into oblivion and people would actively comment to tell me how much they hated my way of thinking or just repeat to me that I need therapy as if going to therapy harder was some how the answer.
Excuse me but you are interrupting my dopamine flow. Your response appears to be neither a meme, rage bait, justice boner, nor even a pun. I hope you learn from this experience and do better.
“do better” is my person ragebait.
So many people where I live over use that shit.
If I tried to make reasonable points about anything, or god forbid, shared my experiences - I was downvoted into oblivion
Introducing quotes from authors that were related to the subject would really show how people were locked in the context of media immediacy, the environment. Links to outside citations would almost always generate replies from people who obviously did not study the citation and just wanted to respond back.
It used to be something people said ‘out loud’ about people not reading links and just commenting… then it just became normalized.
oh yeah the good ol’ [citation needed] meme even though they were already given a damn citation.
Such an obvious sign of someone just responding to respond. Relies on repeating memes as a crutch and can’t have a real discussion about a a topic.
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!
IMO, many (most?) people quite simply don’t think about things. They just have some dogmatic positions they’ve taken for some reasons, and they regurgitate them as necessary.
And that’s a lot of the reason that they so often and so brazenly misinterpret things other people say. They’re not actually reading to comprehend - they’re reading just to get enough of a feel for it to classify it, so that they’ll have some (potentially quite wrong) idea of which bit of rhetoric to trot out in response to it.
You are not wrong. Reading what you typed, I can’t help but think about the people who have spent so much time defending their self-serving opinions that they can no longer have any reaction other than to start arguing. My ex had a bad case of bi-polar. She was really a great person, but any time someone disagreed with her (or even if she thought they were disagreeing) a switch would flip and she would rage at you until she thought she had won. Even walking away wasn’t enough because then she wanted an admission that she was right. Funny thing was that after that had passed and she calmed down, you could talk to her rationally and she could see your point, but it simply wasn’t worth the effort.
Keep up the high-quality discussions and ignore everyone who doesn’t make the effort to keep up!
Yup. This is the only way. Those people are just trying to get responses. The only way to get win is to not give them what they want.
Honestly I feel like the only reason they do this is to bring people down to their level so they can feel like they are somehow smarter, because that’s a lot less effort than actually learning about the subject. Ah well.
It’s true. It’s a way for them to feel like they are better than someone else.
There’s a difference between simplifying a message and writing at a lower reading comprehension level. I think a lot of accidental incomprehension might just be caused by the reader not being very good at reading English.
In my country (and I think the whole EU), government agencies have to write at a B1 level to make sure official publications and letters are accessible to all citizens. I think that’s a good rule of thumb for online conversations as well. (However, writing pleasant prose at B1 level is a whole different beast. Generally, they’re not very good at it.)
Good point on catering to those who speak other languages, I hadn’t considered that.
So what does a B1 level equate to? I’m assuming it’s lower than college level, probably lower that a high school level? Are we talking like middle school, grade school, or something else?
Sorry, didn’t get a notification.
Yeah, it’s basically at high school level, so most of the adult population should be able to understand it without much issue.
No worries, thanks for the update. Yeah that makes sense, we would hope that most people make it through high school, although the way they’re going in some parts of the US by gutting the education and white-washing history (they’re actually trying to teach kids that slavery was a GOOD thing!!!) I feel like in a few years a high school education here is going to be meaningless.
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.
there’s also the problem of people not reading it in the first place, and the problem of people intentionally misinterpreting what you say in bad faith. those aren’t literacy issues
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.
Unmarked sarcasm via text is just always a bad idea. People don’t realize how much body language, tone, and to an extent history with the person, goes into recognizing sarcasm IRL.
When you remove all of that context… it’s often just an extremely dumb statement, and I for one am just going to take you at your word, because too many people really do mean whatever it is you just said.
It’s also terrible because you get a comment like “I guess the earth really is flat” which maybe 99% of people take as sarcasm, and then the one flat earther or borderline flat earther comes along and goes “wow, lots of people are getting behind this movement!”
Yeah, I feel the sarcasm thing. I used to use a lot more absurdist humor but over the past decade it’s become increasingly pointless and even counterproductive as Poe’s law moves along with the Overton window of stupidity. Stuff that used be recognized as obvious satire before gets taken much too seriously far too often now.
You should use emojis to convey sarcasm 🙄
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.
I disagree. It’s a very good game, but I think Donkey Kong is the best game ever.
But does that make us morally superior?
Fuckin cheese squeeze makes my eyeballs itch
You say that, but in her defense she was a prostitute.
Hey don’t bring George Bush into this!
but then I would be all out of fish
At work if I ask 2 questions in an email I’m guaranteed 1 or 0 answers.
My boss is horrible about this. He also doesn’t organize his inbox in conversation view so he’ll randomly pop up in different parts of an ongoing thread and can’t keep track of what people are talking about.
OMG fr. I’ll ask my boss, shall we do option 1,or option 2? and he’ll write back, Yes.
Actchually, that is a perfectly correct response according to propositional calculus.
One or the other? Yes, one or the other.
That’s not just reading comprehension. People are always answering my questions with unapplicable answers.
“Is it on the left or the right?”
“It’s 67, the one with grass in the yard.”
Just answer the damn question rather than providing me other information you decide would be more helpful!
Maybe because there’s 10 kinds of email replies at your workplace
Hah!
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
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.
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.
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.
Even people on our fucking helpdesk write up tickets like that.
“Caller can’t log in”
Okay what are they logging in too? What creds are they using? Are they getting an error message? what is it? WHY AM I HAVING TO FOLLOW UP WITH YOU TO ASK THESE QUESTIONS YOU STUPID FUCK.
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.
(Kent Brockman voice) JUST TAKE A SCREENSHOT, PEOPLE!!
Aside from reading comprehension, it seems as though people absolutely lack the ability to problem solve. Head scratching is as far as many will go. I can’t count how many times I’ve found inefficient, tedious, or straight up broken systems or out of date info in my office and when I ask people if they’ve ever contacted IT about it or tried to figure it out they just say “Eh, nah, I just leave it and it works itself out.” No. My guy, you’re just doing it wrong/taking an extra 15 minutes to do everything you’re doing because of the workarounds.
I feel called out 😅
“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
I feel this.
What is the actual point of publishing knowledge bases and documentation if nobody reads them?
Well some people read it. Just noz everyone.
Show me these people you speak of.
Well I… ok, I’ve read like 5 pages of doxumentation in my entire life, but at least it’s not nothing.
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.
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.
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.
I think part of the problem is that so many people nowadays are conditioned to consuming information in bite-sized chunks (eg. tweets), they now just focus on key words and assume they have all the context they need.
It’s akin to the problem I see with technical support help desks, be it the IT support team at work, or my ISP or mobile provider.
They read a few words and parrot the nearest response from their knowledge base/AI bot, and call it a job well done.
I’m literally dealing with this at work right now. Three times on my ticket I’ve been told to undertake a series of steps, which I not only stated I’d done when I first opened the ticket, but I also attached screenshots proving it.
Fucking frustrating.
That may also just be a resources issue. Too many tickets, not enough reps, and the expectation of low average handle time are not exactly conducive to encouraging those deeper dives.
Yeah, I assume when support people do not understand what I am telling them that they cannot afford to understand what I am telling them. Either they need to solve my problem in 30 seconds with a stock response, or else they need to get rid of me as fast as possible so they can deliver more stock responses to other people.
they now just focus on key words and assume they have all the context they need.
In other words, any text around the keywords is supposed to just be a decoration. Because the purpose of a comment is to choose sides in their greens-vs-reds game, you are not supposed to convey any thoughts, what a thought even is again?..
Had this happen to me taking a marketing course (bleh) the other day.
“The word count is 2000 but I’m close to done with a lot less than that, do I need to have ~2000 words?”
“Hi! You can go 10% over the word count. Thanks! :)”
They also had a glaring issue in a quiz that apparently 500 people over the span of two years overlooked. Blows the mind.
I’ve been running into this so much with paid customer support agents; it’s been driving me mad.
And the amount of times no matter what you say they just respond “have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling?” 🤬
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.
People have been speaking out a long time about the shit education system we use in most countries (of the West at least), and pretty much nothing has been done, it’s still the same assembly line “education” that pumps out kids that are good at memorizing and solving problems without knowing what they are actually solving.
Social media has also had a terrible effect for people’s attention spans and analytical capabilities, and no meaningful restrictions have been put in place.
People have stopped reading books and long/difficult content, because there are much easier alternatives nowadays that their brain naturally goes for due to instant gratification. Also because of having less time and energy to devote after working and being stressed out for the most of the day.
The future is scary indeed, but it’s important to note that we led ourselves here by constantly shoving our problems under the rug.
To that last point - it’s not like we were all collectively consulted and had these issues put to a vote, so to speak. Many of these choices were made without our input, and things were just placed in front of us.
Yes unfortunately, what I mean by ‘we’ is of course the ruling classes and the rich who don’t give a flying fuck if they’re the only ones left on the planet. Sadly for them they will soon realize that they need other people too in order to survive but it will be already too late then.
In that case, we’re in agreement
Lol I remember taking a state mandated reading comprehension test. The text was literally directions on how to assemble a grill.
Well, I mean it comes down to a matter of costs… If you can’t afford it, you really shouldn’t buy it.
Yeah I mean personally I prefer it on the left but completely
Sometimes kids have to learn self-reliance though, you can’t always do everything for them, as tempting as that might be.
Mitochondria is the power house of the cell.
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.
Yes. For years now. And I am horrified.
I am a teacher and I’ve had students who could not find the article about lions from the animal encyclopedia I handed to them. And when I helped them to find it, one started crying, one tried to read it (stopped after a minute or so) and one asked “Isn’t there some lion video we could watch instead?”. It was two pages with a lot of pictures. But it was too much for these 5th graders.
Reading proper books has become almost impossible to kids because their attention span is almost non-existent with written material.
We’ve tried to add more emphasis on basic reading skills in the early grades for some time now, but it seems to have very little effect.
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.
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.
