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 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.
Thanks for putting it in words so well. These days I have to default to ‘no thanks’ for most information arriving in front of my face or I get quickly overwhelmed or distracted. Re-learning how to find the important stuff in an ever-changing media landscape takes up quite some energy, especially as the brain gets older.
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.
Me too:) do you have any recommendations off the top of your head? No genre preference, just your favorite book or video essay?
