This is also due to a distinct drop in reader comprehension. One of the largest parts of reading comprehension is being able to infer the intended audience for a particular piece of work. You should be able to read a news article, see a commercial, read a comment, etc and infer who it is aimed at. And the answer is usually not “me”.
People have become accustomed to having an algorithm that is laser focused to their specific preferences. So when they see something that’s not aimed at them it is jarring, and they tend to get upset. Instead of going “oh this clearly isn’t aimed at me, but I can infer who the intended audience is. I’ll move on.” Now they tend to jump on the creator with whataboutisms and imagined offense.
Maybe you make a post about the proper way to throw a football. You’ll inevitably get a few “bUT wHaT abOUt WhEElcHaiR uSerS, I hAvE a baD ShoUlDer aNd cAn’T thROW SO wHaT abOUt me, I haTE FoOtbAll wHY aRe yOU SHowiNG tHIs to Me, etc” types of comments. It’s because those users have lost the ability to infer an intended audience. They automatically assume everything they see is aimed at them, and get offended when it isn’t.
I have even noticed this started to affect the way media is written. Creators tend to make it a point to outright state their intended audience, just to avoid the negative comments.
This is a very interesting idea. It would certainly explain why people seem to constantly “infill” everything everone says with whatever gets them the most angry - the algo feeds them ragebait, so that’s what they see.
I’m a professional writer for a newspaper. It’s something we inherently think about every time we put pen to paper as it were.
Usually we have a good insight as to our physical paper’s readership. They tend to be older, well-educated, decent reading comprehension, etc. But since our paper is also available online, we also have to factor in the wider readership when the articles get shared. That’s where it gets tricky.
As you’ve pointed out, reading comprehension has sharply declined in general. I love the internet, but there’s no denying it also had some bad consequences with regards to people’s attention spans. The ‘too long, didn’t read mindset.
Because of that, we tend to front-load articles with the needed info and make paragraphs easy to skim. We also tend to write shorter and with less ‘fancy words’. Basically, I need to dumb things down to about 70 percent of my normal writing level. And even with that, you get dumb questions and comments by people who clearly didn’t bother to properly read and understand the first paragraph, much less the rest of the article.
It can certainly be frustrating. People used to read things to learn and get smarter. Now they just want their biases confirmed in as few words as possible.
I’m wondering how many people skipped your comment because it was too long.
I’ve had people go “I don’t have time to read 3 paragraphs!”, as though that’s some kind of argument against the point I’m trying to make. Attention spans are down.
I tend to front-load my comments as much as possible, to try and avoid just that. Make the main point ASAP. But even then, there’s only so much you can do without sounding messy.
For instance, I front-loaded the part about reader comprehension. All of the “why” is in later paragraphs. But even if they only read the first few sentences, they’ll at least get my overall point.
It does make nuanced discussion impossible though. I work in a pretty specialized field (professional audio) with lots of snake oil myths about what will or won’t make your system sound better. There have been several times that I have seen people parroting this snake oil type stuff as if it is genuine advice. And often, this advice happens because the person only has a surface-level understanding of how audio works. Something sounds plausible, (and they don’t understand the underlying principles that would disprove it,) so they end up perpetuating the myth. So a lot of discussions boil down to “well kind of but not really” and people won’t bother reading anything past the “well kind of” part.
This is my first exposure to this idea and it’s quite compelling. Couple that with the perceived tone being argumentative instead of inquisitive or ignorant and that’s a recipe for disaster.
The fact the algorithms only care about engagement, positive or negative, means rage bait takes over too so that doesn’t help the perception that a question is actually an attack.
I first heard about it due to my buddy (a high school English teacher) complaining about how his incoming students were incredibly far behind in basic reading comprehension skills. We ended up having a pretty long talk about it, and he mentioned that all of his colleagues have noticed the same thing.
I did some digging, and discovered that language teachers everywhere have basically been lamenting the fact that the upcoming generation just straight up doesn’t know how to interpret media when it falls outside of their personal algorithms. I ended up talking with another buddy of mine (a writer for a magazine) and he mentioned that they have started needing to change the way they write, because people have simply lost the ability to comprehend what they read. Skimming the first one or two paragraphs is the new norm, even for in-depth news articles. So they have to load as much content into the early paragraphs as possible.
This is also due to a distinct drop in reader comprehension. One of the largest parts of reading comprehension is being able to infer the intended audience for a particular piece of work. You should be able to read a news article, see a commercial, read a comment, etc and infer who it is aimed at. And the answer is usually not “me”.
People have become accustomed to having an algorithm that is laser focused to their specific preferences. So when they see something that’s not aimed at them it is jarring, and they tend to get upset. Instead of going “oh this clearly isn’t aimed at me, but I can infer who the intended audience is. I’ll move on.” Now they tend to jump on the creator with whataboutisms and imagined offense.
Maybe you make a post about the proper way to throw a football. You’ll inevitably get a few “bUT wHaT abOUt WhEElcHaiR uSerS, I hAvE a baD ShoUlDer aNd cAn’T thROW SO wHaT abOUt me, I haTE FoOtbAll wHY aRe yOU SHowiNG tHIs to Me, etc” types of comments. It’s because those users have lost the ability to infer an intended audience. They automatically assume everything they see is aimed at them, and get offended when it isn’t.
I have even noticed this started to affect the way media is written. Creators tend to make it a point to outright state their intended audience, just to avoid the negative comments.
Hmm good point. Never realized there could be connection with hyper curated algorithm and main character syndrome.
Now I kinda understand why “just look away” makes no sense to these kinda people.
This is a very interesting idea. It would certainly explain why people seem to constantly “infill” everything everone says with whatever gets them the most angry - the algo feeds them ragebait, so that’s what they see.
I’m a professional writer for a newspaper. It’s something we inherently think about every time we put pen to paper as it were.
Usually we have a good insight as to our physical paper’s readership. They tend to be older, well-educated, decent reading comprehension, etc. But since our paper is also available online, we also have to factor in the wider readership when the articles get shared. That’s where it gets tricky.
As you’ve pointed out, reading comprehension has sharply declined in general. I love the internet, but there’s no denying it also had some bad consequences with regards to people’s attention spans. The ‘too long, didn’t read mindset.
Because of that, we tend to front-load articles with the needed info and make paragraphs easy to skim. We also tend to write shorter and with less ‘fancy words’. Basically, I need to dumb things down to about 70 percent of my normal writing level. And even with that, you get dumb questions and comments by people who clearly didn’t bother to properly read and understand the first paragraph, much less the rest of the article.
It can certainly be frustrating. People used to read things to learn and get smarter. Now they just want their biases confirmed in as few words as possible.
I’m wondering how many people skipped your comment because it was too long.
I’ve had people go “I don’t have time to read 3 paragraphs!”, as though that’s some kind of argument against the point I’m trying to make. Attention spans are down.
I tend to front-load my comments as much as possible, to try and avoid just that. Make the main point ASAP. But even then, there’s only so much you can do without sounding messy.
For instance, I front-loaded the part about reader comprehension. All of the “why” is in later paragraphs. But even if they only read the first few sentences, they’ll at least get my overall point.
It does make nuanced discussion impossible though. I work in a pretty specialized field (professional audio) with lots of snake oil myths about what will or won’t make your system sound better. There have been several times that I have seen people parroting this snake oil type stuff as if it is genuine advice. And often, this advice happens because the person only has a surface-level understanding of how audio works. Something sounds plausible, (and they don’t understand the underlying principles that would disprove it,) so they end up perpetuating the myth. So a lot of discussions boil down to “well kind of but not really” and people won’t bother reading anything past the “well kind of” part.
“If it doesn’t apply, let it fly.” “Hit dogs holler.”
This is my first exposure to this idea and it’s quite compelling. Couple that with the perceived tone being argumentative instead of inquisitive or ignorant and that’s a recipe for disaster.
The fact the algorithms only care about engagement, positive or negative, means rage bait takes over too so that doesn’t help the perception that a question is actually an attack.
I first heard about it due to my buddy (a high school English teacher) complaining about how his incoming students were incredibly far behind in basic reading comprehension skills. We ended up having a pretty long talk about it, and he mentioned that all of his colleagues have noticed the same thing.
I did some digging, and discovered that language teachers everywhere have basically been lamenting the fact that the upcoming generation just straight up doesn’t know how to interpret media when it falls outside of their personal algorithms. I ended up talking with another buddy of mine (a writer for a magazine) and he mentioned that they have started needing to change the way they write, because people have simply lost the ability to comprehend what they read. Skimming the first one or two paragraphs is the new norm, even for in-depth news articles. So they have to load as much content into the early paragraphs as possible.