[snerbles]

> read the Wikipedia plot synopsis, say "ah what a great story that was, so glad I read it"

I have unironically done this for movies/books/games/media I've elected not to consume but otherwise desired to know for cultural context.

[floren]

I'll cop to the same thing, but neither you nor I would claim that knowing "rosebud was the sled" is equivalent to watching Citizen Kane.

[medvezhenok]

One thing that's missed is that much of the impact of the writing depends on the reader's capacity to grok it.

Many people read at the superficial level, and the takeaway from a book for them might be equivalent to the spark-notes version. Even between readers who are level matched, there are vast individual differences. Some readers can be aphantasiacs (no ability to visualize) and others - hyperphantasiacs. A person can have vastly different experiences from reading the same text depending on how developed their visualization skills (cognitive versus emotional, visual vs abstract, etc).