[mezzie2]

A large portion of people are genuinely or functionally illiterate. Like we're supposed to pitch general material at ~ a 5th or 6th grade reading level because that's the average. Half of people can't even do that. I have daily encounters with adults who work corporate jobs/own businesses who can't interpret compound sentences. I can't use conjunctions or sentences with multiple clauses, etc.

This is going to get worse: the elementary and middle school teachers/education professionals have been screaming at us that there's a major issue with reading in the upcoming generation due to a change in how many schools taught reading for several years that turned out to be a horrible idea. Add the pandemic on top of it (because losing a year of learning is a big deal at the elementary school level), and now we have a generation who can't read.

I think we're going back to having a literate class and a non-literate class, honestly. I can't see us putting in the time, money, and effort to fix the situation. Instead we'll just change formats (and probably have a bunch of middle men pop up that turn text into video with AI for the illiterate).

We're never going to see general purpose text again as a culture. Text will only be primary in certain audiences. (Lawyers, software people, librarians, etc.)

[vundercind]

Can confirm, English teacher friends report that reading ability is dropping with each year and is now so bad they’re concerned about the survival of literate society, period. “Advanced” kids struggle with books that were considered normal for their age in the 80s or 90s. Compound sentences are exactly part of the problem these teachers have highlighted—the kids can’t keep enough context in their heads to track what’s going on through multiple clauses, even the simple sort that were common in writing for kids within the last 50 years.

[mezzie2]

Right, it's a perfect storm.

And I really do think we'll just give up on the idea of literacy being required in society as that generation grows up. Fixing it would be too much work and cost too much money/time, and would be incompatible with current American social values. I also genuinely do think a lot of Boomers and Gen X have mild lead poisoning, so our elders are probably also going to struggle more the older they get. (Who knows, maybe the microplastics are also eating the contextual reasoning parts of our brains and we'll have the same problem.) So if 80% of society isn't functionally literate, functional literacy will go away as an information requirement for the average citizen.

I wouldn't be shocked if literacy becomes a college level skill that's only taught until students stop having to consult sources/teaching materials from before the 2010s/2020s. There will be a few exceptions, like the historians, but eventually literacy is going to be seen as an eccentric skill that used to be a sign of culture but is no longer relevant. (As an example, my basic knowledge of Latin would be very impressive in a lot of historical periods but in 2024 America it's just a weird personal quirk.)

[autoexec]

> also genuinely do think a lot of Boomers and Gen X have mild lead poisoning

So do countless children and adults today. It's in a lot of people's water.

[mezzie2]

Fair point.

I used to live in Flint. Maybe that's why I didn't remember to mention it...

[autoexec]

It's happening all over the country. https://www.nrdc.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium_100/p...

I have some family in Chicago who haven't been able to drink their tap water for years. The city will get around to replacing the pipes eventually, but it's a mess. (https://www.chicagotribune.com/2024/05/27/chicago-lead-pipes...)

[keiferski]

Well, one trend that seems to be going in the opposite direction is how many videos / shorts now have subtitles and text by default. So that will still presumably have an effect on literacy.

Even then, I think readers overestimate the amount of people that are/were actually reading serious literature. Even when literacy and books were at their peaks, most people were reading pulp novels and other low-end books.

So while I don't really disagree with you per se, I do think it's unnecessarily pessimistic, and it's a better approach to try and approach this new media format with fresh eyes and optimism.

[mezzie2]

I like how much more prevalent subtitles are now, but I don't think that most people are going to read them. People are astoundingly good at ignoring things they've decided are irrelevant.

> Even then, I think readers overestimate the amount of people that are/were actually reading serious literature. Even when literacy and books were at their peaks, most people were reading pulp novels and other low-end books.

Oh, absolutely. People into 'serious' literature have always been a minority and definitely never close to the average person's experience with the written word. I think what we're seeing is more that less literacy is needed to be functional in society. The average PMC/middle class person in the 1970s needed a higher rate of literacy than they do in 2024 because video used to be a lot more expensive to create and disseminate: I work in corporate training and the videos we create now would have been handbooks or factsheets in the 70s/80s. For domain specific or technical knowledge, the written word was basically the only option for several decades (aside from like...audio tapes, which have their own issues). Housewives used to have to grab different flyers from grocery stores and price compare, everyone had to be able to read maps (with no spoken directions), mechanics had to consult the Giant Car Books, etc. This did present a lot of problems for people who didn't or couldn't reach that level of literacy for whatever reason, and I'm glad those people (e.g. those with dyslexia, those who were forced to read in a language they didn't know well, etc.) have better options now.

> So while I don't really disagree with you per se, I do think it's unnecessarily pessimistic, and it's a better approach to try and approach this new media format with fresh eyes and optimism.

I'm neutral on the shift from a societal perspective. My main point of judgement is more 'our changes are happening because we lack the political will to address issues' rather than the changes themselves. For example, if we want to commit to video being the default form, we should have video literacy classes in the same way we did written literacy: People should know basic video creation techniques, be able to determine what makes a video more/less trustworthy, how to effectively navigate through a video, how to use videos as reference pieces, etc. I'm displeased because the post-literate world is coming about due to a failure of education and governance rather than due to the positives of video. But objectively, the shift from the written word to video isn't any worse than the shift from oral tradition to the written word. It also makes sense since humans learn by imitation and are very visual animals.

I'm personally pessimistic, but that's because I'm visually impaired, so everything being primarily focused on inalterable visuals is a loss for me (whereas an article I can make big text/zoom/print/whatever for accessibility purposes), but I've also been sad about that since Instagram started and made everything about pictures. Video is an improvement there: At least I can follow videos by sound.

[selimthegrim]

Maybe rebuses will come back in a big way.

OT: you are the same mezzie as mezzie was?

[mezzie2]

I am!

I chop my accounts every once in a while so I don't get too attached to them/so my karma doesn't influence how people receive my ideas.

I also take breaks for a few months from each social site fairly regularly to ensure that they're not slowly boiling my brain into brain rot.