Believe it or not, many of them probably actually lack basic reading comprehension. One year in middle school, our English teacher would have us sometimes grade each other's work. I almost always got an A, but the two other students in my class who I graded got C's because their spelling was pretty terrible and their use of punctuation was almost random. Like how sometimes you find a comment on CZcams where every word is capitalized and has commas randomly scattered throughout.
@@OtakuUnitedStudioYou don't know how many times I've posted something in the clearest possible terms and someone replies blatantly misunderstanding it, EVEN IF I add in context making it clear that is not what I'm referring to.
@@clouds-rb9xt You mean like how they'll read the first three words of a sentence and ignore the rest despite it completely changing the context? "I hate cheese being misused like that." "HOW CAN YOU HATE CHEESE"
As a russian who learnt English via mmorpgs when I was a kid, I find it amusing to see a bunch of people who only speak one language being so proud of not being able to speak that sole language.
@@themc3140 Thanks. It's way easier to pick up little cues of how the language works when you're a kid, so it just happened naturally. When I tried to seriously learn a language as an adult, it's been tough. Been wondering how I even learnt English so well.
I agree with you. You have it a bit more difficult since Russian doesn't even use the same script as English...... While my native tongue.... Swedish is still relatively closely related to English. But I talk to a particular Canadian and I'm beating them in English comprehension.... That shouldn't be possible considering their only language is English while it's my second language.
Do you remember that scene from Matilda in which she asks Harry about the library. "A book? What do you want a book for?" "To read," she replies. "To read? Why would you want to read when you got the television set sitting right in front of you? There's nothing you can get from a book that you can't get from a television faster." And that last part stuck with me as what I know the average American thinks now. A shame, that we as a society (as cliche as I sound) prefer comfortable ignorance over knowledge and wisdom.
@@j.2512 I've been reading Dorothy Must Die. A chad internet age person who still reads book (however, digitally, but not audio book). What have you been reading?
What's more infuriating is that every sector of society thinks X/Twitter is their way to communicate with the world, leaving actual real world communication to wither on the vine and die.
2% of twitter users make up 80% of the discussions. Its literally a worthless and botted astroturfed eco chamber that doesn't matter. Most people there aren't even people, its just bots
You aren't any different from them. Be conscious of what you're doing and stop writing in this youtube like-farmer template. You got your 50~ updoots but gave nothing to the conversation.
I actually checked his account to find what you were referring to & found the original tweet that caused all the confusion & it blew my mind. I tried to give the benefit of the doubt & assumed that, I don't know, maybe there was some sort of genuinely hard to understand thing about the tweet that was genuinely innocent, but it was the most simple tweet you could possibly think of. How people could possibly not understand that tweet & said "What?" "...What?" "what?" "Wut?" like a bunch of gold-fish makes me feel depressed. It actually makes me feel ill. Wtf.
When I was in college from 2017-2021, I was floored by how incapable most of my classmates were at basic grammar and writing. It made group projects absolute hell.
I hope I don't experience that. I hope I find people who are intelligent, hearty, and literate. I really hope I don't encounter this, but as of the current educational standards of the the US, I highly doubt that will happen.
I graduated with an engineering degree in 2012. I started the Master's program right after, and became a "teaching assistant". I was grading papers from sophomores and juniors in engineering classes. They were American - born, native English speakers, and they lacked the most basic abilities with grammar and spelling. I'm talking about misspellings that Word underlines, and they were too stupid / lazy to right-click and select the correct spellings. Anyway, I withdrew from the Master's program and got a job instead.
The biggest shock is that once you delete twitter, alot of "big" news stories suddenly disappear from existence because they really were never big to begin with.
The average person is not meant to give as many fucks as we're expected to today. Trying to do so will destroy your mental health. It's not worth it, especially when it's autistically screeching into the ether for a bunch of people who will forget about you in 5 minutes once you leave. 0/10 would not recommend.
@@SkylineFTW97 Thanks, seriously, it's too easy to get consumed by brainworms. But so many things just shouldn't matter, no need to "carry the weight of the world on your shoulders" no matter how pretentious, arrogant, or stupid one would be for trying. Sadly it's not hard to be that way when caring about shit happening is associated with being a better person in not a few circles
this is how I felt when I stopped using FB. It felt like a weight off of my chest. I still get major news, but it's through a very limited lens, and I realize it only matters so much to me.
It's a twitter thing too bcz it's a platform that incentives especially short quippy posts, so anything that is longer than 3 sentences becomes a monumental and difficult task for the average user on that hell site to read.
It was funny at first because there really are people who just blabber on about nothing for far too long, but it's seriously devolved into people being unwilling to read two sentences.
Very true, however trying to read something with next to no punctuation whatsoever and making any sense out of it is next to impossible. It doesn't matter if you've made the best comment of all time; no punctuation just means I'm never going to engage with your word salad.
I remember feeling so disappointed when the “I ain’t reading all that 💀” phrase started popping up everywhere. Not even as a jokey meme, but genuinely as annoyance towards 5 sentences.
Yes,I remember having a debate a long time ago on Facebook with someone on a discussion about historical figures and they used that line when I discussed and broke down to analyze why he was wrong. And when i use particular intelligent words that are not used much today,his response in a meme to silence me was "Stop humping the thesaurus!". Even speaking intelligently and analytical has become a meme. People do not want to become educated.
The root cause is a societal depression with no hope for the future, combined with acceptance of chasing short-term dopamine. The progressiveism of the 1950s was that every new year would inherently be better, and therefore something to look forward to. Now, we all think everything is going to fall apart at any moment. "why should I worry about 20 years from now, when society probably won't even be around? I should just focus on being happy today" Consciously or subconsciously, that's what's driving a lot of people.
i definitely have fallen into that idea. i don’t know what will happen in the future in regard to american society, but i don’t feel it will be good and i’ve nearly given up on trying to achieve any material wealth or status in the meantime.
@@RwandaBob forget wealth or status. I am a multi millionaire. That doesn't help you make friends you can trust, or find or get a wife you can depend on to raise a family with. If she wants, she can leave with the kids and half your money and there's nothing you can do. Our society is broken.
Lower IQ means less long term planning. America has mutted itself into its youth loosing 10 average IQ points for the first time since IQ is measured. I call it cultural enrichment.
I think things will get better, but they're gonna get worse first. You can probably avoid most of the worst by just not using twitter or tiktok. Personally, I don't use anything but Facebook (which I only use because marketplace has largely taken over Craigslist as a classifieds page).
The problem was getting bad, sure, but the unnecessary panic over C*vid and subsequent lockdowns, completely annihilated what lingering threads of eagerness kids had left to learn things.
I would somewhat agree, if the school system has accounted for absolutely everything and every type of characteristic the student has, and tried to educate them best based on their traits. However, as it stands now, I disagree.
It didn’t need to do this, but that model ended up mostly preventing people above median from progressing. Being “left behind” is objective, not a subjective thing where everyone gets worked towards the mean [at best]
True but then again, parents don’t send their kids to school to learn. It’s so that they can get rid of them at school so that they can raise and take care of their kids for them.
Fahrenheit 451 does an excellent job of explaining this. This line from Captain Beatty always struck me. "Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume ... Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!” ... School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, and pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?” As we make media easier to consume, we lose the aspects that make it unique and informative. I mean, what valuable information can we extract from a Twitter post, a TikTok short, and the majority of CZcams videos (yours are an exception)? The answer is little to nothing because no effort is needed to engage with the content. I think even actions such as turning the book's pages, or even focusing your eyes on its words, make a large difference. I believe society has fallen into this trap because humans always want to follow the path of least resistance. Why spend extra work reading an insightful book, when you can turn your brain off and watch colorful but nonsensical videos (think Behind the Meme and Cocomelon)? Hopefully society can remedy this, but with how we are going, it can only get more downward from here.
It wasn't until recently that I realized how destructive trying to be productive all the time can be (always distracted, always occupied and always hoping that the future will be better). There needs to be room for intentionally inconsequential things. I think my mental state is beginning to improve as a result. Still spending too much time online/at work but I've finally started to form some early friendships and have been able to focus on reading here and there. It definitely seems to be a modern man's virus; we're bombarded with advertisements and dopamine at all times. Companies don't need you to read so the only one compelling you to do so is the inner voice (if you can still hear it at all).
@@evanever I generally agree with this. But I've also been fortunate enough to have been involved in work projects that were truly fun and interesting. I WANTED to be as involved as possible because I was invested in both the process and results. So I completely agree people should be able to take a break when they need one. But those who choose to fully invest themselves should be rewarded for their time and commitment.
There’s a high school English teacher who’s involved in my colleges theater program. I asked her about her profession, as I enjoy teaching, and if its something she could recommend. She said she wouldn’t wish teaching today on her worst enemy. Sifting through obviously ai generated essays, trying to piece together if an essay is real or not, kids barely able to spell, or put together a sentence. The worst part? It’s getting worse. Each year the kids get dumber, it’s terrifying.
The worst part is that it's been gradually introduced purposefully, to dumb people down. Powers that be just want thousands of moronic plebs who cannot have an independent thought so they will just shut up and blindly obey.
@Shadowfate93 unfortunately, they can still put the prompt in ChatGPT and then hand write what it spits out, might make it even harder on the teacher since you can't even use the AI plagarism detecting software (forgot what it's called) on the document.
I'll never forget my first year in college where a teacher asked the class if they knew what Photosynthesis was, and I was the only person to raise my hand. It's given me some odd confidence issues actually, where in I was never a super good student in grade school, but suddenly when I'm in college, showing the same slightly above average intellect and effort somehow puts me ahead of a good chunk of my peers. I'd like to believe I got smarter through my own effort, but rather it feels more like the world just got dumber and that makes a regular schmuck like me look smart in comparison.
yeah, the problem even the smartest of zoomers who get into the workforce are still laughably incompetent and its causing a lot of problems for a lot of people.
I don't think that people got dumber, I think people got less confident. Zoomers are the least confident generation I've seen. Students won't raise hands for fear of social awkwardness for example.
@@j.2512you could blame zoomers and continue the childish cycle of being bitter, blaming others and insulting them or be a temporary light to guide them. I think every generation before us had the same issues with being seen as "incompetent" by the previous generation once they headed into the workforce. If you see someone who is "incompetent" reach out and offer help or advice, if they refuse or decline, walk away! Have a good one and stay safe.
Many probably knew the answer but just didn't raise their hand, it happens all the time, I end up being the only person answering then some people think I'm really smart but its just that most can't be bothered to raise their hand
I was just about to say what @kelechi_77. I’ve been in both positions (being the only one in class in raise my hand to answer a question, and not raising my hand despite confidently knowing the answer). I assume many students can’t be bothered to, especially when the teacher or professor will answer their own question a few seconds later anyway if nobody answers. It’s just not a very engaging way to interact with 20+, 30+ students at once in my opinion.
I’ve never understood why people see illiteracy and general stupidity as virtuous or cool, but *also* look disgusted at Chris Chan, when really he’s the epitome of those negative traits they seem to like
I’d say that’s true of a lot of philosophies or ideologies. In their infancy, they’re only mentally approved of with some changes made to suit them, but it takes a few generations, usually 2-3, to see the full impact, warts and all. So the pro-illiterates like their own stupidity because it doesn’t have consequences yet; it’s just a nice ideal that they can live out with little impact. But a few generations down the road will have to reap the full effects.
What I notice most about the issues with modern classrooms is that the curriculum inherently doesn't trust students to be interested in learning; learning being the fundamental faculty of all animals, although special to humans. Children are predisposed to enjoy learning but the formulas for teaching have to meet a quota because of the classroom design: 30-40 students and only 1 teacher (and perhaps a TA). The classroom is basically unengaging because of this. Exceptional students will find it too slow and will either endure it at the expense of their sanity or abandon it. Slower students will fall behind, either because of their actual faculties or environmental problems, neither of which are effectively addressed in the special education program purgatories. Their methods condition students to expect a right or wrong answer for any given scenario when there may not be one in the real world. The concept of a classroom is especially modern and there is no evidence that it is a good way to educate populations since the standard model is dominant and has relatively no comparison which is consistent with dependent and independent variables. People used to get their education from mentors, they would live with their educated relatives to pick up trades. Or they would educate themselves with genuine autodidacticism. These methods are historically proven and have given us exceptional people including Michael Faraday (read a lot of books working as a book-binder and went to develop very valuable experiments involving electro-magnetism). Abraham Lincoln (Also read intensely and worked a lot of jobs, we know where he ended up, but more importantly we know how good he was at it for the stress of civil war). Arthur Schopenhauer (he did go to school but disagreed with the philosophical teachings and would read entirely independent of the curriculum). Stanley Kubrick (Hated high school but would go on to be a very literate photographer, chess player, and eventually the most important film-maker). Albert Einstein (He was not bad at school as many myths claim, exceptional at math and science but lacking in history and languages. He was very avoidant of his classes, teaching himself mathematics beyond his years at home. His school staff told albert at 15 that he should leave because he was destroying the respect other students would've had for the teachers. So he left high school and pursued his education while maintaining an independent philosophy on study: to learn for ideas rather than facts. He won the Nobel prize for his work on the photoelectric effect in 1905. While he didn't win one for his special and general theories of relativity, it is still a revolutionary science that remains in contention with our current understandings of quantum physics, particularly in concern with gravity). There are many more examples, And of people who are both successful and genuine, they are evident not to be limited to those who endured the standard classroom traditionally. What the youth needs in education is interest, not discipline. It is discipline which installs the Geist of antagonism toward challenging thought seen in our young generations, as you observed. What is needed is interest in a manner that does not rely on hyper-attention-grabbing colors or brands or whistles. It must be subtle, and it must respect a child's curiosity. I say all this as a 17 year old with a lifelong terrible academic record of skipping classes and avoiding all the work to doodle: reading independently and *discovering* beauty in the subjects which classrooms defame was the most important life decision I have made in my past 2 years.
Interesting; thank you for sharing. I'm 37. I have always struggled with formal schooling, but have loved learning on my own. I repaired computers to put myself through college, worked for a few years, started my own firm, and finally sold it a few years ago. But I learned so much by working on my own car, fixing my own computers, and other hobbies. I wasn't a huge fan of school, but I love learning.
Honestly, I feel I've learned much more, in both relevancy and quantity, after graduating HS. I did exceptional in HS, but it turns out math, science, writing and, hell, even history are actually fun and engaging to grasp when one can go about it at their own pace.
i never had an interest in school, as i found it too slow and boring because i could ace all my assignments outside of math without studying i’ve always been a talented writer and big history nerd, so most of my time since around 10 has been spent studying history and writing. i think people should focus on what they’re want to learn, go as far with it as they can, and try to make something of their lives with it. making students learn material they don’t care about just distracts them from the potential they have studying what they want to and care about.
@@RwandaBob I am not saying you're wrong, but I do think it's important to be well rounded. As I've gotten into my late 30s, I've gotten a lot of insight seeing how history and science come together. Especially when you look at things like social Darwinism and eugenics. Obviously people should focus on their strengths, but that doesn't mean the other stuff is unimportant.
I was homeschooled growing up, and I only went to actual high school for the last year and a half. I got very competent grades, that I used to go to college, where I graduated with a 4.0 in environmental sciences. With that, I now have a career. My parents weren't the best at teaching the material, nor were they even that strict, but they taught me something more important: to read well and to love learning. That has gotten me further in life than anything I could have actually learned through standardized tests and the standard school system. As for the television issue, the wife and I decided it was time to stop my boy from watching so much TV. He's not yet 4, and the content was heavily vetted to be actually intelligent and stimulating (though my standards are higher than wifey's), but he was still too glued to it. After a week of no TV, he suddenly became infatuated with the stars and constellations, and he learned more about them through books we have than I even knew. Stories about why the constellations are what they are. He got sick in mid-Feb, and we put the TV on again while he was sitting, bored and out of energy, on the couch. Bad move, he decided to have the same fits as before. This time, after cutting it off, he became interested in space heaters, both electric and propane, and has been drawing them and learning how they work. Boredom is the key to success, and this neverending content pool is ruining that.
True, when a child has to work for their entertainment and use their imagination it... _shudders_ builds character. Letting kids sit in a zombifed stupors all the time watching skibidi-toilet and family guy clips on tik-tok while playing subway surfers makes them braindead. Being bored can be good for them.
I’d recommend a book called Bowling Alone. It was published all the way back in the year 2000, and it’s about the decline in civic participation (voting, starting clubs, talking to neighbors, etc.) that occurred in the 1990s (in relation to previous decades), but every single trend in that book is not only still observed today: it’s gotten worse.
Funny story: I work at a gas station in the Midwest. Most people here are usually competent, but I’ve noticed the same exact trend among the youth. And I’m not talking like 12-13, I’m talking about people in high school. A group of high schoolers came into the store wanting to use the restroom. Issue is, we have it closed to the public because of plumbing issues. One of the kids reads it, and they just don’t get it. They asked me what “public restroom” meant. Not “inconvenience”, but “public restroom”. I thought they were screwing with me and I laughed it off but they were dead serious. This video made me think about that again. And honestly, it makes me want to actively read again.
Nobody knows how to read a register closed sign or “emergency exit” sign. I also always have to go help people pump gas because they can’t follow the instructions on the pump (although I’ll give them a little credit as it’s a little confusing compared to the norm) - another Midwest gas station clerk
My other problem with twitter is that everyone and *literally everyone* wants to get a leg up on you and think that they can read you like a book. They are just so engrossed in the fantasies of roasting everyone that there is no room for actual mature discussion. And the worst part. They are *everywhere.* it has gotten to the point that you can tell who has and who has not used Twitter by that alone.
I know just what you mean man! They always have this feeling of being inferior but also superior at the same time so they chose to tear others down and put themselves on a pedestal instead of engaging in meaningful conversations. This leads to people being heavily shamed for behaving the way they are expected to conduct themselves as adults, respecting others and their feelings, being able to read at a college level and being mature. It's like the twitter crowd get off on being mean causing people to avoid human interaction in fear of being insulted for being "to dumb" or "to smart". Nobody reaches out for help or reaches out to help. Their parents, skools, and society have failed them so badly that humanity will be on a steady decline for the next 40 years, maybe not to extinction but definitely less progress and function. Thanks for the comment, have a good one and stay safe!
In all my 23 years in this life, I have only now just learned that Ignorance and Apathy go hand and hand. Why go through the effort of reading a book and engage with it in any meaningful way? When you can watch a video of a guy who tells you everything that happens. Why learn a new language? When everyone speaks the same tongue. Why place effort into making your own conclusions on any subject? When someone or something can do it for you. Why resist the Old and Ugly Face of Tyranny? When submission is all too easy...
Slightly unrelated, but I’m really impressed that Emp could do all these rants while driving. I’m omw to taking my drivers test and I’m psyched out behind the wheel. Even if it’s just a straight highway I feel like I can’t relax on the road. Idk, just the anxiety talking
You’ve got this soldier, just think about the beers you get to drink once your provisional license test is out of the way. A smooth drive comes your way my friend
Like with all things, driving gets far easier with practice, especially driving on the interstate as it seems Emp's doing. Good luck on your test, you got this!
Hope you passed chief, and if you didn't then don't feel too bad about it. Now you know what it's like and you can focus on improving instead of being nervous about it.
It's something that comes with time, like riding a bike or handwriting. You really learn to do it by moving simple processes/parts from your conscious to your subconscious. This is "muscle memory" you drive through tacit understanding and then you have the conscious focused part of your brain to talk as long as you aren't responding to something sudden/unexpected. It's called subsidiary-focal integration in epistemology Also don't stress about the driving test, bc learning is that subsidiary focal integration, we overthink stuff by pulling it into the focal/conscious mind and "undoing" learning for a time, like rewriting a word over and over until you don't know if it's spelled right anymore. You can always retake the test, you got the instructor with you, it's light work and totally inconsequential if you don't pass your first time 😁
My mother taught me how to read at age 4, and it is single-handedly the greatest gift she has given me. Reading has been my doorway to so much art, science, and other people's experiences, I am infinitely grateful for it all. Merci maman!
Theres always good stuff being put out just ignore the sales/bestseller promotional angle (it's all bs if you look into it anyway anything selling a few copies can be a NYT bestseller)
It's a NYT best seller! _list is 5000 books long and it is # 4462_ "Engaging and imaginative" says Literaryophile ~ A twitter "reviewer" astroturf account run by the writer.
"Among the tribe he no longer had friends as of old. A little child may find companionship in many strange and simple creatures, but to a grown man there must be some semblance of equality in intellect as the basis for agreeable association." - Edgar Rice Burroughs, _Tarzan of The Apes_ ,1912 Brilliant book by the way, highly recommend.
As a high school teacher and a guy who is keeping up with the 2020s trends, I think the thing is that the 2020s are all about blending in, and not standing out. In the 2020s you generally need to pretend like the 2010s didn't happen. The 2010s were all about having an identity and expressing yourself as an individual, or as a part of a fandom or a culture. Conversely, the 2020s are all about not having any identity at all and feigning ignorance to anything abnormal or complicated. It's simply better to pretend to not know about something. I think the first time I really saw it was last year when I was watching one of Leafy's Rumble streams, and he pretended to not know what gay sex was. Like genuinely he was just like "Wait what? They do what? Why do you people in chat know about that? BBC? What? Why do you people know what that means? What? It's a news station also? Oh it's British? Why do you people watch British news? Who are you people? Are British people invading my chat?" And the chat immediately caught on. By acting knowledgeable about gay sex, they look gay, and Leafy, comparatively, looked super straight. It's just the 2020s being the 2020s. Being a grey blur is simply _in_ right now. It's very much Patrick Bateman culture, which is likely a major reason why years ago people online started idolizing the character so much; he mirrors the aspiration to be a unique little psychopath only on the inside, and an unrecognizable suit on the outside. But hey. Frankly I'm just glad this got Emp off of Twitter. I've criticized Emp for being a hypocrite in that matter for way too long, and I'm glad he's finally gotten off. Honestly ever since I got off of Twitter, my life has improved drastically. It really is the first step towards a happier life.
You picked like the strangest possible example but I totally get your point. If you look at any popular streamer now their whole gimmick is being fucking idiots. Just watch that clip of Adin Ross looking up the definition of Facism that kinda says it all.
Perhaps it has something to do with the cultural tension. It seems as if it might’ve flared up around 2015ish, and seems to have persisted to the present. Notice how people would go on social media witch hunts against other fandoms or functionally tribes. Then being a fan of a particular show/podcast or what have you, would place a target on your back if people knew about it. So in response people tried to groom theirselves for mass appeal. To either duck criticism or prevent themselves from being pidgin-holed into a demographic that could limit their social media appeal. As many young people aspire to be social media famous or are molded by it. (Or both) What I think could be a factor is socially kids what to be widely liked and you probably catch them in a place where the social pressure is high. I can see it as a School Bus Driver. There are things that just about everyone knows about, but don’t wanna be hit with the “Well of course you’d know about that.” I have a few more theories, but I’d probably be typing all day and it would never feel complete.
I completely agree with the sentiment that people seem to have some proud attitude towards being willfully ignorant and i will never understand why. i've literally been asked in real life "why do you talk like that" when using vocabulary words beyond a 3rd grader. the first time i was asked this i was genuinely too stunned to give a response. i do wonder what makes people want to be willfully ignorant, do they see it as a revolt against the system? because it is quite the opposite if that's the case.
I told someone "you are very personable" and they said "wait is that a word? Really? Personable? I don't think that's a word.." I was just dumbfounded. Like... huh?
My *boss* commented on me "using big words" after I said "comparatively" 🤦🏻♂️ he's a great guy and our work doesn't require much education, but I don't think he's read anything outside of money-making business philosophy books since hs
I remember arguing with people on some discord server every once in a while, which to my understanding use twitter frequently, due to how much they complain about it and what types of image macros they use... and I was left completely dumbfounded once I realized they didn't understand the terms "Intuition" and "Anorexic". Not only that, but they proceeded to argue how not knowing such terms from adult life is normal, as if they were some complex scientific jargon used for purple prose. These people didn't know *basic* terms you hear in your daily life. They lacked understanding in the English language itself. Now I wonder why the fuck did i waste so much of my time taking them so seriously. My user experience had honestly gotten better after I stopped taking everything people say seriously.
it's beyond easy to look up what a word means and write it down in your notes app of choice, that's depressing as hell lmao i feel like it's partly insecurity from being just average at school or not having certain "talents" that got other people attention and praise. it doesn't take a lot of self-belief to learn the fundamentals of something, it doesn't take belief at all to just memorise what a word means. they probably just accepted those years of life as representing the rest of it (outside of a school setting, where we're free to look up what we want and get good at a hobby in privacy) that's my guess anyway, i loved reading since i was a kid and it's becoming clearer to me that being anti-reading is the most iridescent red flag that could ever burn your eyes
@@spacebassistIm 22 and in college rn and I have had reality slap me in the face so hard with how idiotic people are. I always looked up words and subjects i did not understand and studied them to simply gain knowlege all while assuming everyone else does too. People in the real world do not. I have had friends, co workers and fellow COLLEGE students of mine be blown away by me knowing words I learned in the third grade but then insulting me for not knowing others that are uncommon. Meanwhile, they would ask what a word meant or what context to use it in but not take 20 seconds out of their 8 hours of scrolling through tik tok a day to just Google the word. They ask a question, nobody gives them an answer, they forget it in 10 seconds and move on. Like you said, it does not take much to learn the fundamentals of something. That's the issue however, it's a fundamental for human survival so it might as well be like learning physics for many people nowadays, unfortunately. It is so much easier for people to gain knowledge now and sharpen their minds but they refuse to put the effort in in fear of being shamed for being smart or seen as "not cool" by people that they have never met before lol! The fact that people think intelligence and knowlege is a bad thing and insult others for it is heartbreaking. Sure, it can be lonely but you can solve more problems, big or small, and help others in need because you are capable in doing so. I'd say that's more fulfilling and freeing than sitting around and insulting others for being smarter than you and spinning your tires in the mud when problems do arise. Have a good one and stay safe!
@@John_Doe_84 now in fairness, there's nothing inherently that wrong with asking people to explain what a word means. it can ignite conversation and it allows you to learn how to become a better teacher
@@grammajam3682 excellent point! Aint nothing wrong with wanting knowlege or to be a better teacher as the only way to grow, is by asking questions and talking to others. But I have been on both ends of that situation. Sometimes when you ask what a word means, people often insult you for not knowing it. I am guilty of that myself. Happens alot with my parents. They are both in their 60s and since I am in college, they expect me to know everything lol. I want to be a teacher for people, it gives me fulfillment seeing people grow first hand. So, what you said is true and perhaps I have bad luck with meeting and talking to people. People I meet seem to dislike having full blown conversations they can learn from just by asking a question. In my experiance, people apper to be curious but do not put in the effort to ask or answer questions. Have you had similar experiences? Or are you simply better than me lol! Thanks for the reply
@@John_Doe_84 i don't mean to imply that i think i'm better than you. with my social circle, we're usually always eager to learn from each other and any one who doesn't want to learn, you can avoid them i think people being curious but unwilling to ask questions is simply a by-product of them being socially underdeveloped from our shift away from conversing with people in person. i think it's fruitless to blame the common person for this because i believe the world's smartest people are engineering us to be distant from each other and in our own shells and likewise, thanks for the reply
Emp did a good job of explaining how literacy isn't a binary measure (literate / illiterate) in the video. Trying to bring it down to a single number is almost meaningless. It's better to approach literacy as a concept, and a skill everyone should be constantly trying to improve.
@@PsRohrbaughlike everything in life, literacy is a spectrum and the Overton window of it feels like it's being shifted to the illiterate side rather than the literate side
It is for the worse, because it not also buries the meaningful responses (that's if there even was one to begin with,) but they distract and deviates from the original topic of what the main tweet was about. The current system rewards short attention spams, not information.
I definitely have noticed a rise in anti-intellectualism. I'm not going to proffer any explanations as to why this might be the case, but it appears that being erudite is becoming more and more shameful or ugly.
Don't know about wmen, but with guys I think part of it comes from them viewing reading books/displaying intellect in general as unmanly and I'm sure you've noticed that we're living more and more in an era where dumb, brash caveman type dudes are taking over everything. In my opinion, the West is barely even a civilization at this point because to have a civilization, you need civility and cooperation among the majority of the populous. What we're living in now is more akin to a tribal society.
Being an intellectual is a sign that you’re capable of free thought. Modern culture does not like free thought. Modern culture wants you to be ignorant because, the moment you decide to become a knowledgeable individual, you become a **knowledgeable individual** . Knowledge is power and individuality is “dangerous.” The average twitter user does not want to be intellectually challenged in any way, shape, or form simply because they do not want to risk being exposed to free thought. And free thought… well… that’s just scary and evil and scary
@@yarlodek5842 being an intellectual nowadays just means supporting the current thing and parroting the typical woke marxist postmodern talking points ,
The literate shall inherit the earth. On the subject of the 31:00 mark, have you seen the breakdowns of how cable networks have sped up reruns of sitcoms by 10% of the original pace in order to have more space for commercials?
Nah, the barbarian smashes the skull of the scholar. We are in the middle of the civilizational cycle where the grug-brained will inherit the earth and only once all the panem et circenses the intelligent made and maintained break down will the value of knowledge be reinstated and slowly rebuilt. tl;dr: People won't wake up until their VR porn and McDonalds stops
This put literally everything I've been feeling about the modern internet and society into words. I'm not exactly a genius, but I do use my brain and it severely frustrates me that nobody else I know does that because "It's elitist". I'm not saying complex stuff either, I'm using regular vocabulary that I've known since elementary school and people don't understand me. How am I supposed to have a conversation when these people refuse to engage with anything beyond "Red had ball, ball gone, red sad." I know these people have brains, they should actually put them to use. Edit: Also grammar. For fuck's sake. It's the simplest part of English. You don't have to be perfect, and I'm not asking for much. Nobody with any serious background writes like "2mro gna do my 4th with my 2 besties bda". Unironically, that is so much harder to understand. It's frustrating to try and read. It's not that hard to type a sentence and at least attempt to spell and punctuate properly.
This. So much this. It's not even the fact that the people complaining about this are necessarily extremely intelligent. Hate to use in-group vocabulary, but all we're doing is what should be the average. People are just that unwilling to learn and, honestly, unwilling to grow that going beyond anything other than a basic understanding is somehow too much effort. I see this so much in my life. "Oh doing X thing just takes up so much time" - when the thing in question takes 10 minutes maximum.
I got off social media (except youtube) and started reading books again. It blows my mind how shallow twitter tends to be compared to your average book. Once you wean yourself off it it's hard to go back.
I think that this may be partially due to the fact that the limitations we have are rapidly being destroyed by people who think the answer is making everything easier to replicate.
Nature gives us natural barriers to overcome but now that we dont have many left we are stuck with people who do not want to be challenged to create or just exist
Those people always existed. The difference is that before, they would till fields from the age of ten and die by 30. Technological progress has allowed the golem caste the ability to express itself, and unsurprisingly what they have to say is meaningless and worthless.
fellow word-lover here, i have a ton saved but honestly only remember maybe 30-40% of them. i still enjoy reading but summoning the real fancy words (like uh... stentorian) is a challenge and i tend to think of "easier" alternatives far quicker makes me wonder how often i'd use them if i remembered more
god i love this video format, its like i've been kidnapped and the driver is going on an pcp induced rant as we drive towards a cliff, its somewhat relaxing
I finally discovered this offshoot channel of yours, and you’re 100% right. However, this video essay has made me remember things about my childhood. In Middle School, I thought I was a genius, and every day I’d rant about how school is giving us useless information. How we’re getting dumber because of school, and how we shouldn’t care as much about it. 8 years later, I feel like people similar to my younger self caused this whole disaster. Nobody cares about school. The students don’t care if they do well, they’ll just be ushered along because why bother trying. I’ve heard about Freshman unable to read children’s books, Seniors unable to write paragraphs. Knowing that everyday people need an explanation for 3 sentences baffles me, one can only hope we as a species can course correct our way out of this. Recently I’ve realized just how much I’ve forgotten how to read, how to write, and so on. I definitely need to touch up on my literacy. I can make sense of paragraphs, but it takes me a long time to write something that makes sense while bringing my point across. For Christ’s sake, I only know one language. I shouldn’t be sucking at the one language I use.
i see writing as being like a muscle. reading obviously helps massively because you can pick apart sentence structure and how other people arrange their ideas, but practice is the main thing to grow your understanding and after a while you can see major changes. some of your older stuff at that point can be a little weird or make you question what you were thinking, but it's a sign you've grown i say this as someone who badly wants to write fiction so i have to keep up with it too or i'll never get anything done
@@All4Tanuki i spotted you before calling them the "golem caste" and i'm a little concerned you think too much on this and with a lot of spite. at the least i can see it as tragic and "this better not lead to ruin" but saying that feels like you may as well call them sheep i feel like adding that talking to people irl kinda shows you that they do think on things. they don't prioritise the same stuff and you're bound to hear some "confession" like they watch netflix all the time or only care about cars but more people are willing to have a chat than you think. it's just a little unfortunate right now, everyone's anxious to initiate because we're more withdrawn
I kept thinking of the comedic film "Idiocracy" all throughout the video but especially during the instances in which you mentioned illiterate individuals feeling proud of being dumb. Sometimes it does seem like we're approaching the society describe in that movie, which if you haven't watched I absolutely recommend you to do.
How fitting he’s so angry and he looks like the hulk. In all seriousness, the real reason people don’t care about reading is that they have no incentive to read when they have unlimited information that can be given to them at any time. It’s like a kid that is constantly given money for their entire life, and they never learn to be financially responsible.
But you can read when you’re on the internet if i couldn’t read than all of the words in your comment when just appear as crap in my brain but it’s not since it has enough meaning to my head that i am making a comment on it
When people talk about how they have left Twitter, I always thank myself for not getting one in the first place. In all seriousness, this has been a topic I've thought about myself for some time. I work a sad retail job at the moment (Covid lockdowns destroyed my last job and it's been though getting back to normal, but that's another topic) and at that job, I've seen tons of kids wandering around staring at Ipads with parents who speak like, as you said, cavemen. It's a sad sight of parents who don't care dooming their children to stupidity. On one hand, I can sympathize with people who struggle to read as I had issues with it all throughout school and even through college (my issues mostly came when reading fiction as I had a hard time visualizing a story), but having spent the last few years using much of my spare time at work or in waiting rooms reading, I can tell you, it is much better to read an engaging or informative book, than to waist hours on junk videos. Funny enough, I got better at reading after college at my retail job, I got two fifteen minute breaks and a one hour lunch I ended up using this time to do reading while everyone else was on their phones. I can tell you, that doing that was one of the best decisions I made working the job because over two years, I went from slow reading to being able to get through a decent sized book in two to three days. I think the numbing effect of TV, TikTok, etc., may be one of the most sinister aspects of them because not only are you not engaging with the work being shown, you end up waisting so much time without even realizing it. Anyway, those are my thoughts. I could go on, but you get the idea. Thanks for discussing this, it needed to be said, even if to a small group of people.
Growing up, one of the most important leason I leanred from a certain message board on the early internet was the phrase *"Lurk more."* Im willing to bet it was rhe same for you, Emp.
@@tcscomment Some lessons, valuable ones, come only through practice and embarrassment. Or well, it will definitely teach you faster, if you don't resent it
I'm pretty sure when they say "brevity is the essence of wit" didn't mean we should all dumb down everything to the lowest common denominator, but "No Child Left Behind" amirite? Tbh, I can't help but wonder how those readers would respond if you asked them a question like "How would you feel if you didn't eat Breakfast this morning?"
There's no perfect solution. It's beyond human ability to have a broad and deep understanding of all subject matters. There's a benefit to being succinct - but certain topics also require details and context.
I’ve noticed it in myself, too. I get frustrated when I read books sometimes because my brain is so fried from low-quality content. I used to read Stephen King (old works, mainly) and horror/science/fantasy novels. Now I can barely get through a comic book or an in-game text without my eyes glazing over. It frustrates me to no end, and I intend to change that and cut out as much garbage content as I can. Good video!
@joshbuoy8661 it's fucking grueling. I have developed the same issue, especially with game text. Books I can still manage, but an interactive medium with instant gratification just programs you against taking in words unless they're extremely simple. It's like selective dyslexia, it sucks
You're describing low reading comprehension, which has always been a thing particularly among those in low income environments. Does social media make it worse? Probably a little, but having to spend any time with kids in low reading level groups back in school taught me at a young age that a lot of people just suck at reading.
Yep, even when I was at school in a relatively low income area the amount of people in high school that couldn’t even read words like “excessive” and would run off sentences constantly just seemed normal to me. I thought I was just really good at reading 😂
But low income people increasingly have access to the internet and public education is a thing. I’m from a family that makes slightly below minimum wage (blue colar work) however i still am able to read paragraphs and type paragraphs well
@@staringcorgi6475yeah but public education (specially in the inner cities) historically has not been great and has been consistently defunded. Combine that with the lack of investment in these neighborhoods and the closing of spaces that would encourage reading (like libraries) and things are a lot more complex than they look.
It’s sad, I own lots of books I want to read but have never read because it’s so much more gratifying to sit and watch youtube videos. I can’t imagine growing up today with unlimited access to the internet. The commodification of attention is ruining all of us.
Come to think of it, the current brainrot of the general young population comes with its strengths and weaknesses- those who are literate and can articulate themselves at a somewhat advanced level have the opportunity to be way ahead of their current generation, giving them advantages in fields like business. However, given the standards for requiring critical thinking and discipline are currently disappearing, many important roles in society are losing the quality it once provided (eg teaching) and/or the safety of others which is entrusted with someone who must do their job correctly (pilots or similar roles). This is a somewhat concerning matter for “gen z” since we will in fact grow up being a little older than “gen alpha” while all services and utilities in society will be run by them. I’m hoping for some kind of change that doesn’t make the future seem so grim.
they are automating the technically skilled jobs and leaving the minimum wage souless mindless jobs for people. So thats what current trends incentivize.
The educational gap is ever widening. There are kids coming out of high school that are super smart and some that never should have moved on from elementary school. It's a shame that the majority on social media are the latter.
I deleted my twitter a few years ago too. There's nothing of value on that site. 4chan has anonymity and funny posts, reddit is mostly trash but there's still a few small niche communities I like to visit, and instagram has good meme accounts, but twitter has nothing, none, 0. I urge anyone still on twitter to leave that site for good and do literally anything else.
Normie reddit is a cesspit, but the communities that used to have their own forums are usually good. I'm a car guy and follow make and model specific sub's, namely the Honda Fit sub as I'm a Fit owner myself. That's people who are all passionate about something getting together to discuss it constructively, not the updoot farming you normally see.
The only good thing about Twitter is art, because the format it has, while atrocious for discussion, is actually great for art. Now that I think about it, an awful social media that pollutes the minds but is actually quite effective for art? Why, isn't that just Tumblr?
Your analysis on television... Yes. My grandparents wake up and turn on the TV, and it's on the entire day until they go to bed. Born in 1934 / 1936 respectively.
Really, the thing that's killing libraries the death of physical media by corporations pushing the slow burn of eliminating personal property. The whole concept of "you'll own nothing and be happy" is a part of this, where they're turning everyone into renters of media, not owners of it. Libraries can't function in a world where everything is rented - they're bad for the business model.
I never got into Twitter. I have an account on there but I've used it maybe... Half a dozen times in a decade? I just don't get Twitter. I don't understand it at all. It's just a vessel for removing context. It makes no sense at all. Tweeting gets everyone in trouble. As an Internet veteran since the early 90s, my biggest lesson I've learned is, don't feed the trolls. Feeding the trolls is what gets 99% of people in trouble.
The only thing I'll add here, though, is that it is apparent to me that Twitter is very far from a good source for a reflection of society. As bad as the world may seem on there, the world itself is nothing like it. Funny enough, my realization of this kinda enabled me to utilize my technology in a healthy way.
I would like to shout out to Minecraft, it indirectly encouraged 4 year old me to read more. At first it was so I could figure out what each thing was, but then it turned into communicating with others through text in multiplayer, which meant that I needed to read and write. That turned into reading wiki pages and informative books on ingame actions and techniques, which then turned into writing commands and making mods, which required to me to learn programming terms. It may haven't been much, but it sure did encourage me to read more and it got me into programming. No TL;DR, read the comment please.
I agree with almost all of this except for the TV causing the Illiteracy, kind of. Given how much Animation was made specifically for Illiterate Soldiers in the World Wars. Though the ease of access, Bad Parenting, a desire to Rebel against what’s seen as Educated Blindness, Ineffective Education, and the Neverland Syndrome being boosted highly by wanting to escape an increasingly Terrifying, Complicated World that’s constantly fed through various News Outlets. All that which you’ve mentioned all culminates in Fear and Risk Aversion or even just Aversion to any Challenge. The Ultimate Killer of Drive, Ingenuity, Creativity, and Passion. We’re seeing the Collective Consciousness dissected and experimented with in Real Time, like we always have. But now on a Truly Global Scale.
I'm glad you share the same sentiment as I do, Emp. All throughout my years of schooling I was heralded as an English prodigy, and it always pissed me off. Being able to read aloud without stuttering or asking "DURR what's that word mean?? How do i pronounce it???" Shouldn't be an achievement for someone who's an undergraduate. Hell it shouldn't be an achievement for someone in high school. OR EVEN MIDDLE SCHOOL! I've come to hate being around the average person because it seems as though everyone has intelligence on par with a fuckin' Speak & Spell
As a kid I had a lot of difficulty learning to read and writing it's been a weird issue I've had. I read slowly and still have a lot of trouble with grammar in particular and reading more than 10 pages of anything causes some pretty bad headaches but at the very least I try. I can comprehend what I'm reading. I can write sentences. I can use vocabulary. English might have been a difficult subject for me to learn but at least I tried at all. I don't often comment on things and that's mostly because responses I receive are almost always unrelated to anything I said at all like they didn't bother reading what I said. I find it weird that people can't often engage with me in any way near intellectual. I feel empathetic for people who have trouble learning to read and use grammar because it's something I've struggled with a bit more than I'd like to admit but I don't understand the amount of people with no reading comprehension or no desire to use their reading comprehension. Oftentimes when I'm talking about an opinion I have, it also feels like it's beneficial for them to not be able to comprehend what I'm saying so they can disagree with what I said and not respond to any evidence to the contrary of what they believe in. Not even wanting to interact with the other side of an issue but also trying to make a point about something without basic understanding of the other side is a huge issue I've noticed too. Not really related to the video but it does frustrate me.
You took the words out of my mouth. I relate plenty to the things you say. Ever since I was a kid I've had a hard time reading and writing, but to put it shortly, I feel as if I'm decent regarding everything else, I learned how to speak and write in English all by myself, I can read essays and news articles, I can listen to really longform content (2-5 hours) and absorb all the content and write about it. But writing an essay myself, or writing a story despite loving fiction, do anything with my own handwriting? I become a nervous wreck. And when I read an actual book on my hands? I can understand what is being written, I even feel excited to read, but my thoughts become so turbulent at one point that I eventually drop the book and never touch it again, it's like I can't have my entire world ever be just me and tiny letters on a page.
A couple of things... First, since at least the 90s, there has been a grade inflation as well as general cheating scandals by teachers to push out as many As as possible while passing standardized testing. I remember reading that in the 90s, roughly half of all high school graduates were functionally illiterate. Makes sense within this context, and sparked concerns which lead to "No Child Left Behind." Second, since the lockdowns, more parents have started to homeschool. Prior to this revelation, parents treated schools as free daycare, so as to work two jobs. So children were left without their parents. Remember the 90s kids were called the Nintendo generation for that reason, and you had a hit song "The kids ain't right" by Offspring which summarized the situation. Shoot, in the 80s, you had "Another brick in the wall" describing the exact same situation. In essence, since the 1970s, people knew what the problem is, but most simply did not care enough, till the lockdowns. That is when reality hit families in the face hard, and parents, for the first time, woke up to reality, and were forced to be parents. Third, there is always hope for further education down the line. After graduation, there is nothing stopping adults from studying and learning more. Just that right now, those who are dumb happen to be able to benefit from those in power. They don't know why they do something so self-destructive, but it brings them that immediate happiness provided by some government official standing on their corpses. Problem is, even rats flee such a paradise, so to will those who realize something is wrong, and try to improve themselves.
I think the issue stems from our society having such loads of information at the tips of our fingers. They take it for granted. People want the end product only. They want an opinion without the effort it takes to read an article, so they just skim a headline. They want knowledge without the effort to learn, hence Google. "Why would I bother to learn it myself when the information is right there if I ever need it" They want art without the toil of creating it, hence A.I. We are a society of consumers, and sadly Art and Knowledge are now just commodities to be consumed, not passions to be pursued. The Elites are getting what they want, mindless consumers. Don't Think, Consume. Marvel Fans come to mind.
I like some of the art on twitter but everything else on there is garbage. Worse than reddit, the only thing that might be worse is CZcams comments, but at least those are an optional part of the yt experience
This seems less like an issue of literacy, and more like an issue of people with a poor reading comprehension and a lack of ability to do basic research. I doubt that someone's proficiency in a specific language like English has as much of an effect. It's people growing up and not reading, not trying to learn on their own and do research, not being taught by their parents or teachers to understand, but to just consume. It's not their ability to speak a language, it's their ability to process information in general. I believe that is mostly the point being made in this video. If that's true, I think it could be better expressed if you made this distinction. Nvm if not though
@@vienlacrose because sometimes the curtains being blue does matter, sometimes writing does have a deeper meaning, sometimes it is important to be able to mentally take apart a concept and try to see what it means.
I think this video finally made me realize the link between the lower levels of literacy (beginning in my generation, the millennials) to the declining quality of media. Not all of it is bad, but I find it very hard to watch any recent media of the last 10 years or so. I am constantly re-watching older things. It just feels like a lot of newer media has a lower quality of writing. I keep wondering if the quality really has gone down or if I'm just being a boomer. I also feel like that the more I engaged with social media or any recent cinema the more my literacy level goes down. I think I need to quit doom scrolling twitter and just read books for awhile. I need to quit twitter like you. Anyway keep up the good work, I enjoy your videos both here and on the main channel.
maybe i'm just coping since all i ever had growing up was the newer media, but i do genuinely believe that the best media of today is better than everything that came before it. at least that's what i hope. i think people who really try to make the best art possible will learn and iterate on all the previous generations before them, granting them at least the potential to surpass them. i just think that the number of those "people who really try" is shrinking smaller and smaller due to the problems emp describes in this video.
most media is written by gen x rather than millenials. Some guy called it millenial writting and stuck but literally every example he mentions like Dan Harmon, Josh Whedon or Mindi Kalig are all Gen x
I have a hard time enjoying newer media, too. Sometimes it may well be the fault of the writers, other times it’s probably studios interfering trying to appeal to the masses or some imaginary audience. I hold out hope that sooner or later there will be another renaissance in film and television, but it’s hard waiting. I think I’m most hopeful about smaller productions that come from people who don’t have to compromise their creative integrity.
It's incredibly strange to me how this is happening while at the same time these super long form video essays are getting extremely popular on CZcams. Maybe it's like you said and it's just people on Twitter, but I swear it doesn't make sense. Maybe its the classic redditor type of person who likes to think they're super smart and are the kind of people to watch Veritasium but not actually get any usable information out of it. They're the same people who are confused that they can spend hours on video games and be focused, but when they have to read a textbook or anything more than a 240 character tweet they're just totally lost. The thing you said about Boomers always watching TV is certainly true about Gen Z as well, just switch out TV for anything smart-device. Whether they're doomscrolling tiktok for hours on end, or being unable to eat a meal without having some shitty video essay piped through their headphones, it's all the same. Combine that with AI generating things like pictures, videos, art with just a one sentence prompt and it makes it really hard to look hopefully at the future. Sorry for the rant basically restating what you already said in your rant. I guess what I mean to say is the things you're saying very much resonate with the things I and other people are also seeing.
Long form video essays becoming popular seems good, until you realize how many of the viewers will just not care about the thing after they've watched it. It's like TV documentaries, you don't have to do research, the information just gets cherry-picked and fed to you, and then you can go ahead and pretend to know about some topic by quoting the couple parts of the video you remember.
@@TheManster22 True most people jump to video essay are for money and prestige sake rather than having a particular deep interest on a particular subject
Speaking as a frequent viewer of these - they're little more than background noise that makes you feel smart for viewing it. I am well aware there is far more to these videos, and not all of them are entirely that bad, yet the fact is that almost no one sits down and watches that stuff. It's just playing on like a TV in the living room, and if the content creator has their video essay voice on, you passively feel smart for hearing some of the words. Bet you anything that's what over half the views amount to.
Most people just want to put these on while they're doing chores or playing games. Just to have something to listen to in the background. Basically, another type of "friendship simulator" content, like 5+ hour streams and such. Much like people used to do with talk radio or TV back in the day.
I'm sure someone else has mentioned this, but just in case, there was an overview of the American Education System in September of 2020, through data collected over 5 years by Gallup, which concluded that 130 million Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 have a literacy level below a 6th grader. That's 54%. Always take studies with a grain of salt because there's always bias involved, but even if that estimate is off by 10%, that is still startling.
Wait, you're saying that as we've flooded the country with waves of immigration and shut the country down so the kids already here couldn't be taught in person and constantly encourage parents to let kids get raised on their phones instead of caring for them might result in negative learning environments?
I think the education system is partially to blame. I was in an environment where I was made to feel bad or weird or different for being able to answer questions, and understand the material. This was combined with being in classes that were painfully dull and easy. I say this as someone who was a slacker in K-12, and not an overachieving, glasses emoji bookworm playing chess or whatever image comes up with what I'm about to type. There's a pervasive amount of anti-intellectualism in American culture today and fear of being "uncool" or "cringe". I think aspects of this slacker ethos and "too cool to care" mentality could arguably go back to the beatnik or hippie generations, but it really reached its apex with the advent of sarcasm and irony booming in the late 80s into the 90s. Television shows like the Simpsons helped popularize this constant ironic or sarcasm bent. Yes, the Simpsons may be a quality show or had something to say, but as a byproduct (no, I'm not saying The Simpsons are the sole show to blame) sarcasm and detached irony has become an end of itself. Instead of using sarcasm or biting satire to communicate something we now use sarcasm as its own ethos. I think somewhere along the line this sarcasm, irony, and lack of being genuine is partially why people are so anti-intellectual and seemingly act proud of it. No one wants to be called out as cringe or a "lolcow" on social media.
Watched Hazbin Hotel and was floored by how many people didn't understand a lyric as simple as "Alastor, altruist, nearly died for his friends", being him speculating on what the headlines would say about him. People needed it explained, and were so unfamiliar with a word as simple as altruist, that they GENUINELY THOUGHT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HIS NAME.
i find funny that me and a couple of my friends are categorized as the essayists by other people, because we write extra long messages to each other and we always read them FULLY AND COMPLETE, but it's kinda funny to me how people nowadays can't read a message with more than 4 lines of text.
It does suck to see you constantly so jaded, even still, but I'm very happy for you for getting off of Twitter. I got it off of it for the last time months ago and never looked back, and it's been such an improvement. I still remember a while ago, I was reminded about Elon Musk, community notes, ratios, and I genuinely reacted like I had something wrong in my body, going "holy crap, I used to see that daily, now I haven't thought about it for months, this is amazing". I guarantee you, eventually your life will feel so much better, or at least, you won't be AS miserable. I don't really think the illiteracy thing is an issue with America as a whole as it is with Twitter, because Twitter is THE worst part of the Internet. Not only does it encourage ragebait and being snarky assholes, it also discourages actual in depth discussions and instead short bursts of ignorance for "discussion". Never look back, leave the demons to their demons.
seeing people write comments with terrible punctuation or no punctuation pisses me off. I'm not a grammar nazi, but some people write like they've been smoking DMT since they were 12
You didn't capitalize "seeing". Or put a period after "12". Bad grammar has been the norm on the internet since for forever. It's not a matter of intelligence. You either get it, or you don't.
@@ToadySPGrammar where it is necessary is important. It's common to not punctuate single sentences on the internet. Being unable to determine which "Their" you are supposed to use is prohibative to understanding what somebody is trying to communicate. Having zero periods or commas, with 800 words of continuous, uncapitalized sentences, makes somebody's writing incomprehensible. There is a massive difference between not putting an apostrophe on "its" and having absolutely no ability to write with any amount of cohesion.
@@Sammysapphira No you and I completely agree on that. Having the knowledge to be able to spell things correctly in general is important. But just like in the late 2000s I think it's cool when the average user online makes the active choice, through tact, to decide "I'm either going to not spell any of this right, or I'm going to just use lazy abbreviations."
i'm a teenager. everyone around me is stupid, i actually try to have an inciteful conversation and i get told to "shut the f$$$ up" and that i'm "yapping". the sad part is that we have the potential to be good, but no one wants to.
So google has a handy feature that if you highlight a word, it gives you the definition of that word. So if you don't know what it means you can easily figure it out. Beyond how easy it is to just type the word into a search engine. People are so unwilling to use the tools at there disposal they just won't do that. On the topic of reading. As a Zoomer growing up in the 2000's. I don't remember reading itself being the issue, I remember the fact the books I was told to read were just boring to me. So I wouldn't engage with it that heavily. It wasn't until 6th grade where my teacher saw in particular the boys were less interested in reading. He simply just came in with options he figured the boys in my class would like. That's what got myself and most of the other boys interested. Just needed the right book, to get us to care. He did other stuff too like reading to the class every day for 20-30 minutes, he even made sure the substitute teachers would read to us as well. I'm not sure if it's completely just this brain rot we're forcing on everyone, the mentality that being ignorant is cool or if it's also an issue of the teaching. I just know from my experience it took one teacher who put in the extra effort, to get me to give a crap about reading, and school in general.
I shudder at the thought of how illiterate I'd be without the advantage of our digital age. Blame the government for defunding and enforcing lottery systems in your schools. "Teach them the answers for tests". 30 students per instructor.
i knew you lleft twitter! I was going back to your profile every other day and I was like "Yo where did this guy go?". It's shame cause I really liked your takes... but im glad you left that god awful website. It seems it's getting worse with every day that passes...
My buddy had to rewatch all of the Disney movies after I painstakingly explained to him that they have life lessons and themes. Intelligence, and the subject of English in general, has at least in my experience become a taboo. AI “art” is a great example as many of my peers believe that art is simply entertainment, and that it has no meaning. Edit: and I think this all has to do with racism at the end of the day
I'd be curious what apps / networks you use today, if you're willing to share. I left reddit when they disabled 3rd party apps, and I left Facebook all the way back in 2008 when they let people besides college students join. Now, outside of CZcams, I only communicate with people I know via text or phone call. I'm 37.
Most of twitter is bots and spam now. Then you’ve got gimmick accounts and OnlyFans girls everywhere trying to advertise or bot accounts in every reply section of every big tweet. On top of that it’s always promoting rage bait tweets to the front because it gets engagement. Ughh twitter is a cesspool
I’m legitimately becoming an English teacher for highschoolers and this is gonna be the video i show my students as to why communicating properly is important. After reading more complex books and older stories like Pride and Prejudice, its expanded my vocabulary so much and simultaneously my understanding of the world which is wonderful. Thanks for the rant Emp lol i totally understand how you feel and it makes me feel like I too am narcissistic being the smartest person in the room especially on twitter. Also I have a habit in staying on twitter too long…. I need to leave lol
A not insignificant amount of people acting stupid on Twitter is likely doing it on purpose either to bait engagement or to be "quirky" for attention. It's completely normalized and even encouraged in many internet circles to act as stupid and immature as possible because the idiots within those circles think it's funny, and it's a fast track to getting some brief attention
I believe reading books, novels, essays, short stories and the like, can help counter the effect of unnecessary social media scrolling that fogs up your brain and makes it difficult to focus on anything. Reading physical books specifically. Audiobooks and PDF downloads don't count because they are not completely disconnected from a screen or the internet. Reading novels as a hobby really helped me relearn how to focus and be more attentive and present.
I understand your point, but I believe pdfs still count if you can maintain focus on them. Many, many old books can just be read, freely and easily, with the advent of the internet, some that can't be easily found locally in a library.
Hey Emp, a couple of years ago we spoke in Twitter DMS the first time you were planning to quit Twitter and I tried to give you some perspective as to why people there end up acting like this. I now believe that whatever cope exists to justify one's continuation of engagement in this toxic platform is simply a construct of a mind on social media addiction. I'm clean off social media for 6 months and it really made me realize just how much damage this stream of provocative (dis)information is able to do especially on people that lack real life communities to ground them to reality. I'm certain by now everyone with a shred of sanity must've left this website, explaining the deterioration of the userbase. Nowadays it's all social media syndrome afflicted individuals and the grifters that mine them.
I'm with you bro, the school system is failing no doubt but it's really parenting that is failing more. Parents aren't pushing education as important to there kids. My 7 year old can read on a 6th grade level because we taught him that education is key to obtaining anything he wants, not just put a tablet in his hand and tell him to go away.
For the first time in history, it seems there's an illiteracy problem not because people can't read; but they're too lazy to read.
Believe it or not, many of them probably actually lack basic reading comprehension. One year in middle school, our English teacher would have us sometimes grade each other's work. I almost always got an A, but the two other students in my class who I graded got C's because their spelling was pretty terrible and their use of punctuation was almost random. Like how sometimes you find a comment on CZcams where every word is capitalized and has commas randomly scattered throughout.
Reading is so last century!
@@OtakuUnitedStudioYou don't know how many times I've posted something in the clearest possible terms and someone replies blatantly misunderstanding it, EVEN IF I add in context making it clear that is not what I'm referring to.
@@clouds-rb9xt You mean like how they'll read the first three words of a sentence and ignore the rest despite it completely changing the context?
"I hate cheese being misused like that."
"HOW CAN YOU HATE CHEESE"
@@OtakuUnitedStudioYea Like When, Users Type Like This aNd Have Really, Dumb User, Names Like Gacha Life Jacob Fan UTTP Or Something
As a russian who learnt English via mmorpgs when I was a kid, I find it amusing to see a bunch of people who only speak one language being so proud of not being able to speak that sole language.
I haven't learned a second language yet, definitely want to in the future, but the fact you learned english through an MMORPG is awesome, dude.👍
@@themc3140 Thanks. It's way easier to pick up little cues of how the language works when you're a kid, so it just happened naturally. When I tried to seriously learn a language as an adult, it's been tough. Been wondering how I even learnt English so well.
I developed my english at a very early age from roleplaying online. And now im trilingual and expecting to learn more languages
russians learn racist slurs in all languages just to scream at people in videogames
I agree with you. You have it a bit more difficult since Russian doesn't even use the same script as English...... While my native tongue.... Swedish is still relatively closely related to English. But I talk to a particular Canadian and I'm beating them in English comprehension.... That shouldn't be possible considering their only language is English while it's my second language.
this is longer than 3 sentences, I cant comprehend this video
45 mins? I ain't watchin allat
This isn't a youtube short
Huh? What?
Context?
@@saintgogeto675 Watching the first 10 minutes of the video should help.
Do you remember that scene from Matilda in which she asks Harry about the library.
"A book? What do you want a book for?"
"To read," she replies.
"To read? Why would you want to read when you got the television set sitting right in front of you? There's nothing you can get from a book that you can't get from a television faster."
And that last part stuck with me as what I know the average American thinks now. A shame, that we as a society (as cliche as I sound) prefer comfortable ignorance over knowledge and wisdom.
what have you read today? or you just watched youtubers?
@@j.2512 You should ask these questions to yourself. Your life will improve with this introspection.
@@DigitalDiscDreamerso none?
@@j.2512 I've been reading Dorothy Must Die. A chad internet age person who still reads book (however, digitally, but not audio book). What have you been reading?
@@redactado266 The Bible. I highly recommend it.
What's more infuriating is that every sector of society thinks X/Twitter is their way to communicate with the world, leaving actual real world communication to wither on the vine and die.
So true, many brands try and communicate there when its basically the equivalent of trying to gauge output on Tumblr LOL
Vine shutdown years ago mate
@@icehawke543not everyone who says vine referrers to the short video sharing site "Vine", there is a thing called context after all
2% of twitter users make up 80% of the discussions. Its literally a worthless and botted astroturfed eco chamber that doesn't matter. Most people there aren't even people, its just bots
They don't mean the vine platform they mean like a leaf dying on a real vine I think @@icehawke543
Emp replying to confused users on X with differently shaped blocks and holes was a legendary moment.
You aren't any different from them. Be conscious of what you're doing and stop writing in this youtube like-farmer template. You got your 50~ updoots but gave nothing to the conversation.
@@soyingerchad7128 omg youre so pretty
@@soyingerchad7128 MarstedR 's comment was useful to me because I didn't know Emplemon tweeted that. I found it funny
@@soyingerchad7128
Wtf is up your a**???
I actually checked his account to find what you were referring to & found the original tweet that caused all the confusion & it blew my mind. I tried to give the benefit of the doubt & assumed that, I don't know, maybe there was some sort of genuinely hard to understand thing about the tweet that was genuinely innocent, but it was the most simple tweet you could possibly think of. How people could possibly not understand that tweet & said "What?" "...What?" "what?" "Wut?" like a bunch of gold-fish makes me feel depressed. It actually makes me feel ill. Wtf.
When I was in college from 2017-2021, I was floored by how incapable most of my classmates were at basic grammar and writing. It made group projects absolute hell.
I hope I don't experience that. I hope I find people who are intelligent, hearty, and literate. I really hope I don't encounter this, but as of the current educational standards of the the US, I highly doubt that will happen.
I graduated with an engineering degree in 2012. I started the Master's program right after, and became a "teaching assistant". I was grading papers from sophomores and juniors in engineering classes. They were American - born, native English speakers, and they lacked the most basic abilities with grammar and spelling.
I'm talking about misspellings that Word underlines, and they were too stupid / lazy to right-click and select the correct spellings.
Anyway, I withdrew from the Master's program and got a job instead.
@@x86x2you very much will, everyone at some point in their lives eventually does
@@x86x2 college freshman here, yea its over
@@thecheeseblock9880I mean it's good cause it'll make shitty essays look good in comparison
The biggest shock is that once you delete twitter, alot of "big" news stories suddenly disappear from existence because they really were never big to begin with.
Oh yeah this is a huge one. Legit probably 99% of news means nothing at all. No impact on my life.
The average person is not meant to give as many fucks as we're expected to today. Trying to do so will destroy your mental health. It's not worth it, especially when it's autistically screeching into the ether for a bunch of people who will forget about you in 5 minutes once you leave. 0/10 would not recommend.
@@SkylineFTW97 Thanks, seriously, it's too easy to get consumed by brainworms.
But so many things just shouldn't matter, no need to "carry the weight of the world on your shoulders" no matter how pretentious, arrogant, or stupid one would be for trying. Sadly it's not hard to be that way when caring about shit happening is associated with being a better person in not a few circles
this is how I felt when I stopped using FB. It felt like a weight off of my chest.
I still get major news, but it's through a very limited lens, and I realize it only matters so much to me.
The "big news" sounded more like a lowkey crush on Trump or Elon. That's the only way I could see anybody obsessively talk about them 24/7.
I'm so happy emp is as ungodly annoyed at those "I AIN'T READIN ALL DAT XDDDDD" memes as much as I have been for the last few years
They act like what they just read makes no sense to make you look dumb it’s so childish
28 words???? I ain't reading Allat💀
It's a twitter thing too bcz it's a platform that incentives especially short quippy posts, so anything that is longer than 3 sentences becomes a monumental and difficult task for the average user on that hell site to read.
It was funny at first because there really are people who just blabber on about nothing for far too long, but it's seriously devolved into people being unwilling to read two sentences.
Very true, however trying to read something with next to no punctuation whatsoever and making any sense out of it is next to impossible. It doesn't matter if you've made the best comment of all time; no punctuation just means I'm never going to engage with your word salad.
I remember feeling so disappointed when the “I ain’t reading all that 💀” phrase started popping up everywhere. Not even as a jokey meme, but genuinely as annoyance towards 5 sentences.
If they’re American than there’s no excuse as any class can go to school
@@staringcorgi6475 they have 56% mutt genes, school won't help
Yes,I remember having a debate a long time ago on Facebook with someone on a discussion about historical figures and they used that line when I discussed and broke down to analyze why he was wrong. And when i use particular intelligent words that are not used much today,his response in a meme to silence me was "Stop humping the thesaurus!". Even speaking intelligently and analytical has become a meme. People do not want to become educated.
i aint readin all that 💀
@@superhyruleanto “show off your educational prowess” in a reply section is corny
The root cause is a societal depression with no hope for the future, combined with acceptance of chasing short-term dopamine. The progressiveism of the 1950s was that every new year would inherently be better, and therefore something to look forward to. Now, we all think everything is going to fall apart at any moment.
"why should I worry about 20 years from now, when society probably won't even be around? I should just focus on being happy today"
Consciously or subconsciously, that's what's driving a lot of people.
i definitely have fallen into that idea. i don’t know what will happen in the future in regard to american society, but i don’t feel it will be good and i’ve nearly given up on trying to achieve any material wealth or status in the meantime.
@@RwandaBob forget wealth or status. I am a multi millionaire. That doesn't help you make friends you can trust, or find or get a wife you can depend on to raise a family with. If she wants, she can leave with the kids and half your money and there's nothing you can do. Our society is broken.
Lower IQ means less long term planning. America has mutted itself into its youth loosing 10 average IQ points for the first time since IQ is measured. I call it cultural enrichment.
Thank you for your comment, helped me pinpoint what’s been getting me down.
I think things will get better, but they're gonna get worse first. You can probably avoid most of the worst by just not using twitter or tiktok. Personally, I don't use anything but Facebook (which I only use because marketplace has largely taken over Craigslist as a classifieds page).
No kid left behind has destroyed the concept of learning. Some people need to be held back
The problem was getting bad, sure, but the unnecessary panic over C*vid and subsequent lockdowns, completely annihilated what lingering threads of eagerness kids had left to learn things.
Carlin said best “ no kid left behind head start someone’s losing fucking ground here”
I would somewhat agree, if the school system has accounted for absolutely everything and every type of characteristic the student has, and tried to educate them best based on their traits. However, as it stands now, I disagree.
It didn’t need to do this, but that model ended up mostly preventing people above median from progressing. Being “left behind” is objective, not a subjective thing where everyone gets worked towards the mean [at best]
True but then again, parents don’t send their kids to school to learn. It’s so that they can get rid of them at school so that they can raise and take care of their kids for them.
Fahrenheit 451 does an excellent job of explaining this. This line from Captain Beatty always struck me.
"Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations. Digests, Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume ... Speed up the film, Montag, quick. Click, Pic, Look, Eye, Now, Flick, Here, There, Swift, Pace, Up, Down, In, Out, Why, How, Who, What, Where, Eh? Uh! Bang! Smack! Wallop, Bing, Bong, Boom! Digest-digests, digest-digest-digests. Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!” ... School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, and pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?”
As we make media easier to consume, we lose the aspects that make it unique and informative. I mean, what valuable information can we extract from a Twitter post, a TikTok short, and the majority of CZcams videos (yours are an exception)? The answer is little to nothing because no effort is needed to engage with the content. I think even actions such as turning the book's pages, or even focusing your eyes on its words, make a large difference.
I believe society has fallen into this trap because humans always want to follow the path of least resistance. Why spend extra work reading an insightful book, when you can turn your brain off and watch colorful but nonsensical videos (think Behind the Meme and Cocomelon)?
Hopefully society can remedy this, but with how we are going, it can only get more downward from here.
We're all chasing pleasure / dopamine. It boils down to delaying gratification to get a larger payoff, or chasing something immediate and short-term.
It wasn't until recently that I realized how destructive trying to be productive all the time can be (always distracted, always occupied and always hoping that the future will be better). There needs to be room for intentionally inconsequential things.
I think my mental state is beginning to improve as a result. Still spending too much time online/at work but I've finally started to form some early friendships and have been able to focus on reading here and there.
It definitely seems to be a modern man's virus; we're bombarded with advertisements and dopamine at all times. Companies don't need you to read so the only one compelling you to do so is the inner voice (if you can still hear it at all).
@@evanever I generally agree with this. But I've also been fortunate enough to have been involved in work projects that were truly fun and interesting. I WANTED to be as involved as possible because I was invested in both the process and results.
So I completely agree people should be able to take a break when they need one. But those who choose to fully invest themselves should be rewarded for their time and commitment.
Huh, what, context? What kind of loser writes a comment this long?
tldr huh what huh context what
There’s a high school English teacher who’s involved in my colleges theater program. I asked her about her profession, as I enjoy teaching, and if its something she could recommend. She said she wouldn’t wish teaching today on her worst enemy. Sifting through obviously ai generated essays, trying to piece together if an essay is real or not, kids barely able to spell, or put together a sentence. The worst part? It’s getting worse. Each year the kids get dumber, it’s terrifying.
The worst part is that it's been gradually introduced purposefully, to dumb people down. Powers that be just want thousands of moronic plebs who cannot have an independent thought so they will just shut up and blindly obey.
I think just requiring essays to be hand written would solve this?
@Shadowfate93 unfortunately, they can still put the prompt in ChatGPT and then hand write what it spits out, might make it even harder on the teacher since you can't even use the AI plagarism detecting software (forgot what it's called) on the document.
You can thank the "no child left behind" bullshit. These kids NEED to be held back
And yet, these people are expected to vote and be allowed to have kids?
I'll never forget my first year in college where a teacher asked the class if they knew what Photosynthesis was, and I was the only person to raise my hand.
It's given me some odd confidence issues actually, where in I was never a super good student in grade school, but suddenly when I'm in college, showing the same slightly above average intellect and effort somehow puts me ahead of a good chunk of my peers. I'd like to believe I got smarter through my own effort, but rather it feels more like the world just got dumber and that makes a regular schmuck like me look smart in comparison.
yeah, the problem even the smartest of zoomers who get into the workforce are still laughably incompetent and its causing a lot of problems for a lot of people.
I don't think that people got dumber, I think people got less confident. Zoomers are the least confident generation I've seen. Students won't raise hands for fear of social awkwardness for example.
@@j.2512you could blame zoomers and continue the childish cycle of being bitter, blaming others and insulting them or be a temporary light to guide them. I think every generation before us had the same issues with being seen as "incompetent" by the previous generation once they headed into the workforce. If you see someone who is "incompetent" reach out and offer help or advice, if they refuse or decline, walk away! Have a good one and stay safe.
Many probably knew the answer but just didn't raise their hand, it happens all the time, I end up being the only person answering then some people think I'm really smart but its just that most can't be bothered to raise their hand
I was just about to say what @kelechi_77. I’ve been in both positions (being the only one in class in raise my hand to answer a question, and not raising my hand despite confidently knowing the answer). I assume many students can’t be bothered to, especially when the teacher or professor will answer their own question a few seconds later anyway if nobody answers. It’s just not a very engaging way to interact with 20+, 30+ students at once in my opinion.
I’ve never understood why people see illiteracy and general stupidity as virtuous or cool, but *also* look disgusted at Chris Chan, when really he’s the epitome of those negative traits they seem to like
Chris is the uber-american. He is the avatar of the new man of liberalism, he was simply ahead in the evolution process than the rest
I’d say that’s true of a lot of philosophies or ideologies. In their infancy, they’re only mentally approved of with some changes made to suit them, but it takes a few generations, usually 2-3, to see the full impact, warts and all. So the pro-illiterates like their own stupidity because it doesn’t have consequences yet; it’s just a nice ideal that they can live out with little impact. But a few generations down the road will have to reap the full effects.
As a moderate liberal, don't compare us to that monster!
What I notice most about the issues with modern classrooms is that the curriculum inherently doesn't trust students to be interested in learning; learning being the fundamental faculty of all animals, although special to humans. Children are predisposed to enjoy learning but the formulas for teaching have to meet a quota because of the classroom design: 30-40 students and only 1 teacher (and perhaps a TA). The classroom is basically unengaging because of this. Exceptional students will find it too slow and will either endure it at the expense of their sanity or abandon it. Slower students will fall behind, either because of their actual faculties or environmental problems, neither of which are effectively addressed in the special education program purgatories.
Their methods condition students to expect a right or wrong answer for any given scenario when there may not be one in the real world. The concept of a classroom is especially modern and there is no evidence that it is a good way to educate populations since the standard model is dominant and has relatively no comparison which is consistent with dependent and independent variables. People used to get their education from mentors, they would live with their educated relatives to pick up trades. Or they would educate themselves with genuine autodidacticism.
These methods are historically proven and have given us exceptional people including Michael Faraday (read a lot of books working as a book-binder and went to develop very valuable experiments involving electro-magnetism). Abraham Lincoln (Also read intensely and worked a lot of jobs, we know where he ended up, but more importantly we know how good he was at it for the stress of civil war). Arthur Schopenhauer (he did go to school but disagreed with the philosophical teachings and would read entirely independent of the curriculum). Stanley Kubrick (Hated high school but would go on to be a very literate photographer, chess player, and eventually the most important film-maker). Albert Einstein (He was not bad at school as many myths claim, exceptional at math and science but lacking in history and languages. He was very avoidant of his classes, teaching himself mathematics beyond his years at home. His school staff told albert at 15 that he should leave because he was destroying the respect other students would've had for the teachers. So he left high school and pursued his education while maintaining an independent philosophy on study: to learn for ideas rather than facts. He won the Nobel prize for his work on the photoelectric effect in 1905. While he didn't win one for his special and general theories of relativity, it is still a revolutionary science that remains in contention with our current understandings of quantum physics, particularly in concern with gravity).
There are many more examples, And of people who are both successful and genuine, they are evident not to be limited to those who endured the standard classroom traditionally. What the youth needs in education is interest, not discipline. It is discipline which installs the Geist of antagonism toward challenging thought seen in our young generations, as you observed. What is needed is interest in a manner that does not rely on hyper-attention-grabbing colors or brands or whistles. It must be subtle, and it must respect a child's curiosity.
I say all this as a 17 year old with a lifelong terrible academic record of skipping classes and avoiding all the work to doodle: reading independently and *discovering* beauty in the subjects which classrooms defame was the most important life decision I have made in my past 2 years.
Interesting; thank you for sharing. I'm 37. I have always struggled with formal schooling, but have loved learning on my own. I repaired computers to put myself through college, worked for a few years, started my own firm, and finally sold it a few years ago.
But I learned so much by working on my own car, fixing my own computers, and other hobbies. I wasn't a huge fan of school, but I love learning.
Honestly, I feel I've learned much more, in both relevancy and quantity, after graduating HS. I did exceptional in HS, but it turns out math, science, writing and, hell, even history are actually fun and engaging to grasp when one can go about it at their own pace.
You write very well my man. Keep it up, you know what to do
i never had an interest in school, as i found it too slow and boring because i could ace all my assignments outside of math without studying
i’ve always been a talented writer and big history nerd, so most of my time since around 10 has been spent studying history and writing.
i think people should focus on what they’re want to learn, go as far with it as they can, and try to make something of their lives with it. making students learn material they don’t care about just distracts them from the potential they have studying what they want to and care about.
@@RwandaBob I am not saying you're wrong, but I do think it's important to be well rounded. As I've gotten into my late 30s, I've gotten a lot of insight seeing how history and science come together. Especially when you look at things like social Darwinism and eugenics.
Obviously people should focus on their strengths, but that doesn't mean the other stuff is unimportant.
I was homeschooled growing up, and I only went to actual high school for the last year and a half. I got very competent grades, that I used to go to college, where I graduated with a 4.0 in environmental sciences. With that, I now have a career. My parents weren't the best at teaching the material, nor were they even that strict, but they taught me something more important: to read well and to love learning. That has gotten me further in life than anything I could have actually learned through standardized tests and the standard school system.
As for the television issue, the wife and I decided it was time to stop my boy from watching so much TV. He's not yet 4, and the content was heavily vetted to be actually intelligent and stimulating (though my standards are higher than wifey's), but he was still too glued to it. After a week of no TV, he suddenly became infatuated with the stars and constellations, and he learned more about them through books we have than I even knew. Stories about why the constellations are what they are. He got sick in mid-Feb, and we put the TV on again while he was sitting, bored and out of energy, on the couch. Bad move, he decided to have the same fits as before. This time, after cutting it off, he became interested in space heaters, both electric and propane, and has been drawing them and learning how they work.
Boredom is the key to success, and this neverending content pool is ruining that.
True, when a child has to work for their entertainment and use their imagination it... _shudders_ builds character. Letting kids sit in a zombifed stupors all the time watching skibidi-toilet and family guy clips on tik-tok while playing subway surfers makes them braindead.
Being bored can be good for them.
I’d recommend a book called Bowling Alone. It was published all the way back in the year 2000, and it’s about the decline in civic participation (voting, starting clubs, talking to neighbors, etc.) that occurred in the 1990s (in relation to previous decades), but every single trend in that book is not only still observed today: it’s gotten worse.
Funny story: I work at a gas station in the Midwest. Most people here are usually competent, but I’ve noticed the same exact trend among the youth. And I’m not talking like 12-13, I’m talking about people in high school. A group of high schoolers came into the store wanting to use the restroom. Issue is, we have it closed to the public because of plumbing issues. One of the kids reads it, and they just don’t get it. They asked me what “public restroom” meant. Not “inconvenience”, but “public restroom”. I thought they were screwing with me and I laughed it off but they were dead serious.
This video made me think about that again. And honestly, it makes me want to actively read again.
Nobody knows how to read a register closed sign or “emergency exit” sign. I also always have to go help people pump gas because they can’t follow the instructions on the pump (although I’ll give them a little credit as it’s a little confusing compared to the norm) - another Midwest gas station clerk
My other problem with twitter is that everyone and *literally everyone* wants to get a leg up on you and think that they can read you like a book. They are just so engrossed in the fantasies of roasting everyone that there is no room for actual mature discussion. And the worst part. They are *everywhere.* it has gotten to the point that you can tell who has and who has not used Twitter by that alone.
You're white
I know just what you mean man! They always have this feeling of being inferior but also superior at the same time so they chose to tear others down and put themselves on a pedestal instead of engaging in meaningful conversations.
This leads to people being heavily shamed for behaving the way they are expected to conduct themselves as adults, respecting others and their feelings, being able to read at a college level and being mature.
It's like the twitter crowd get off on being mean causing people to avoid human interaction in fear of being insulted for being "to dumb" or "to smart". Nobody reaches out for help or reaches out to help.
Their parents, skools, and society have failed them so badly that humanity will be on a steady decline for the next 40 years, maybe not to extinction but definitely less progress and function.
Thanks for the comment, have a good one and stay safe!
People may have laughed it off, but Fahrenheit 451 is really becoming our reality.
The degree to which all of this shit is happening VOLUNTARILY is fucking mental.
In all my 23 years in this life, I have only now just learned that Ignorance and Apathy go hand and hand.
Why go through the effort of reading a book and engage with it in any meaningful way? When you can watch a video of a guy who tells you everything that happens.
Why learn a new language? When everyone speaks the same tongue.
Why place effort into making your own conclusions on any subject? When someone or something can do it for you.
Why resist the Old and Ugly Face of Tyranny? When submission is all too easy...
Slightly unrelated, but I’m really impressed that Emp could do all these rants while driving. I’m omw to taking my drivers test and I’m psyched out behind the wheel. Even if it’s just a straight highway I feel like I can’t relax on the road. Idk, just the anxiety talking
You’ve got this soldier, just think about the beers you get to drink once your provisional license test is out of the way. A smooth drive comes your way my friend
Like with all things, driving gets far easier with practice, especially driving on the interstate as it seems Emp's doing. Good luck on your test, you got this!
Hope you passed chief, and if you didn't then don't feel too bad about it. Now you know what it's like and you can focus on improving instead of being nervous about it.
It's something that comes with time, like riding a bike or handwriting. You really learn to do it by moving simple processes/parts from your conscious to your subconscious. This is "muscle memory" you drive through tacit understanding and then you have the conscious focused part of your brain to talk as long as you aren't responding to something sudden/unexpected. It's called subsidiary-focal integration in epistemology
Also don't stress about the driving test, bc learning is that subsidiary focal integration, we overthink stuff by pulling it into the focal/conscious mind and "undoing" learning for a time, like rewriting a word over and over until you don't know if it's spelled right anymore. You can always retake the test, you got the instructor with you, it's light work and totally inconsequential if you don't pass your first time 😁
Driving becomes second nature the more you do it.
My mother taught me how to read at age 4, and it is single-handedly the greatest gift she has given me.
Reading has been my doorway to so much art, science, and other people's experiences, I am infinitely grateful for it all.
Merci maman!
the flip side is that books suck now, literally everything is a NYT bestseller
And when every book is a best-seller: none will be the best-seller.
And then book discussions are all filled with people who buy and critique best sellers, perpetuating this ouroboros style cycle of best sellers...
Theres always good stuff being put out just ignore the sales/bestseller promotional angle (it's all bs if you look into it anyway anything selling a few copies can be a NYT bestseller)
It's a NYT best seller!
_list is 5000 books long and it is # 4462_
"Engaging and imaginative" says Literaryophile ~ A twitter "reviewer" astroturf account run by the writer.
Just read classics? There's more than enough books buddi fuck da best salads
"Among the tribe he no longer had friends as of old. A little child may find companionship in many strange and simple creatures, but to a grown man there must be some semblance of equality in intellect as the basis for agreeable association." - Edgar Rice Burroughs, _Tarzan of The Apes_ ,1912
Brilliant book by the way, highly recommend.
"Wouldn't you rather be closer Stephen Hawking than a cow ?" Well no, not anymore.
it wasn't him it was Stephen HAWKIN not HAWKING
This video is like being scolded by your dad. Painful but true.
As a high school teacher and a guy who is keeping up with the 2020s trends, I think the thing is that the 2020s are all about blending in, and not standing out. In the 2020s you generally need to pretend like the 2010s didn't happen. The 2010s were all about having an identity and expressing yourself as an individual, or as a part of a fandom or a culture. Conversely, the 2020s are all about not having any identity at all and feigning ignorance to anything abnormal or complicated. It's simply better to pretend to not know about something.
I think the first time I really saw it was last year when I was watching one of Leafy's Rumble streams, and he pretended to not know what gay sex was. Like genuinely he was just like "Wait what? They do what? Why do you people in chat know about that? BBC? What? Why do you people know what that means? What? It's a news station also? Oh it's British? Why do you people watch British news? Who are you people? Are British people invading my chat?"
And the chat immediately caught on. By acting knowledgeable about gay sex, they look gay, and Leafy, comparatively, looked super straight.
It's just the 2020s being the 2020s. Being a grey blur is simply _in_ right now. It's very much Patrick Bateman culture, which is likely a major reason why years ago people online started idolizing the character so much; he mirrors the aspiration to be a unique little psychopath only on the inside, and an unrecognizable suit on the outside.
But hey. Frankly I'm just glad this got Emp off of Twitter. I've criticized Emp for being a hypocrite in that matter for way too long, and I'm glad he's finally gotten off. Honestly ever since I got off of Twitter, my life has improved drastically. It really is the first step towards a happier life.
You picked like the strangest possible example but I totally get your point. If you look at any popular streamer now their whole gimmick is being fucking idiots. Just watch that clip of Adin Ross looking up the definition of Facism that kinda says it all.
Perhaps it has something to do with the cultural tension. It seems as if it might’ve flared up around 2015ish, and seems to have persisted to the present. Notice how people would go on social media witch hunts against other fandoms or functionally tribes. Then being a fan of a particular show/podcast or what have you, would place a target on your back if people knew about it.
So in response people tried to groom theirselves for mass appeal. To either duck criticism or prevent themselves from being pidgin-holed into a demographic that could limit their social media appeal. As many young people aspire to be social media famous or are molded by it. (Or both)
What I think could be a factor is socially kids what to be widely liked and you probably catch them in a place where the social pressure is high. I can see it as a School Bus Driver. There are things that just about everyone knows about, but don’t wanna be hit with the “Well of course you’d know about that.” I have a few more theories, but I’d probably be typing all day and it would never feel complete.
that first paragraph really answered some questions for me, i never thought about it that way.
@@GlobinHDI fully believe Aiden Ross doesn’t know want fascism is.
Honestly most people a warped idea of what it is, yourself included
@@EggEnjoyer No I mean he literally couldn’t even pronounce most of the words in the google definition.
I completely agree with the sentiment that people seem to have some proud attitude towards being willfully ignorant and i will never understand why. i've literally been asked in real life "why do you talk like that" when using vocabulary words beyond a 3rd grader. the first time i was asked this i was genuinely too stunned to give a response. i do wonder what makes people want to be willfully ignorant, do they see it as a revolt against the system? because it is quite the opposite if that's the case.
I told someone "you are very personable" and they said "wait is that a word? Really? Personable? I don't think that's a word.."
I was just dumbfounded. Like... huh?
@@ThatSilverDude dumbfounded? like.. you found "the dumb"? you're making that up, c'mon
@@spacebassist Seriously, next he'll say he's stupid -ified or something, lol
you're right with your last point. the system is strengthened by willfully ignorant people who don't put thought into their decisions
My *boss* commented on me "using big words" after I said "comparatively" 🤦🏻♂️ he's a great guy and our work doesn't require much education, but I don't think he's read anything outside of money-making business philosophy books since hs
I remember arguing with people on some discord server every once in a while, which to my understanding use twitter frequently, due to how much they complain about it and what types of image macros they use... and I was left completely dumbfounded once I realized they didn't understand the terms "Intuition" and "Anorexic". Not only that, but they proceeded to argue how not knowing such terms from adult life is normal, as if they were some complex scientific jargon used for purple prose.
These people didn't know *basic* terms you hear in your daily life. They lacked understanding in the English language itself. Now I wonder why the fuck did i waste so much of my time taking them so seriously. My user experience had honestly gotten better after I stopped taking everything people say seriously.
it's beyond easy to look up what a word means and write it down in your notes app of choice, that's depressing as hell lmao
i feel like it's partly insecurity from being just average at school or not having certain "talents" that got other people attention and praise. it doesn't take a lot of self-belief to learn the fundamentals of something, it doesn't take belief at all to just memorise what a word means.
they probably just accepted those years of life as representing the rest of it (outside of a school setting, where we're free to look up what we want and get good at a hobby in privacy)
that's my guess anyway, i loved reading since i was a kid and it's becoming clearer to me that being anti-reading is the most iridescent red flag that could ever burn your eyes
@@spacebassistIm 22 and in college rn and I have had reality slap me in the face so hard with how idiotic people are. I always looked up words and subjects i did not understand and studied them to simply gain knowlege all while assuming everyone else does too. People in the real world do not. I have had friends, co workers and fellow COLLEGE students of mine be blown away by me knowing words I learned in the third grade but then insulting me for not knowing others that are uncommon. Meanwhile, they would ask what a word meant or what context to use it in but not take 20 seconds out of their 8 hours of scrolling through tik tok a day to just Google the word. They ask a question, nobody gives them an answer, they forget it in 10 seconds and move on.
Like you said, it does not take much to learn the fundamentals of something. That's the issue however, it's a fundamental for human survival so it might as well be like learning physics for many people nowadays, unfortunately.
It is so much easier for people to gain knowledge now and sharpen their minds but they refuse to put the effort in in fear of being shamed for being smart or seen as "not cool" by people that they have never met before lol!
The fact that people think intelligence and knowlege is a bad thing and insult others for it is heartbreaking. Sure, it can be lonely but you can solve more problems, big or small, and help others in need because you are capable in doing so. I'd say that's more fulfilling and freeing than sitting around and insulting others for being smarter than you and spinning your tires in the mud when problems do arise.
Have a good one and stay safe!
@@John_Doe_84 now in fairness, there's nothing inherently that wrong with asking people to explain what a word means. it can ignite conversation and it allows you to learn how to become a better teacher
@@grammajam3682 excellent point! Aint nothing wrong with wanting knowlege or to be a better teacher as the only way to grow, is by asking questions and talking to others. But I have been on both ends of that situation. Sometimes when you ask what a word means, people often insult you for not knowing it. I am guilty of that myself. Happens alot with my parents. They are both in their 60s and since I am in college, they expect me to know everything lol.
I want to be a teacher for people, it gives me fulfillment seeing people grow first hand. So, what you said is true and perhaps I have bad luck with meeting and talking to people. People I meet seem to dislike having full blown conversations they can learn from just by asking a question.
In my experiance, people apper to be curious but do not put in the effort to ask or answer questions.
Have you had similar experiences? Or are you simply better than me lol!
Thanks for the reply
@@John_Doe_84 i don't mean to imply that i think i'm better than you. with my social circle, we're usually always eager to learn from each other and any one who doesn't want to learn, you can avoid them
i think people being curious but unwilling to ask questions is simply a by-product of them being socially underdeveloped from our shift away from conversing with people in person. i think it's fruitless to blame the common person for this because i believe the world's smartest people are engineering us to be distant from each other and in our own shells
and likewise, thanks for the reply
I googled it. In the us the literacy rate is 79% as of 2022
so says that study. the reality is more widespread lack of literacy because of the capacity of surveyed individuals being in participating schools.
Emp did a good job of explaining how literacy isn't a binary measure (literate / illiterate) in the video. Trying to bring it down to a single number is almost meaningless. It's better to approach literacy as a concept, and a skill everyone should be constantly trying to improve.
@@PsRohrbaughlike everything in life, literacy is a spectrum and the Overton window of it feels like it's being shifted to the illiterate side rather than the literate side
I'm pretty sure those "Huh? What?" accounts are bots (mostly blue checkmarks) trying to farm engagement
I genuinely can't tell if that's better or worse
It is for the worse, because it not also buries the meaningful responses (that's if there even was one to begin with,) but they distract and deviates from the original topic of what the main tweet was about. The current system rewards short attention spams, not information.
I definitely have noticed a rise in anti-intellectualism. I'm not going to proffer any explanations as to why this might be the case, but it appears that being erudite is becoming more and more shameful or ugly.
Don't know about wmen, but with guys I think part of it comes from them viewing reading books/displaying intellect in general as unmanly and I'm sure you've noticed that we're living more and more in an era where dumb, brash caveman type dudes are taking over everything. In my opinion, the West is barely even a civilization at this point because to have a civilization, you need civility and cooperation among the majority of the populous. What we're living in now is more akin to a tribal society.
Being an intellectual is a sign that you’re capable of free thought. Modern culture does not like free thought. Modern culture wants you to be ignorant because, the moment you decide to become a knowledgeable individual, you become a **knowledgeable individual** . Knowledge is power and individuality is “dangerous.” The average twitter user does not want to be intellectually challenged in any way, shape, or form simply because they do not want to risk being exposed to free thought. And free thought… well…
that’s just scary
and evil
and scary
@@yarlodek5842 being an intellectual nowadays just means supporting the current thing and parroting the typical woke marxist postmodern talking points ,
@@j.2512No, it’s just that “woke” ideas hold up against scrutiny.
@@j.2512being marxist and postmodern is oxymoronic. Please stop listening to Jordan Peterson.
W Emp. Twitter is an absolute blight on society
So are those tunnel diggers stealing our money. Oh wait Elon bows to them too.
@@Gigadoomer13 THE UNDERMINER?!
The literate shall inherit the earth.
On the subject of the 31:00 mark, have you seen the breakdowns of how cable networks have sped up reruns of sitcoms by 10% of the original pace in order to have more space for commercials?
Nah, the barbarian smashes the skull of the scholar. We are in the middle of the civilizational cycle where the grug-brained will inherit the earth and only once all the panem et circenses the intelligent made and maintained break down will the value of knowledge be reinstated and slowly rebuilt.
tl;dr: People won't wake up until their VR porn and McDonalds stops
Lol no they won't
This put literally everything I've been feeling about the modern internet and society into words. I'm not exactly a genius, but I do use my brain and it severely frustrates me that nobody else I know does that because "It's elitist". I'm not saying complex stuff either, I'm using regular vocabulary that I've known since elementary school and people don't understand me. How am I supposed to have a conversation when these people refuse to engage with anything beyond "Red had ball, ball gone, red sad." I know these people have brains, they should actually put them to use.
Edit: Also grammar. For fuck's sake. It's the simplest part of English. You don't have to be perfect, and I'm not asking for much. Nobody with any serious background writes like "2mro gna do my 4th with my 2 besties bda". Unironically, that is so much harder to understand. It's frustrating to try and read. It's not that hard to type a sentence and at least attempt to spell and punctuate properly.
This. So much this. It's not even the fact that the people complaining about this are necessarily extremely intelligent. Hate to use in-group vocabulary, but all we're doing is what should be the average. People are just that unwilling to learn and, honestly, unwilling to grow that going beyond anything other than a basic understanding is somehow too much effort.
I see this so much in my life. "Oh doing X thing just takes up so much time" - when the thing in question takes 10 minutes maximum.
About the grammar thing, nothing is more hilarious and frustrating than getting ENGLISH assignments from my ENGLISH TEACHER with all sorts of typos.
I got off social media (except youtube) and started reading books again. It blows my mind how shallow twitter tends to be compared to your average book. Once you wean yourself off it it's hard to go back.
I think that this may be partially due to the fact that the limitations we have are rapidly being destroyed by people who think the answer is making everything easier to replicate.
Nature gives us natural barriers to overcome but now that we dont have many left we are stuck with people who do not want to be challenged to create or just exist
Those people always existed. The difference is that before, they would till fields from the age of ten and die by 30. Technological progress has allowed the golem caste the ability to express itself, and unsurprisingly what they have to say is meaningless and worthless.
@@All4Tanuki legit braintard if you think the majority of the working class died at 30
Whenever I see a word I don't know, I LOVE to learn about what it means. It's such a shame I can't seem to find anyone who likes doing the same.
fellow word-lover here, i have a ton saved but honestly only remember maybe 30-40% of them. i still enjoy reading but summoning the real fancy words (like uh... stentorian) is a challenge and i tend to think of "easier" alternatives far quicker
makes me wonder how often i'd use them if i remembered more
i feel like i over use a word after i learn it or encounter it when i usually don't
god i love this video format, its like i've been kidnapped and the driver is going on an pcp induced rant as we drive towards a cliff, its somewhat relaxing
Wow that's a fun way to view it. Glad I found this channel
Same dude, I just found it yesterday. A true gem
I finally discovered this offshoot channel of yours, and you’re 100% right. However, this video essay has made me remember things about my childhood. In Middle School, I thought I was a genius, and every day I’d rant about how school is giving us useless information. How we’re getting dumber because of school, and how we shouldn’t care as much about it.
8 years later, I feel like people similar to my younger self caused this whole disaster. Nobody cares about school. The students don’t care if they do well, they’ll just be ushered along because why bother trying. I’ve heard about Freshman unable to read children’s books, Seniors unable to write paragraphs. Knowing that everyday people need an explanation for 3 sentences baffles me, one can only hope we as a species can course correct our way out of this.
Recently I’ve realized just how much I’ve forgotten how to read, how to write, and so on. I definitely need to touch up on my literacy. I can make sense of paragraphs, but it takes me a long time to write something that makes sense while bringing my point across. For Christ’s sake, I only know one language. I shouldn’t be sucking at the one language I use.
Kudos. It takes a big person to admit they ain't the sharpest tool in the shed. I, myself, should probably read more books too.
i see writing as being like a muscle. reading obviously helps massively because you can pick apart sentence structure and how other people arrange their ideas, but practice is the main thing to grow your understanding and after a while you can see major changes.
some of your older stuff at that point can be a little weird or make you question what you were thinking, but it's a sign you've grown
i say this as someone who badly wants to write fiction so i have to keep up with it too or i'll never get anything done
The only people who think big words are pretentious are people who feel insecure because they don't know what the word means
people misreading what little is written is what's killing me
Internet used to be less accessible. You see the hobos on the street? They were offline up until a few years ago.
This is the key. We need to escape into more obscure spaces and leave twitter etc to the brainless, swarthy masses
@@All4Tanuki i spotted you before calling them the "golem caste" and i'm a little concerned you think too much on this and with a lot of spite. at the least i can see it as tragic and "this better not lead to ruin" but saying that feels like you may as well call them sheep
i feel like adding that talking to people irl kinda shows you that they do think on things. they don't prioritise the same stuff and you're bound to hear some "confession" like they watch netflix all the time or only care about cars but more people are willing to have a chat than you think. it's just a little unfortunate right now, everyone's anxious to initiate because we're more withdrawn
@spacebassist 4channer. Don't bother.
I kept thinking of the comedic film "Idiocracy" all throughout the video but especially during the instances in which you mentioned illiterate individuals feeling proud of being dumb. Sometimes it does seem like we're approaching the society describe in that movie, which if you haven't watched I absolutely recommend you to do.
Very good film.
How fitting he’s so angry and he looks like the hulk.
In all seriousness, the real reason people don’t care about reading is that they have no incentive to read when they have unlimited information that can be given to them at any time. It’s like a kid that is constantly given money for their entire life, and they never learn to be financially responsible.
But you can read when you’re on the internet if i couldn’t read than all of the words in your comment when just appear as crap in my brain but it’s not since it has enough meaning to my head that i am making a comment on it
@@staringcorgi6475 reading comprehension is different than understanding grammar
When people talk about how they have left Twitter, I always thank myself for not getting one in the first place. In all seriousness, this has been a topic I've thought about myself for some time. I work a sad retail job at the moment (Covid lockdowns destroyed my last job and it's been though getting back to normal, but that's another topic) and at that job, I've seen tons of kids wandering around staring at Ipads with parents who speak like, as you said, cavemen. It's a sad sight of parents who don't care dooming their children to stupidity.
On one hand, I can sympathize with people who struggle to read as I had issues with it all throughout school and even through college (my issues mostly came when reading fiction as I had a hard time visualizing a story), but having spent the last few years using much of my spare time at work or in waiting rooms reading, I can tell you, it is much better to read an engaging or informative book, than to waist hours on junk videos.
Funny enough, I got better at reading after college at my retail job, I got two fifteen minute breaks and a one hour lunch I ended up using this time to do reading while everyone else was on their phones. I can tell you, that doing that was one of the best decisions I made working the job because over two years, I went from slow reading to being able to get through a decent sized book in two to three days.
I think the numbing effect of TV, TikTok, etc., may be one of the most sinister aspects of them because not only are you not engaging with the work being shown, you end up waisting so much time without even realizing it.
Anyway, those are my thoughts. I could go on, but you get the idea. Thanks for discussing this, it needed to be said, even if to a small group of people.
Growing up, one of the most important leason I leanred from a certain message board on the early internet was the phrase *"Lurk more."* Im willing to bet it was rhe same for you, Emp.
it's better to read/listen first, then think about it, then maybe say something about it
@@tcscomment Some lessons, valuable ones, come only through practice and embarrassment. Or well, it will definitely teach you faster, if you don't resent it
I'm pretty sure when they say "brevity is the essence of wit" didn't mean we should all dumb down everything to the lowest common denominator, but "No Child Left Behind" amirite?
Tbh, I can't help but wonder how those readers would respond if you asked them a question like "How would you feel if you didn't eat Breakfast this morning?"
There's no perfect solution. It's beyond human ability to have a broad and deep understanding of all subject matters. There's a benefit to being succinct - but certain topics also require details and context.
"Wut? I did eated brekfist today, y r u sayin I diddnt?"
I love that question for determining if someone can understand hypotheticals.
“What is break fast?”
Brevity? Wuts Dat mean?? What does essence mean??
I’ve noticed it in myself, too. I get frustrated when I read books sometimes because my brain is so fried from low-quality content.
I used to read Stephen King (old works, mainly) and horror/science/fantasy novels.
Now I can barely get through a comic book or an in-game text without my eyes glazing over.
It frustrates me to no end, and I intend to change that and cut out as much garbage content as I can.
Good video!
Yeah, me too. It worries me.
In-game text? Yikes now I’m REALLY glad I never frequented X much. Best of luck on getting your literacy back on track. :)
@joshbuoy8661 it's fucking grueling. I have developed the same issue, especially with game text. Books I can still manage, but an interactive medium with instant gratification just programs you against taking in words unless they're extremely simple. It's like selective dyslexia, it sucks
You're describing low reading comprehension, which has always been a thing particularly among those in low income environments. Does social media make it worse? Probably a little, but having to spend any time with kids in low reading level groups back in school taught me at a young age that a lot of people just suck at reading.
Yep, even when I was at school in a relatively low income area the amount of people in high school that couldn’t even read words like “excessive” and would run off sentences constantly just seemed normal to me. I thought I was just really good at reading 😂
But low income people increasingly have access to the internet and public education is a thing. I’m from a family that makes slightly below minimum wage (blue colar work) however i still am able to read paragraphs and type paragraphs well
no, its common in black people
@@j.2512of course the dude who complained about wokeness is a literal racist.
@@staringcorgi6475yeah but public education (specially in the inner cities) historically has not been great and has been consistently defunded. Combine that with the lack of investment in these neighborhoods and the closing of spaces that would encourage reading (like libraries) and things are a lot more complex than they look.
It’s sad, I own lots of books I want to read but have never read because it’s so much more gratifying to sit and watch youtube videos. I can’t imagine growing up today with unlimited access to the internet. The commodification of attention is ruining all of us.
Come to think of it, the current brainrot of the general young population comes with its strengths and weaknesses- those who are literate and can articulate themselves at a somewhat advanced level have the opportunity to be way ahead of their current generation, giving them advantages in fields like business.
However, given the standards for requiring critical thinking and discipline are currently disappearing, many important roles in society are losing the quality it once provided (eg teaching) and/or the safety of others which is entrusted with someone who must do their job correctly (pilots or similar roles). This is a somewhat concerning matter for “gen z” since we will in fact grow up being a little older than “gen alpha” while all services and utilities in society will be run by them. I’m hoping for some kind of change that doesn’t make the future seem so grim.
they are automating the technically skilled jobs and leaving the minimum wage souless mindless jobs for people. So thats what current trends incentivize.
"Everyone is so numbed by the sun that if you use a three-syllable word they think you're a professor." -Lester
The educational gap is ever widening. There are kids coming out of high school that are super smart and some that never should have moved on from elementary school. It's a shame that the majority on social media are the latter.
I deleted my twitter a few years ago too. There's nothing of value on that site. 4chan has anonymity and funny posts, reddit is mostly trash but there's still a few small niche communities I like to visit, and instagram has good meme accounts, but twitter has nothing, none, 0. I urge anyone still on twitter to leave that site for good and do literally anything else.
Reddit can be really useful, when i have xthing problem i type xthing reddit on google and i have actual ressource
Normie reddit is a cesspit, but the communities that used to have their own forums are usually good.
I'm a car guy and follow make and model specific sub's, namely the Honda Fit sub as I'm a Fit owner myself. That's people who are all passionate about something getting together to discuss it constructively, not the updoot farming you normally see.
You need to cut out Insta and reddit in that list too. Frankly 4chan has gotten terrible over the last decade too, but it was always terrible.
@@MidlifeCrisisJoe 4chan has gotten so much exposure and that lead to 4chan stop being interesting site and just another site to whimp about stuff.
The only good thing about Twitter is art, because the format it has, while atrocious for discussion, is actually great for art. Now that I think about it, an awful social media that pollutes the minds but is actually quite effective for art? Why, isn't that just Tumblr?
Your analysis on television... Yes. My grandparents wake up and turn on the TV, and it's on the entire day until they go to bed. Born in 1934 / 1936 respectively.
Have you read "Amusing Ourselves to Death"? You basically already agree with it but I think it would make everything a lot clearer
I fear for the future of public libraries because of this
Really, the thing that's killing libraries the death of physical media by corporations pushing the slow burn of eliminating personal property.
The whole concept of "you'll own nothing and be happy" is a part of this, where they're turning everyone into renters of media, not owners of it. Libraries can't function in a world where everything is rented - they're bad for the business model.
I never got into Twitter. I have an account on there but I've used it maybe... Half a dozen times in a decade?
I just don't get Twitter. I don't understand it at all. It's just a vessel for removing context. It makes no sense at all. Tweeting gets everyone in trouble.
As an Internet veteran since the early 90s, my biggest lesson I've learned is, don't feed the trolls. Feeding the trolls is what gets 99% of people in trouble.
This is the moment where Emplemon became Heisenberg.
The only thing I'll add here, though, is that it is apparent to me that Twitter is very far from a good source for a reflection of society. As bad as the world may seem on there, the world itself is nothing like it. Funny enough, my realization of this kinda enabled me to utilize my technology in a healthy way.
I would like to shout out to Minecraft, it indirectly encouraged 4 year old me to read more. At first it was so I could figure out what each thing was, but then it turned into communicating with others through text in multiplayer, which meant that I needed to read and write. That turned into reading wiki pages and informative books on ingame actions and techniques, which then turned into writing commands and making mods, which required to me to learn programming terms. It may haven't been much, but it sure did encourage me to read more and it got me into programming.
No TL;DR, read the comment please.
I agree with almost all of this except for the TV causing the Illiteracy, kind of. Given how much Animation was made specifically for Illiterate Soldiers in the World Wars. Though the ease of access, Bad Parenting, a desire to Rebel against what’s seen as Educated Blindness, Ineffective Education, and the Neverland Syndrome being boosted highly by wanting to escape an increasingly Terrifying, Complicated World that’s constantly fed through various News Outlets. All that which you’ve mentioned all culminates in Fear and Risk Aversion or even just Aversion to any Challenge. The Ultimate Killer of Drive, Ingenuity, Creativity, and Passion. We’re seeing the Collective Consciousness dissected and experimented with in Real Time, like we always have. But now on a Truly Global Scale.
What? Huh? I’m confused, context?
It is
Could someone summarize the transcript of this video?
I trolled emp on Twitter so hard that he quit
Whhuaaaaat?
TL;DR - Pwnd
uuuuuummmmmm uhhhhhhhhhh uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh UMMMMMMMMMMMMMM UUUUUUUUUUUUH
*TWENTY-FOUR!*
"READ A BOOK!"
I'm glad you share the same sentiment as I do, Emp. All throughout my years of schooling I was heralded as an English prodigy, and it always pissed me off. Being able to read aloud without stuttering or asking "DURR what's that word mean?? How do i pronounce it???" Shouldn't be an achievement for someone who's an undergraduate. Hell it shouldn't be an achievement for someone in high school. OR EVEN MIDDLE SCHOOL!
I've come to hate being around the average person because it seems as though everyone has intelligence on par with a fuckin' Speak & Spell
As a kid I had a lot of difficulty learning to read and writing it's been a weird issue I've had. I read slowly and still have a lot of trouble with grammar in particular and reading more than 10 pages of anything causes some pretty bad headaches but at the very least I try. I can comprehend what I'm reading. I can write sentences. I can use vocabulary. English might have been a difficult subject for me to learn but at least I tried at all. I don't often comment on things and that's mostly because responses I receive are almost always unrelated to anything I said at all like they didn't bother reading what I said. I find it weird that people can't often engage with me in any way near intellectual. I feel empathetic for people who have trouble learning to read and use grammar because it's something I've struggled with a bit more than I'd like to admit but I don't understand the amount of people with no reading comprehension or no desire to use their reading comprehension. Oftentimes when I'm talking about an opinion I have, it also feels like it's beneficial for them to not be able to comprehend what I'm saying so they can disagree with what I said and not respond to any evidence to the contrary of what they believe in. Not even wanting to interact with the other side of an issue but also trying to make a point about something without basic understanding of the other side is a huge issue I've noticed too. Not really related to the video but it does frustrate me.
You can write sentences but jfc you sure can't format them. Paragraph breaks bro. Every two to three sentences, hit the enter key.
You took the words out of my mouth. I relate plenty to the things you say. Ever since I was a kid I've had a hard time reading and writing, but to put it shortly, I feel as if I'm decent regarding everything else, I learned how to speak and write in English all by myself, I can read essays and news articles, I can listen to really longform content (2-5 hours) and absorb all the content and write about it.
But writing an essay myself, or writing a story despite loving fiction, do anything with my own handwriting? I become a nervous wreck. And when I read an actual book on my hands? I can understand what is being written, I even feel excited to read, but my thoughts become so turbulent at one point that I eventually drop the book and never touch it again, it's like I can't have my entire world ever be just me and tiny letters on a page.
Finally someone else talks about this, I always felt like I was just going insane
A couple of things...
First, since at least the 90s, there has been a grade inflation as well as general cheating scandals by teachers to push out as many As as possible while passing standardized testing. I remember reading that in the 90s, roughly half of all high school graduates were functionally illiterate. Makes sense within this context, and sparked concerns which lead to "No Child Left Behind."
Second, since the lockdowns, more parents have started to homeschool. Prior to this revelation, parents treated schools as free daycare, so as to work two jobs. So children were left without their parents. Remember the 90s kids were called the Nintendo generation for that reason, and you had a hit song "The kids ain't right" by Offspring which summarized the situation. Shoot, in the 80s, you had "Another brick in the wall" describing the exact same situation. In essence, since the 1970s, people knew what the problem is, but most simply did not care enough, till the lockdowns. That is when reality hit families in the face hard, and parents, for the first time, woke up to reality, and were forced to be parents.
Third, there is always hope for further education down the line. After graduation, there is nothing stopping adults from studying and learning more. Just that right now, those who are dumb happen to be able to benefit from those in power. They don't know why they do something so self-destructive, but it brings them that immediate happiness provided by some government official standing on their corpses. Problem is, even rats flee such a paradise, so to will those who realize something is wrong, and try to improve themselves.
I think the issue stems from our society having such loads of information at the tips of our fingers. They take it for granted. People want the end product only. They want an opinion without the effort it takes to read an article, so they just skim a headline. They want knowledge without the effort to learn, hence Google. "Why would I bother to learn it myself when the information is right there if I ever need it" They want art without the toil of creating it, hence A.I.
We are a society of consumers, and sadly Art and Knowledge are now just commodities to be consumed, not passions to be pursued. The Elites are getting what they want, mindless consumers. Don't Think, Consume. Marvel Fans come to mind.
I like some of the art on twitter but everything else on there is garbage. Worse than reddit, the only thing that might be worse is CZcams comments, but at least those are an optional part of the yt experience
it is a fucking travesty that online artists decided to use Twitter for their work after tumblr fell instead of literally any other better website
@@toolofthelord that you thought tumblr was ever good shows a severe lack of taste on your part though. How embarrassing.
This seems less like an issue of literacy, and more like an issue of people with a poor reading comprehension and a lack of ability to do basic research. I doubt that someone's proficiency in a specific language like English has as much of an effect.
It's people growing up and not reading, not trying to learn on their own and do research, not being taught by their parents or teachers to understand, but to just consume.
It's not their ability to speak a language, it's their ability to process information in general.
I believe that is mostly the point being made in this video. If that's true, I think it could be better expressed if you made this distinction. Nvm if not though
I completely agree with this
Becoming an adult is realizing that the majority of people are squarely around room temp IQ.
"Mabey the curtains were just blue" we have never recovered
Why tell us the curtans are fucking blue if it doesn't fucking matter?
@@vienlacrose because sometimes the curtains being blue does matter, sometimes writing does have a deeper meaning, sometimes it is important to be able to mentally take apart a concept and try to see what it means.
I think this video finally made me realize the link between the lower levels of literacy (beginning in my generation, the millennials) to the declining quality of media. Not all of it is bad, but I find it very hard to watch any recent media of the last 10 years or so. I am constantly re-watching older things. It just feels like a lot of newer media has a lower quality of writing. I keep wondering if the quality really has gone down or if I'm just being a boomer.
I also feel like that the more I engaged with social media or any recent cinema the more my literacy level goes down. I think I need to quit doom scrolling twitter and just read books for awhile. I need to quit twitter like you. Anyway keep up the good work, I enjoy your videos both here and on the main channel.
maybe i'm just coping since all i ever had growing up was the newer media, but i do genuinely believe that the best media of today is better than everything that came before it. at least that's what i hope. i think people who really try to make the best art possible will learn and iterate on all the previous generations before them, granting them at least the potential to surpass them. i just think that the number of those "people who really try" is shrinking smaller and smaller due to the problems emp describes in this video.
most media is written by gen x rather than millenials. Some guy called it millenial writting and stuck but literally every example he mentions like Dan Harmon, Josh Whedon or Mindi Kalig are all Gen x
I have a hard time enjoying newer media, too. Sometimes it may well be the fault of the writers, other times it’s probably studios interfering trying to appeal to the masses or some imaginary audience. I hold out hope that sooner or later there will be another renaissance in film and television, but it’s hard waiting. I think I’m most hopeful about smaller productions that come from people who don’t have to compromise their creative integrity.
This is gold. He's basicaly impressed with the level of stupidity in society.
It's incredibly strange to me how this is happening while at the same time these super long form video essays are getting extremely popular on CZcams. Maybe it's like you said and it's just people on Twitter, but I swear it doesn't make sense. Maybe its the classic redditor type of person who likes to think they're super smart and are the kind of people to watch Veritasium but not actually get any usable information out of it. They're the same people who are confused that they can spend hours on video games and be focused, but when they have to read a textbook or anything more than a 240 character tweet they're just totally lost.
The thing you said about Boomers always watching TV is certainly true about Gen Z as well, just switch out TV for anything smart-device. Whether they're doomscrolling tiktok for hours on end, or being unable to eat a meal without having some shitty video essay piped through their headphones, it's all the same. Combine that with AI generating things like pictures, videos, art with just a one sentence prompt and it makes it really hard to look hopefully at the future.
Sorry for the rant basically restating what you already said in your rant. I guess what I mean to say is the things you're saying very much resonate with the things I and other people are also seeing.
Long form video essays becoming popular seems good, until you realize how many of the viewers will just not care about the thing after they've watched it. It's like TV documentaries, you don't have to do research, the information just gets cherry-picked and fed to you, and then you can go ahead and pretend to know about some topic by quoting the couple parts of the video you remember.
@@TheManster22 True most people jump to video essay are for money and prestige sake rather than having a particular deep interest on a particular subject
Speaking as a frequent viewer of these - they're little more than background noise that makes you feel smart for viewing it. I am well aware there is far more to these videos, and not all of them are entirely that bad, yet the fact is that almost no one sits down and watches that stuff. It's just playing on like a TV in the living room, and if the content creator has their video essay voice on, you passively feel smart for hearing some of the words. Bet you anything that's what over half the views amount to.
Most people just want to put these on while they're doing chores or playing games. Just to have something to listen to in the background. Basically, another type of "friendship simulator" content, like 5+ hour streams and such. Much like people used to do with talk radio or TV back in the day.
I'm sure someone else has mentioned this, but just in case, there was an overview of the American Education System in September of 2020, through data collected over 5 years by Gallup, which concluded that 130 million Americans between the ages of 16 and 74 have a literacy level below a 6th grader. That's 54%. Always take studies with a grain of salt because there's always bias involved, but even if that estimate is off by 10%, that is still startling.
Wait, you're saying that as we've flooded the country with waves of immigration and shut the country down so the kids already here couldn't be taught in person and constantly encourage parents to let kids get raised on their phones instead of caring for them might result in negative learning environments?
Explain in football terms.
Eyyyy kenny!
I think the education system is partially to blame. I was in an environment where I was made to feel bad or weird or different for being able to answer questions, and understand the material. This was combined with being in classes that were painfully dull and easy. I say this as someone who was a slacker in K-12, and not an overachieving, glasses emoji bookworm playing chess or whatever image comes up with what I'm about to type. There's a pervasive amount of anti-intellectualism in American culture today and fear of being "uncool" or "cringe". I think aspects of this slacker ethos and "too cool to care" mentality could arguably go back to the beatnik or hippie generations, but it really reached its apex with the advent of sarcasm and irony booming in the late 80s into the 90s. Television shows like the Simpsons helped popularize this constant ironic or sarcasm bent. Yes, the Simpsons may be a quality show or had something to say, but as a byproduct (no, I'm not saying The Simpsons are the sole show to blame) sarcasm and detached irony has become an end of itself. Instead of using sarcasm or biting satire to communicate something we now use sarcasm as its own ethos. I think somewhere along the line this sarcasm, irony, and lack of being genuine is partially why people are so anti-intellectual and seemingly act proud of it. No one wants to be called out as cringe or a "lolcow" on social media.
Learn to paragraph break. Breaking up a wall of text by hitting the enter key every few sentences is ALSO a part of writing people. jfc
Watched Hazbin Hotel and was floored by how many people didn't understand a lyric as simple as "Alastor, altruist, nearly died for his friends", being him speculating on what the headlines would say about him. People needed it explained, and were so unfamiliar with a word as simple as altruist, that they GENUINELY THOUGHT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE HIS NAME.
i find funny that me and a couple of my friends are categorized as the essayists by other people, because we write extra long messages to each other and we always read them FULLY AND COMPLETE, but it's kinda funny to me how people nowadays can't read a message with more than 4 lines of text.
It does suck to see you constantly so jaded, even still, but I'm very happy for you for getting off of Twitter. I got it off of it for the last time months ago and never looked back, and it's been such an improvement. I still remember a while ago, I was reminded about Elon Musk, community notes, ratios, and I genuinely reacted like I had something wrong in my body, going "holy crap, I used to see that daily, now I haven't thought about it for months, this is amazing". I guarantee you, eventually your life will feel so much better, or at least, you won't be AS miserable.
I don't really think the illiteracy thing is an issue with America as a whole as it is with Twitter, because Twitter is THE worst part of the Internet. Not only does it encourage ragebait and being snarky assholes, it also discourages actual in depth discussions and instead short bursts of ignorance for "discussion". Never look back, leave the demons to their demons.
seeing people write comments with terrible punctuation or no punctuation pisses me off. I'm not a grammar nazi, but some people write like they've been smoking DMT since they were 12
The amount of people online who can't even tell the difference between "you're" and "your" as well as "then" and "than" is staggering.
You didn't capitalize "seeing". Or put a period after "12".
Bad grammar has been the norm on the internet since for forever. It's not a matter of intelligence.
You either get it, or you don't.
@@ChawedMirthPrattEnterpriseDon't forget "Lose" and "Loose".
@@ToadySPGrammar where it is necessary is important. It's common to not punctuate single sentences on the internet. Being unable to determine which "Their" you are supposed to use is prohibative to understanding what somebody is trying to communicate. Having zero periods or commas, with 800 words of continuous, uncapitalized sentences, makes somebody's writing incomprehensible. There is a massive difference between not putting an apostrophe on "its" and having absolutely no ability to write with any amount of cohesion.
@@Sammysapphira No you and I completely agree on that. Having the knowledge to be able to spell things correctly in general is important.
But just like in the late 2000s I think it's cool when the average user online makes the active choice, through tact, to decide "I'm either going to not spell any of this right, or I'm going to just use lazy abbreviations."
i'm a teenager. everyone around me is stupid, i actually try to have an inciteful conversation and i get told to "shut the f$$$ up" and that i'm "yapping". the sad part is that we have the potential to be good, but no one wants to.
"Everyone around me is stupid" plz don't fall into that mindset and type of thinking, it makes you look self centered
I think you meant “insightful.”
So google has a handy feature that if you highlight a word, it gives you the definition of that word. So if you don't know what it means you can easily figure it out. Beyond how easy it is to just type the word into a search engine. People are so unwilling to use the tools at there disposal they just won't do that.
On the topic of reading. As a Zoomer growing up in the 2000's. I don't remember reading itself being the issue, I remember the fact the books I was told to read were just boring to me. So I wouldn't engage with it that heavily. It wasn't until 6th grade where my teacher saw in particular the boys were less interested in reading. He simply just came in with options he figured the boys in my class would like. That's what got myself and most of the other boys interested. Just needed the right book, to get us to care. He did other stuff too like reading to the class every day for 20-30 minutes, he even made sure the substitute teachers would read to us as well.
I'm not sure if it's completely just this brain rot we're forcing on everyone, the mentality that being ignorant is cool or if it's also an issue of the teaching. I just know from my experience it took one teacher who put in the extra effort, to get me to give a crap about reading, and school in general.
I shudder at the thought of how illiterate I'd be without the advantage of our digital age. Blame the government for defunding and enforcing lottery systems in your schools. "Teach them the answers for tests". 30 students per instructor.
without YT I wouldn't have learned to speak English nearly as well
i knew you lleft twitter! I was going back to your profile every other day and I was like "Yo where did this guy go?". It's shame cause I really liked your takes... but im glad you left that god awful website. It seems it's getting worse with every day that passes...
My buddy had to rewatch all of the Disney movies after I painstakingly explained to him that they have life lessons and themes. Intelligence, and the subject of English in general, has at least in my experience become a taboo. AI “art” is a great example as many of my peers believe that art is simply entertainment, and that it has no meaning.
Edit: and I think this all has to do with racism at the end of the day
Most of us left Twitter and Instagram 5-10 years ago, people are arguing with ghosts over there.
dead internet I guess
I'd be curious what apps / networks you use today, if you're willing to share. I left reddit when they disabled 3rd party apps, and I left Facebook all the way back in 2008 when they let people besides college students join.
Now, outside of CZcams, I only communicate with people I know via text or phone call. I'm 37.
I'd use an RSS feed a lot more if people used them.@@PsRohrbaugh
Most of twitter is bots and spam now. Then you’ve got gimmick accounts and OnlyFans girls everywhere trying to advertise or bot accounts in every reply section of every big tweet. On top of that it’s always promoting rage bait tweets to the front because it gets engagement. Ughh twitter is a cesspool
@@PsRohrbaugh the social media fad has well since passed, i would stick with youtube for entertainment alone. nothing else is remotely worth it
I’m legitimately becoming an English teacher for highschoolers and this is gonna be the video i show my students as to why communicating properly is important. After reading more complex books and older stories like Pride and Prejudice, its expanded my vocabulary so much and simultaneously my understanding of the world which is wonderful. Thanks for the rant Emp lol i totally understand how you feel and it makes me feel like I too am narcissistic being the smartest person in the room especially on twitter. Also I have a habit in staying on twitter too long…. I need to leave lol
A not insignificant amount of people acting stupid on Twitter is likely doing it on purpose either to bait engagement or to be "quirky" for attention. It's completely normalized and even encouraged in many internet circles to act as stupid and immature as possible because the idiots within those circles think it's funny, and it's a fast track to getting some brief attention
I believe reading books, novels, essays, short stories and the like, can help counter the effect of unnecessary social media scrolling that fogs up your brain and makes it difficult to focus on anything. Reading physical books specifically. Audiobooks and PDF downloads don't count because they are not completely disconnected from a screen or the internet. Reading novels as a hobby really helped me relearn how to focus and be more attentive and present.
I understand your point, but I believe pdfs still count if you can maintain focus on them. Many, many old books can just be read, freely and easily, with the advent of the internet, some that can't be easily found locally in a library.
Hey Emp, a couple of years ago we spoke in Twitter DMS the first time you were planning to quit Twitter and I tried to give you some perspective as to why people there end up acting like this. I now believe that whatever cope exists to justify one's continuation of engagement in this toxic platform is simply a construct of a mind on social media addiction. I'm clean off social media for 6 months and it really made me realize just how much damage this stream of provocative (dis)information is able to do especially on people that lack real life communities to ground them to reality. I'm certain by now everyone with a shred of sanity must've left this website, explaining the deterioration of the userbase. Nowadays it's all social media syndrome afflicted individuals and the grifters that mine them.
EXCEPTIONAL INDIVIDUAL
As a community manager, this is cathartic.
I swear communicating with groups of people is so hard.
Made the right call not using that hell site.
I'm with you bro, the school system is failing no doubt but it's really parenting that is failing more. Parents aren't pushing education as important to there kids. My 7 year old can read on a 6th grade level because we taught him that education is key to obtaining anything he wants, not just put a tablet in his hand and tell him to go away.