I’m a boomer and I approve this.
this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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me_irl
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I think the proliferation of videos as primary information sources is a huge part of how propaganda and disinformation became so effective and powerful. It's why we've done a collective nosedive into regressive politics and can no longer agree on the objective facts regarding.. well.. anything!
Information delivered by video tends to be trusted on the way it's delivered rather than the content itself. So we're thinking less critically about what we choose to believe.
While I agree that the pivot to video was a massive turning point in the dumbing down of political discourse, I think it's more to do with the pace and passive nature of video/audio: the people are getting news and ideas at the cadence that the broadcaster deems appropriate instead of at the pace of the listener which would happen in reading or face to face transmission.
If something was missed entirely or misunderstood it is far more tedious to try and hunt down the segment that needs reiteration than it is to read it again (or ask for clarification). This means people that miss something will just try to pick up any context later in the broadcast and if the broadcaster doesn't deem it important or relevant (or maliciously omits it), the listener has no further interaction with the idea. And then the idea is lost beneath the rest of the news agglomeration.
My favorite trend is where youtubers record a screenshare of a word document they have open on their computer that they proceed to read to me, slowly.
I’m especially delighted when the youtuber selects the text as they read it, as if to make sure I don’t get lost.
ETA: I’m just saying it’s a good thing we streamlined video platform monetization, so 1.6 million other viewers and I can not read that document together. I’m not sure what generation was responsible but, good for them.
I'm a Millennial. I'd rather burn a house than pick a video from a choice of (video, article).
I hate it when I'm looking for a single piece of information like how to change a specific setting in my device and there's no text available, just a highly rated video that goes like:
"Hey guys, it's your boy ManualExplainer here and welcome to another video. Be sure to like and subscribe to my channel. And remember to click on the little bell icon so you get notified whenever I put up a new video. All right, let's get to it. But first, a word from today's sponsor."
😡😡😡😡
God bless the people that put the video highlight on Sponsorblock or write the solution in the comments.
I'm millennial and i hate those videos too
Everyone that's functionally literate hates those videos
Amen to that, brother.
I fear for the future, because this generation won't know something if it hasn't been tictokified or taught by an "AI".
I can send you the article, but you're going to get two "would you like to subscribe" popups and dozen more ads sprinkled between every third sentence.
Like, I get that the video shit is annoying. But it almost feels like a competition in print media to make it worse.
Case in point:
I don't see the problem?
The article clearly demonstrates how the web became unreadable with a handy diagram...
/s
Firefox reader mode FTW.
Ublock origin is your best friend
(Press the image if compression quality really bad)
I usually block this popups too
Can try the anti-adblock-adblock list lol
Millennial weebs read twice as fast as Gen x. Those fanmade anime subs can roll through quick.
Ikr, fuck ticktok i can SPEED through text!
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Hi, millennial here. Do you know why some millennials and a large portion of gen z suck at reading? Because their boomer/gen x parents didn't read to them as a child.
I grew up on my grandmother's lap, with her actively making reading fun and encouraging me to read along - I was reading, and comprehending, YA novels by grade 2.
My little brother though, who did not have a parent/grandparent to teach them to love reading, can't read worth shit. He was well into highschool before he even attempted a book like animorphs, and still didn't really comprehend the plot any better than grade 2 me.
So no, this is not a generational/phones bad problem, it's just another example of how boomers and gen x let their children down when it came to raising them with life skills, and then making fun of them for it.
I'm also a millennial. I had a lot of classmates and friends whose boomer parents actively discouraged reading. I mean the whole stereotype of the weak nerd that just reads books and is being bullied for it is pretty old. A lot of my friends even back in elementary school had a TV in their bedroom the second cable/satellite TV became a thing here. I had classmates whose parents discouraged them from going to university or reading advanced books because that is for nerds and only working with your hands is real work. Matilda was written in 1988 and while the parents in that book were a caricature, I knew parents who'd scoff if their child read a book or dared talk about going to university.
The millennial children of these parents grew up to consume internet click bait and are now not teaching their kids to read books. The internet and smartphones definitely accelerated the problem, but it started much earlier.
Gen X. My parent and grand parents didn’t do shit. It’s not generational. They weren’t bad , just not great. That’s pretty universal.
They didn’t read to me, and I’m an avid reader.
I read to my kids, but they all lost interest in it pretty quickly. Only one of them does it as an adult.
It’s all situational my dude.
Same experience here as a GenXer - I don't recall my parents ever reading to me - they might have when I was really young, but they were also raising my brothers (6 and 7 years older than me), so I doubt they had much time.
I was the avid reader in the family. When I got married, I stopped reading as much, but I still do some reading when I find a book that interests me. I have three or four sitting on my desk at the moment that I haven't started.
Because their boomer/gen x parents didn’t read to them as a child.
As a gen-Xer, this hurt to read. If I knew my classmates were going to grow up to be such dipshit parents, I would have slapped some sense into them. I mean, a lot of them were already pretty awful as teenagers... but, that wasn't a phase? Man, I am sincerely, deeply sorry.
This is the type of boomer engagement bait you'd see on Facebook. It's basically "UpVoTe If YoU aRe GeNx!1!1". Sure, the discussion here is higher quality, but it still makes me cringe to see this kind of stuff being posted unironically on a site I use.
Lmao, "for the love of bananarama" "in Prince's funky name, amen." Who types that?
A millennial pretending to be gen X.
Post a pithy hot-take in text? Nobody reads.
Post a screenshot of the same text from a social media site? That’s bussin!
If you see a millennial doing that then slap them and call them an embarrassment for me
As a xennial with ADD, send me the short, I'll watch it, hunt down the article, read it, then spend 3h down a rabbit hole to understand the validity of the claims and the bias of the news outlet, then I'll get bored and stop typing in the mid
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hv;dw (hate videos; didn't watch)
I don’t like these generational generalizations.
Not an xer but I feel the same. I’d rather read twenty minutes than watch a 5 minute YouTube video.
“Elder millennial”/Oregon Trail generation here, and I’d generally rather read it, too. I’ve found it often only takes 5 minutes to read an article where the video would be 20 minutes. Sometimes a video works better for a how-to, but often an article will be a faster choice.
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I do wonder how much of video's proliferation is because we (in the US at least) fucked up teaching a generation of kids how to read. I'm told one of the dominant strategies for teaching reading was just bad. Well meaning people went all in on it, and then kids just didn't learn to read well.
You can read about it here, or listen to it as a podcast https://features.apmreports.org/sold-a-story/
This is just appaling to read. No wonder the US education is so fucked.
Just to further push the point, it took me 40 minutes to read 3 transcripts. Each transcription is of a roughly hour long podcast episode. So 3 hours down to 40 minutes and English is my second language. It stresses me that people can't recognize that reading is the closest thing humans have to a superpower.
Also, I want to see the video. Not the video with someone next to it making faces as they watch the video.
The only reaction video worth watching is someone from that profession reacting and giving additional context as to why it works or doesn't
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The worst is instructional manuals being replaced with videos.
Going back 10 seconds, 20 times, so that you can visually see how two pieces fit together is way more annoying than just looking at a visual diagram on a printed page. Especially when you've got both hands full with stuff.
I put something together I got at Walmart like 10 years ago and it came with print instructions that had links to .gif files that were short and looping showing each step clearly
I though "oh wow if some random Chinese product does this surely it'll spread" and now feel so dumb for having thought that
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I know plenty of people that "can read fast." Unfortunately, they don't comprehend anything they read until they slow the fuck down.
I wish to buy this person a beer. Also send me tech docs and not a YouTube tutorial where I have to jump ahead of all the bullshit while trying not to miss the useful details.
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