Sudden? No. Been dropping off since Reagan started the anti-education push his masters wanted? Yes. The illiteracy and lack of critical thinking skills have (intentionally) been instilled, or removed depending on your viewpoint, from the educational process worldwide. And as usual... the 'wealthy' "have a plan".

This IS NOT new, and IS NOT a sign of bad things.

100 years ago, conservatives could barely even read.

The only thing that has been on sharp incline lately is logical fallacies coming out of them. They're literally regressing, though they've always been hyper-judgemental idiots who are fundamentally afraid of reality.

What do you mean "sudden?" It's been the bane of my existence since first logging into the Internet and discovering chat rooms in the early 90's, communicating solely by text.

Idiocracy is slowly becoming a documentary, and I hate it.

It is an issue.

One data point. Stress makes people stupid. People are really stressed.

I'll generalize and say there are many my age in their 20s that watch things like TikTok and shorts that are conditioned for the fastest intake of media. This means ignoring the written word outside of texts.

Even myself, if I see a wall of text in an article, I know to skip the fluffer ad-reads down to paragraph three, then skim. To be fair most articles could be wrapped up to maybe two paragraphs but get extended for ad spots. Outside the context of reading articles on say lemmy, especially online, there is a largely missed hear mean not what I'm saying operating in good faith that often gets missed online. For example if someone posts an article about how smoking kills you, and I post a comment that "yes but its a creature comfort" I am not refuting it kills you - I'm merely suggesting that its a rough world and that people have vices to cope.

Nuance and assumption that we're acknowledging it is often lost on people.

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Yeah... But not just reading. If found that I have to explain extremely basic story plots or what happened in a movie to people. Like they never watched anything that happened in it.

I don't know man, but I'll tell you this- I went to the UK to see a punk show and it got cancelled, so I went on the band's IG to see if there was a post as to why. There was, and as I tried to read some of the comments from users on the post my mind actually melted from how fucked up the spelling was. Not abbreviations, but just a shocking inability to spell very basic words. It's concerning

During my grade six year (1992) I noticed when we would take turns reading pages from our english class novel that nearly every person was unable to comprehend, pronounce and read clearly.

I would finish the books in a day and have to go slowly through it with the class for the next two weeks watching people that were obviously barely literate reading the same books.

I've given up reading every word these days. I don't have the time or capacity.

After skimming I'll either go back and read something thoroughly, or move on to the next thing. 99% of it will be forgotten within the hour anyways.

However I won't comment (and I try not to pass on) on anything I haven't read thoroughly.

If I'm going to read every word (like a critical acclaimed book or article) I'm going to listen to it on my commute/wind down time.

Yes it's just one of the many signposts on the road to Idiocracy

I always hated that about redditers. They love to pretend they don’t understand people and then feel like they get bonus points if they can intentionally misconstrue your statements to be offensive or wrong.

Also, people jumping to extreme or nonsensical conclusions. Something like: "I personally don't like a cactus as a balcony plant." - "Aha so you think all plants should die?! I think you should die instead!"

Sometimes they will just make up stuff you supposedly believe and go ballistic on that. For some there really is no nuance and it's really tiering how this compromises more complex discussions.

Reading compre-what now?

It used to be common that people couldn't read. 100 years ago children worked in mines and factories. What is old is new again.

In general, or on Lemmy specifically? Because I've definitely noticed that some comment replies on Lemmy seem to completely miss the point of the parent comment.

I've been a cashier for ages and a question that often pops up for customers on the payment terminal is "would you like to donate to X charity". How often people ask me what they should press, yes or no... I look at them ask them if they would like to donate to X charity and it's like a light goes on for them and they suddenly understand.

So many people just make up what they want to out of anything you say.

For me it's scanning vs. reading. Too often I'll think I've read something, react to it, only to see after the fact that I missed something because I was in fact -not- reading but scanning. Email is an example. I get so much of it, I scan and skim, and inevitably get bit by this bad habit, often more than once a day. It's a disservice to the person e-mailing me, I know, but there are a LOT of people and I suppose the (poor) rationale is that at least everyone is getting some attention. I know it's better to get to what I can and things that I can't just need to wait.

I don’t quite get your meaning here, could eli5

I've noticed a lot of people using words in sentences that make zero sense. If they can fit any if the "ists" or "isms" in it they will even if it has nothing to do with what they are talking about. If you call them out for it they call you a dumbass. I just proceed to let them eat their own words with a simple dictionary link. I especially notice this in those "woke" people and lgbtq people. (Not hating on your sexuality you guys just can't use the correct words 90% of the time)

I recall hearing a long time ago that most news sites, magazines, newspapers, etc. tend to target a sixth grade reading level. So, I don’t know if there’s been a sharp rise, but it’s not really surprising considering how far beyond most readers should be.