Comment by keiferski
1 year ago
My point is that the average person doesn’t actually like to read and would rather watch a video or listen to audio. The number of hours spent scrolling TikTok or YouTube absolutely dwarfs the number of hours people spend reading books for pleasure. This is…basic sociological knowledge about contemporary society and really not a controversial thing to say at all. People read much less today than they used to.
Writing is more durable than it is desirable, and as its durability is matched by video and digital devices, I expect its presence to lessen.
Why the strawman? Your claim of the average person not liking to read and what we are actually discussing of reading/writing being a good form of communication are two different things.
Plenty of people like lots of bad things because we have monkey brains, stop thinking that just because a group likes something, it is good. I watch the behavior day in and day out...people watch HOURS of content per day, and at the end they have synthesized almost none of it. A majority of social video and audio is just a way for people to entertain themselves and a buffer against being alone with their thoughts. I wholeheartedly agree that audio and video can be great learning and communication tools. To say that is what is happening on a majority of social media is extremely misguided.
I am describing what I see as a societal shift and commenting on it. You are making this (and your other comment) into some moralistic activist argument, which is entirely missing the point and frankly just uninteresting. As I said, it’s not about what is better, it’s what ends up being used by people that drives culture.
Adding to that: the critique of writing has a long history going back all the way to Plato. This is not a new topic.
What is uninteresting is your weak spine in succumbing to "societal inertia", without considering what is possibly good or bad, just what is. You clearly don't know what you're describing because you're just flip flopping between 2 things. Just read your comments back in a couple of hours and you'll understand.
Like I actually can't understand how your argument is: "people are watching more videos, therefore reading is bad". Did you even think that through?
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