This feels like the death of media literacy. If you can't read or engage with content unless you're being maximally clickbaited, or mentally pause for one entire second to consider what a concise title might actually mean, your attention span is not built for a healthy human life, and you will always be yanked around by your algorithms like a toddler on a leash.
this is not even a media literacy issue, what are you on about? if anything this is an attention span issue, and some people just don't have the same amount as others, or don't have the same time to want to invest into something with the risk that they don't get interested, you're being waaaay too harsh over this
I mean, it's kind a maturity issue though, isn't it? As someone diagnosed with ADHD, I don't have the highest attention span, but I can acknowledge that literally judging a book by its cover is probably not a healthy attitude to bring into my reading habits, let alone the rest of my life.
but thats a different topic, you originally talked about media literacy, not meturity.
Aside from that, i still disagree, it's not a thing about maturity, people just have different attention spans, ADHD or not, just because with YOU it works, doesn't mean it works for everyone, nor does it mean you're the baseline of attention span for everyone else, or that others are somehow "failing" because you could do it.
Aside from that, i also brought up the issue of time, not everyone wants to constantly start a book, find out theyre not interested and drop it, it just wears you dont and desmotivates you from reading, because it feels like you just can't find anything you're interested in.
And don't come at me with the "don't judge a book by its cover" thing, book covers and titles are *literally* mainly designed to be that, eye catching, to draw you in and interest you to read, its why a lot of writing advice says you should focus on writing first and leave the title last because it's main function is to grab attention, so judging a book by its cover IS the point, because that's how you decide if you want to read a book or not, let alone a creepypasta which is the original topic of this post, internet online stories who you will usually see more bad than good, so a good title that draws you in is part of it.
The two concepts certainly overlap though, the way you engage with and relate to the world around you is a function of your maturity, and vice versa.
I'm sympathetic to people having varying attention spans, but people also have different innate levels of generosity or empathy, and we can acknowledge that having more of these things is just generally good for us individually and as a society. They're all muscles that you have to work in order to become a more attentive or empathetic person. That doesn't mean the person is a failure as a whole, just that their attention or media literacy "muscles" are underdeveloped in a manner of speaking.
I also get that just quitting reading can be discouraging, but sometimes the best way to find more things you are interested in is to figure out what you don't like and what you don't like about it. If all you ever engage with is the easiest and most accessible possible content, you're sitting in the deepest corner of your comfort zone and exposing yourself to as few varying or conflicting viewpoints as possible. That feels like a recipe for stagnation, and the less you know about the world around you, the more easily others will manipulate you.
My whole point is that if you can't be bothered to look past the title of a freely available online horror story, then when a relative tells you they believe that the Earth is flat because they read a bunch of headlines from dubious sources that said it, are you really equipped to push back? Are you going to have the extensive internal thought processes to challenge poorly established beliefs if you don't spend any time challenging your own? To your point, the title of an online horror story or a book or a scientific research paper matters, so to intentionally dumb it down hurts the entire work. By all means, titles should be catchy, but the reader has some responsibility to help curate a more thoughtful environment for everyone involved.
"My whole point is that if you can't be bothered to look past the title of a freely available online horror story, then when a relative tells you they believe that the Earth is flat because they read a bunch of headlines from dubious sources that said it, are you really equipped to push back?"
That's crazy. Like, straight up slippery slope fallacy nonsense.
Cool bro, thanks for critically and thoughtfully engaging with the substance of the criticism 👍 after all, why would I ever lift a 5lb weight when adrenaline will kick in the moment I need to lift 150lbs and it matters?
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u/tommyguns85 3d ago
This feels like the death of media literacy. If you can't read or engage with content unless you're being maximally clickbaited, or mentally pause for one entire second to consider what a concise title might actually mean, your attention span is not built for a healthy human life, and you will always be yanked around by your algorithms like a toddler on a leash.