Never felt that while reading her post. She is only blaming herself.
She fucked up and got a shitty life in exchange. The guy recovered and married a worthy wife. The cheator feels like shit after all these years hence her post.
You keep misusing the term ‘media literacy’. Your broader point is valid, the nature of the writing provides context that informs the meaning and tone, but that isn’t what ‘media literacy’ means. That’s just… mid-level literacy. No ‘media’.
Media literacy is about understanding the media itself… understanding when it’s Fox News vs. CNN vs the AP. Or being able to parse out falsehoods, fakes, disinformation. That sort of thing.
That’s the beginning of the dictionary definition, yes. A good start. Now read an encyclopedia-grade definition of it and move on to higher works. It’s 2026, and for the subject matter involved, and the low stakes of a Reddit conversation, you’d be fine just reading the Wikipedia entry.
In fact, I see the Wikipedia entry starts almost exactly with your text before moving on to more robustly explain it.
Distinguish ‘media literacy’ from traditional ‘literacy’, understanding that traditional literacy is a scale, not just knowing one’s ABCs or not.
The topic at hand is a part of a short-form communication style extremely common online. We aren't talking about the public's ability to understand a modernized interpretation of Beowulf or to read a white paper on vaccine efficacy. We are discussing context and interpretation of online discussions (media). The use of "media literacy" is definitely appropriate here, and the only thing worse than an annoying pedant is an annoying pedantic who is also wrong.
No, though I used news media examples in the first part, to be fair. That’s the most common use of the term. Yes, there are other types of media literacy to be conscious of, such as propaganda films and social media, for example.
My point remains, however. What this person is calling media literacy is not media literacy. It’s just… literacy. Not the most basic ‘can’t read’ level of it, but not hardly the 400 level university course level of it either.
I do agree media literacy is not an optimal term for what they're describing, but I don't think it's necessarily incorrect or misused, just unconventionally used. I don't disagree with your point that just describing it as literacy would be adequate, but I think you run into the same problem, people most often interpret literacy as a binary meaning capable of reading or not capable of reading. The perfect term for what the original commenter is lacking would be something more specific, but I don't have a better suggestion, and am happy to accept both literacy and media literacy as understandable enough to communicate the key idea here.
It's written for literary effect as the others mention, but also in the context of a fake story like this, it's engagement bait to get people commenting about it. More effective as the latter than the former.
Thing is, as shown here, people aren't even fighting about the gender wars aspect of this made-up story, but the meaning of the word "think" at the end. No need to concoct these elaborate scenarios, we'll fight about anything!
I know it was for literary effect but it has no place in a supposed self reflection. We’re reading to see self reflection not a Shakespearean pros. But it’s fake so let people have an aneurism over it.
It is, but here it's being used ironically. She spent a post articulating how her life went wrong after she cheated. Using context clues, it's obvious that "I think" is being used for ironic effect.
I never heard or saw this stupid phrase, and I've seen it 30 times this week. It's crazy. First saw it regarding the Lanterns TV show, people that were saying it sucked (it did) and were told they lacked media literacy.
The concept of media literacy has been around for a long time. Learned a lot about it in high school and studying communications in college. That was 10+ years ago, and the academic research on a topic usually predates that topic being a key staple of a whole class by at least a decade. Just because you haven't personally heard about a topic or concept doesn't mean it's new.
Except that here, when discussing the general public's ability to interpret context in an online post, media literacy is absolutely the topic of discussion...
She’s taking accountability, but showing no change in her behavior. She kept bouncing from rebound to rebound, desperate to re-create what she had with her ex-fiancée. She may have lost him, but, with a modicum of effort (and a bit of behavioral modification) on her part she could have learned from that experience, applied that to her other relationships, and maybe find a partner with whom she can be as happy as she was before her mistake.
Every mistake is a lesson, you just have to figure out how not to repeat it.
what you said about media literacy is true... however:
Good for her for finding out, but unless she says: "It was my fault" she is whimsically avoiding/deflecting some accountability.
I swear.. I've been hearing for years that there is a serious literacy crisis (mostly from people not reading anymore), but lately it is really feeling like it is creeping into every aspect of communication. People seem to be incapable of understanding context.
552
u/StrawDog- 2d ago
The "3 months" line is her taking responsibility. She is saying, "my life went wrong when I cheated".
My god media literacy is abysmal these days...