Yes.
I firmly believe it has a lot to do with everything that used to be a well written article or website now being condensed into a video. I was never a good writer, but the only way for me to retain information is if it's in text.
It is an issue.
One data point. Stress makes people stupid. People are really stressed.
Most of social media has been like this for me since forever, same with RL groups I don't choose, like school or university, frankly.
Their intention is to value a separate person with their statement as little as possible (in extremes as little as themselves). Your comment isn't supposed to be considered an individual thought, it's supposed to go into predetermined classification, using some key words.
People with little brain power would simply feel themselves bad without such classification. While with it they can deceive themselves that their "yeah sure we believe you lol" is equivalent to a proper expression of your thought materialized in words.
Other than that, reading texts is a rare pastime for some.
I am honestly starting to wonder if there's some as-yet-unidentified environmental factor at play like how leaded gasoline caused so many problems in the latter half of the 20th Century.
But with regard to your specific gripe, pedantry is a hobby for some people.
Microplastics?
Forever chemicals?
Covid?
At this rate there's a lot of contenders.
Sad.
I've seen posts where I had to assume OP/the commenter wasn't a native English speaker, because of the sentence structure and odd choice of words. A multilingual platform such as lemmy, can sometimes leave you scratching your head. Since I don't speak a 2nd or 3rd language I'm always in awe of polyglots. I always try to offer an olive branch by assuming the fault was mine, and I wasn't clear enough in my wording.
however...
There are people (myself included) who will skim long form texts, rather than actually reading all of the words (thanks to every prof who's ever assigned busy work or HW on a school holiday). I can only speak for myself when I say, once I've skimmed something, if I get to the end and it doesn't add up, I go back and re-read it in its entirety. I have to imagine in a world of 6 billion people, there willl be some who don't choose to re-read the text, and choose outrage...also some people just think it's funny to be contrarian, there's not much you can do about that, other than smile and move along.
Tomorrow you will wake up, the world will be full of promise, and maybe a satisfying breakfast, and you won't even remember angry_commenter@lemmy.instance...they, on the other hand will wake up, and still be them...
I definitely see some clear "this is not their first language" posts, but I don't see a lot of overlap with the semi-literate stuff. They'll usually be pretty close with a missed idiom here or there, an uncommon word that's a slightly odd translation, or have some awkward habit on structure that's pretty consistent but just not quite right in English.
The "can't read" people are all over the place, without coherent structure, and just pull random interpretations out of thin air.
Our attention span is getting shorter as tech speeds up. Reminds me of Paul Virilio's "accident" hypothesis also now AI coming into play makes it even more clear.
Don't forget that we recently had a pandemic with a virus that is known to cause permanent brain damage. This includes reduced motor function, mental capacity and personality changes.
Did you just call me illiterate?
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