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Comment by hellisothers | Hacker News Reader

> Many people are so aware they can't that they will refuse to try. Of the ones that do, you will struggle to find one who can read the text with anything like the fluidity or inflection they would use to speak the same words

Is this tru’ish? I’m not refuting it I’m just a little shocked this might be the situation we’re in. I know generally people now struggle to consume long form content but it even being able to read a story?

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It’s probably true insofar as if random assholes accost me and ask to read a page from a book I’m more likely to employ old Anglo Saxon than engage with their stupidity.

I read like 80 books in a slow year but if someone approached me at the grocery store and asked me to read even a children's book I would refuse. It's not because I can't read, it's because when I'm at the grocery store I am kind of busy getting my groceries and don't want to engage with a stranger who has an odd request.

That stranger might conclude I can't read, when in reality I devour books, am the beta reader for my two published-author friends, and probably edit the "thoughts on books I've read" section of my personal wiki more than any other.

A weirdo approaches you with a highly unusual request. You suspect the goal is to humiliate you or make you into a dummy somehow, which is actually their goal. No thanks.

> I know generally people now struggle to consume long form content but it even being able to read a story?

There is reading and then there is reading an unknown text out loud in public while being judged. The two are not the same thing. I had to read publicly when I was a student years ago when smartphones were a new thing. They handed me the text with instructions to reread it at least twice ideally out loud before performing.

The point is, it is not like 20 years ago a good student would be expected to read super fluidly out loud in public without at least a little preparation.

Way to miss the forest for the trees. "The grocery store" is just "a place people from a wide variety of backgrounds have to go to." Nobody's talking about actually accosting people to give them tests. The point is that everyday people would struggle with this task if they weren't specifically prepared for it.

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