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Comment by garciasn | Hacker News Reader

I read for pleasure; ~100 books a year on average. When I go anywhere, I am reading.

My daughter informed me that the mothers of her teammates were outright making fun of me for having my 'nose buried in a book,' before every event. I asked her if they were making fun of everyone else for having their nose buried in their phones; she laughed and said they probably were not.

Why is reading for fun something that's worthy of negative attention these days but scrolling social feeds is somehow socially acceptable? I just don't get it.

Of course kids aren't reading for pleasure; their parents likely aren't and there's societal pressure to NOT do it and instead use your phone to pass the time.

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Herd mentality, anti-intellectual culture, poor reading skills, and ADHD are widespread issues. Those mothers sound lame, and ultimately the joke's on them. Reading is awesome, and making fun of someone for it just shows what basic bitches they are.

Hey, come on... I have ADHD and love reading. No need to use that as a bludgeon. It's unnecessary...

I didn't read it that way, I thought the GP was listing it as one of the newer challenges to getting kids (and adults!) to read. IMO it doesn't prevent you from loving to read, but it does make it harder.

Okay, well that's definitely a more interpretation that I didn't see. I may have misunderstood. Thanks, friend.

Apologies friend, neighbor comment has it right. Not trying to shade anyone with ADHD, just calling out as a widespread/modern challenge. Same with poor reading skills. Parents, schools, and culture have failed many people, who might otherwise have been avid readers, but instead they don't even know the joy of reading a good book.

Ah, no worries then. I apologize for misunderstanding. :)

I knew a friend with ADHD that had a hard time reading. I suggested to him that he visualize and draw an image of everything he’s reading in his mind and apparently that made that a lot easier.

Um, were they not visualizing books as they read them? I'm assuming fiction like novels. How could one possibly read a novel and not visualize everything they're reading?

Oh have I got a treat for you! The ability to make the magic pictures appear in your mind is not actually a universal human experience. There's a broad range of related topics, but the place to start is probably 'Aphantasia'[0].

It's quite interesting to talk about with friends and compare experiences. Good if you're all comfortable enough to allow a little bit of "treating the witness as hostile".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphantasia

Doesn't your ADHD interfere with sitting down and reading?

not if it's a fantastic book

One part of ADHD is hyperfocus. ADHD is a dopamine deficiency issue, so when something highly stimulating (like a good book, or writing code) causes a release of dopamine the brain locks onto it and won't let go.

You misunderstand how it works. It's not "can't pay attention" like people think. It's "have difficultly directing attention". There's two different failure modes. One is "not interesting enough, so can't keep my attention focused on it" and the other is "too interesting, so can't take my attention off it". You'll find ADHDers that like reading probably read a lot.

For me it made it a little dangerous to read: I hyperfocus on the book and can't get anything else done until I've finished it.

> these days

Bill Hicks, the standup comedian dead for over three decades already, had a now-classic bit about being challenged for reading by a waitress. Reading has always been uncool to some people.

Funnily enough, smart phones (and previous feature phones with their SMS) have probably gotten more people into reading and writing for leisure than any other technology since the printing press.

Granted, people are not doing any long form reading and writing on these devices, but they are reading and writing.

You’re underestimating how many people almost entirely just doom scroll videos, especially young people.

For a brief period before instagrams and youtube became mainstream and tiktoks came along to decimate whatever was left.

This is an exaggeration, but I wouldn't rule out your average smartphone user reading less in an average commute than they would do just reading store signs as they pass...

But they're reading multiple words overlayed on the 30 second video! And they sometimes write "wtf stupd g* n* lol" as a comment! That gotta count!?!

I disagree, people used to read newspapers and magazines. Even if you were not an intellectual or interested in politics you'd read the sports daily, or the gossip column.

This activity has largely disappeared.

Yeah obviously they still teach letters at school. People can read their name.

But reading a long form article about the Iran war? It looks bleak.

Not what am I reading...but what am I reading for? Well, shit! You stumped me!

For what it’s worth I think people have always been this way. I used to read during recess when I was in middle school. I usually could not wait to get back to my books. But the other kids saw this as profoundly antisocial. I wasn’t being antisocial exactly; I was pretty shy and had a very active imagination. Amusingly, the school bullies misinterpreted my bookishness as weakness. That changed when I (accidentally) knocked out a kid’s front teeth during a fight. I felt terrible about it but the bullying stopped immediately.

This undercurrent of anti-intellectualism has been around for a long time. I would just ignore the naysayers.

It's funny how that works.

I (90s high schooler) was made fun of merely for being on the internet or being able to fix electronics. The early days of Facebook were amusing (when everybody was friending everybody), seeing the same people that bullied me spending hours on end playing FarmVille.

While I never physically fought back, but one of my friends (who had a LOT of success almost immediately after high school) did pass on of our tormentors working construction in the street and made eye contact...in his very expensive SLK Mercedes. Not to degenerate construction work, but there was a lot of satisfaction for him in that moment.

It still surprises me how the peking order in schools so poorly represents real life. A few years ago at a previous job, we had an HR woman who was almost certainly a "popular" kid in school, comment how much fun being around us "nerds" was.

It's not that there's social pressure specifically against reading. Just that there's social pressure to conform, and most people aren't reading.

Similarly, people are socially allowed to be buried in their phones while at work and this doesn't get critized by managers much, but god help you if you had a magazine or book open when taking a short break.

If you don't pay attention to the NFL, you might have missed Philadelphia Eagles player AJ Brown reading a book on the sidelines:

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/koyNVSD2vyU

There were many performative hot takes at the time. The best part though, for me, was coach Nick Sirianni defending him when asked about it after the game. Sirianni said:

> Some guys pray in between, some guys mediate in between. A.J. reads in between. Whatever these guys need to do to put their mind in a place where they can play with great detail and great effort, I fully encourage them to do that

I love the result of reading, and the occasional jolt I get when reading, but not the activity of reading. I need to consume the text word for word, scanning with my eyes. The thing that gets me most happened after I got into Hemmingway: everything in a book happens in the forefront. In a movie you can have things happening outside your span od attention. Not in a book. You can’t have a doorbell happening in the background - it’s explicit and relevant to the story (which has spawned a counter-culture of writers).

My apologies for over-commenting in this page but, uh, is there a way to read without reading the words? WTF does "I need to consume the text word for word, scanning with my eyes." mean? Are people reading with their eyes closed or using braille or listening to the paper or something?

I read a lot. My subjective experience of reading fiction is that I daydream it. After I build up speed over a couple pages I'm not really aware my eyeballs are sliding over markings or that my fingers are turning pages.

Some people can't do that, but who knows what their brains are doing that mine can't.

I’m an outlier due to medical issues following a burnout to the crisp. I occasionally zone out, most often when I’m reading. So reading has become a chore - I can’t switch on an auto-pilot like I used to. This has made the activity literally “scanning with my eyes” and doing so with attention. On bad days I re-parse the same sentence several times and it just won’t get interpreted. I used to consume a lot of text and it got me two master degrees. Now I barely read and don’t remember what I read. Reading something online is by scrolling the text to the top bar, like pointing a finger to the line you’re reading.

Hope this answers your wtf

It's not about the reading. It's about: a) being different, and b) making them feel guilty for not reading themselves. I used to get the same for being vegetarian, for much the same reasons. These days it's less weird and, oddly, I feel like people are almost envious that I get to have a "cool" label and they don't. It's strange because it's quite easy to get the label yourself if you want it, but it's hard to change habits.

It always has been negative attention gathering - reading marks you as a nerd.

And yeah, by far the strongest predictor I've ever seen for "does the kid do X that everyone agrees is good for people to do" is always "do the parents do it?". You lead by example. Kids are great at picking up on whether you enjoy it or not.

I think this is how Beauty And The Beast opens.

Is this in the united states? The usa has a shockingly anti-intellectual culture and has been so for my whole life.

Having all the time the nose in a book is a disfunctional behavior just like being on the phone all the time is disfunctional.

Of course other people are applying the conformity rule and they're pretending that their phone addiction is normal but both behavior are disfunctional.

However there are still people that are able to function normally and they do whatever they are doing being present to their activity and to the things around them, for example noticing people, speaking to them, greeting them, listening to them etcetera.

I too love reading but I know recognize that there is a moment to read and have pleasure and moments we need to do something else and take pleasure just in the activity we are doing, even if it is just eating or washing the dishes. It also important to accord our attention to people around us and that will give us joy as well.

Don't get defensive saying: you too has a problem, mind your business. Life your life fully being present in each moment and do not try to seek the "pleasure" at every moment, otherwise a book addiction is not any different than a phone addiction.

Child raised with this mentality will throw you in a retirement home and disown you. I don’t blame them one bit.

Do you care to argument on what you disagree with my comment ?

I read a lot too, but it’s somewhere around 50 a year. How on earth are you getting through two books a week? What sort of books are these? I confess I read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy that are between 500 and 800 pages each. That’s not all of my reading, but I’d say at least 50% is.

On vacation, for example, I'll read 1-2 books a day. I would say most books I read are in the 300-350p range; just because that's what most books are, it seems.

I’m 65. I’m pretty sure I heard plenty of snide “nose buried in a book” cracks when i was growing up.

Well it’s just cope. It’s the same way in the UK where drinkers will sneer at non drinkers, or meat eaters at vegans. You will get criticised for losing weight or making dietary changes. People imagine that someone else may feel superior to them for making better choices, and they absolutely hate this.

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