The average, adult American reads at a 5th to 6th grade level.
~15% of adult Americans are functionally illiterate, ie, read at a 1st to 2nd grade level or worse.
This is why the Republican long game has been to destroy public educations: morons are easier to trick.
Also, Twtitter was a mistake, way before Elon bought it.
Ah, yes, lets reduce politcal discourse to the character limit of only slogans, and then later be surprised that everyone only reacts to clever short snippets that necessarily disinclude complexity and context.
Twitter largely blew up as a social platform for two reasons:
Celebrities joined, back when that was still a term that meant something, before everyone became a micro-celebrity / influencer via later short form video platforms…
And also prominent, mostly Democrat politicians joined, and used it for political messaging.
So, this is to a large part the Dems fault as well, they spearheaded the idea of realtime political messaging in tiny idiot snippets.
Ugh, when twitter took over political discourse back when it had the most restrictive character limit was when things really went to shit and tanked what little patience people had for politics.
How effective that was at just controlling narrative with ease at appealing to populism is why Musk went after it in the first place. It is so much easier to maintain a fallacious argument (which is what right-wing logic is founded on to play on people’s innate biases) when your opponent is limited in how they are able to word their counter arguments, where they can focus on the vagaries to accuse it of inconsistency, or take the time to post a long chain that most people won’t bother following while the main discussion is replying to the original fallacy, steering the conversation while you struggle to keep up.
And it’s only gotten worse with how all mainstream social media is evolving under capitalism. Which is the worst part. Dems saw how effective it was too but the mechanisms of capitalism allowed Musk to wrest control of the platform and disenfranchise political opponents and silence experts under the guise of the “free market” and “free speech”.
It is literally a reformation of the very medium of political discourse, and … as we should but apparently do not know… to a great extent, the medium is the message.
Its analagous to NewSpeak.
Its not the vocabulary that has been top down rewritten… but, the maximum length of a sentence, a thought.
Now its all so much worse with tiktok and insta… thats why some of us are here on lemmy, where it is at least possible to have a long form discussion.
I just find it incredibly depressing that this shit is what gets people interested in politics. It’s no wonder our country is circling the drain.
The average, adult American reads at a 5th to 6th grade level.
~15% of adult Americans are functionally illiterate, ie, read at a 1st to 2nd grade level or worse.
This is why the Republican long game has been to destroy public educations: morons are easier to trick.
Also, Twtitter was a mistake, way before Elon bought it.
Ah, yes, lets reduce politcal discourse to the character limit of only slogans, and then later be surprised that everyone only reacts to clever short snippets that necessarily disinclude complexity and context.
Twitter largely blew up as a social platform for two reasons:
Celebrities joined, back when that was still a term that meant something, before everyone became a micro-celebrity / influencer via later short form video platforms…
And also prominent, mostly Democrat politicians joined, and used it for political messaging.
So, this is to a large part the Dems fault as well, they spearheaded the idea of realtime political messaging in tiny idiot snippets.
Ugh, when twitter took over political discourse back when it had the most restrictive character limit was when things really went to shit and tanked what little patience people had for politics.
How effective that was at just controlling narrative with ease at appealing to populism is why Musk went after it in the first place. It is so much easier to maintain a fallacious argument (which is what right-wing logic is founded on to play on people’s innate biases) when your opponent is limited in how they are able to word their counter arguments, where they can focus on the vagaries to accuse it of inconsistency, or take the time to post a long chain that most people won’t bother following while the main discussion is replying to the original fallacy, steering the conversation while you struggle to keep up.
And it’s only gotten worse with how all mainstream social media is evolving under capitalism. Which is the worst part. Dems saw how effective it was too but the mechanisms of capitalism allowed Musk to wrest control of the platform and disenfranchise political opponents and silence experts under the guise of the “free market” and “free speech”.
Yep.
It is literally a reformation of the very medium of political discourse, and … as we should but apparently do not know… to a great extent, the medium is the message.
Its analagous to NewSpeak.
Its not the vocabulary that has been top down rewritten… but, the maximum length of a sentence, a thought.
Now its all so much worse with tiktok and insta… thats why some of us are here on lemmy, where it is at least possible to have a long form discussion.