The Internet - Tumblr Posts
vent - functional literacy vs YA publication
this has been sitting in my head for years, really, but I'm so glad more people are starting to notice the effects.
YA novels have been slowly corrupting publishing strategy and overall, the literacy of readers.
DISCLAIMER
I am not saying people shouldn't read YA. Obviously, YA is a genre best suited for a certain age group (12-18). YA is fitted for the appropriate Lexile level of 12-18 year olds.
However.
More than half of YA readers are older than eighteen, most in their early to mid twenties.
Why is this a problem?
The accessibility, popularity, and easy reading level of YA novels is appealing to mass audiences. While that is not necessarily a bad thing, it means that adults are not expanding their reading level. This is a troubling reality for advanced employment.
In a work environment, reading is content-appropriate and usually highly advanced. Employees need to analyze and maturely reason with product/client problems and find solutions. As you get older, the reading content is supposed to evolve to fit that mindset.
When adults are consistently reading below the expectation, it weakens their reasoning skills and makes them functionally illiterate.
About 21% of American adults are functionally illiterate.
What is functional literacy?
Literacy is the ability to read and write proficiently and at an age-appropriate level. Functional Literacy is the ability to reason and use reading/writing skills to connect topics to the world around you.
TLDR: literacy: I can read the paragraph. functional literacy: I can find the theme/deeper meaning of the paragraph and relate it to something contextually relevant.
Why is this bad?
An inability to reason and analyze means that employees and adults in general are less equipped to deal with age-appropriate problems. After a while, underperforming becomes a norm. In advanced fields of work like medicine and technology, this inhibits expansion and proactive care.
The YA industry has normalized a mediocre, basic structure of writing. A problem has arisen with the lexile level juxtaposed with the content level.
Plenty of 'YA' novels contain graphic content that is very mature and should be handled as such - namely, sex and mental health. In a lot of popular BookTok and 'mafia/forbidden romance' books, the reading and writing level is consumable for 14-18 year olds, but the content maturity is very adult.
Hence, mature topics are handled poorly and young people are exposed to very damaging material without proper education or understanding of real-life consequences. Similar to the sex ed crisis; when teenagers aren't given a proper explanation and education about impactful issues, they grow into uneducated and naive adults.
Does this show up in school?
Yes. yes, 1000%. I work as a TA for several of my professors and I tutor high school students.
I have noticed a resounding difference in reading and writing ability in the last five years.
When I was in the tenth grade, we read Animal Farm, To Kill a Mockingbird, and Ayn Rand. it was expected that you could reasonably explain and hypothesize about themes, real-life examples, and differences between old and new world priorities.
I have talked to students that don't know what a theme is. They cannot analyze more than spelling and grammar. The writing quality they test into basically plateaus at 9th grade. Most popular media is a 9th grade or younger reading level. This doesn't prompt people to advance their reading skills, because 'they don't have to.'
This terrifies me, because there are so many occupations that require advanced lexile levels and adults just aren't meeting standard.
A large part of this has to do with the internet.
DISCLAIMER 2
I am not bashing the internet. I love Google. The only thing I have to say is that google has changed the way we think. Before google was more than a learning device, usually you would find a dictionary or a thesaurus to look up definitions.
I am Gen Z (I'll be nineteen soon) and I was raised with a home computer, but my mom insisted I use the encyclopedias first. When you go through the process of looking up the letter, then the cross section, blah de blah, it creates a kind of 'deep processing' where you get the context, definition, and application of the word/subject you're looking up.
When you google a word/subject, it gives you a surface level summary and a definition. Hell, you don't even have to spell the word right, it'll do it for you.
This also creates the spelling issues of most adults. With autocorrect and voice-to-text, spelling isn't a priority. I think my grade is the last that even did spelling sheets.
This is scary, personally.
I think in the future, educated positions will be replaced with AI and most people will fill in the jobs that don't require more than a high school diploma. In America, some states don't require a Master's to teach.
I suppose medicine, technology, science etc would still advance if we had AI to do it for us, but I can't imagine living as a species without the ability to think maturely. The dependence on everything else would be disturbing.
anyway thanks for listening xox
look, guys, this may seem ironic coming from a person with Verbose Disease, but I'm about to tell you the secret to winning social media: shutting the fuck up. you have a controversial discourse opinion? shut the fuck up and no one will know. can't participate in a boycott for various reasons? shut the fuck up and no one will know. you think or do something Problematic that has no bearing on anyone but yourself? shut the fuck up and no one will know. you haven't been keeping up on a pressing social issue? shut the fuck up and no one will know. your mind is a wonderful place where you can have all the bad takes in the world and they're all perfectly insulated from everyone and everything unless you try to excise them on a grand scale. you can take the mental L all by yourself without using a public platform as a confession booth and face zero repercussions and it'll be just fine. open up a damn diary and explain yourself there.
I know it's been talked about before but I still don't think it's been emphasized how *fucked* today's internet experience is for children. I didn't know what the word "discourse" was when I was 8, or 10, or even 13. I was too busy playing the nigh-limitless amount of flash games out there on the internet and making sure my neopets were fed. Like I cannot stress enough that if I had free time on the computer, 9 times out of 10 I could go and play a jaunty little game someone had whipped up and put out there for no other reason than that creating games was awesome and easy to do. Or go to some page that existed just to collect memes; you see back then there were more than 4 sites, and you didn't need accounts to visit them. I didn't get targeted ads. I wasn't exposed to any sort of political ideology. I spent a lot of time on the computer but no one site monopolized my time or tried to fucking manipulate me into using it more. The internet was for more than one thing back then, and honestly I don't think enough people realize how much has been stolen from us.
Every time without fail
When I think things are good, and I think things are fine...someone says "Hold on gangster"
E-MORTALITY / @blueskies-bluescreens / status of a steam user / death, virtual grief and your digital footprint by kelley edwards and johanna j. lunn / STurner4077 on twitter / the new forms of mourning: loss and exhibition of the death on the internet (2016) by julie alev dilmaç / description for all the ghosts in the machine: illusions of immortality in the digital age (2019) by elaine kasket
I actually need to get off the internet the ego boost I get from being able to just share my thoughts unprovoked?!
Like hark, thou shalt listen to my tales! I bringeth news from the crevasses of mine own brain and I commandeth thee to read
“Getting Ready for A Career as an Internet Designer” book seen at thrift.
WOW. rockin Netscape Navigator on their PowerPC like A PRO Careerer
And uhm.. HOW in 1992 did you get internet access on top of Mount Kilimanjaro? that’s what I WANNA KNOW
ALSO LOOK that that book cover - Talk about Prescient Y2K aesthetic with the holographic materials!
I love how unsafe the internet is if you're a genuine minority. Oh if you're a GOOD autistic, you're fine. If you understand certain social cues, and have no issues that can't be solved with a tone tag, you're a good autistic. Your autistic speaking mannerisms, though? Absolutely deplorable. And is that... *gasp* YOU BEING WEIRD?? This is unfathomable. how dare an autistic person make me uncomfortable. They're weird, they don't act like ME, so... Queer spaces? If you're cute and soft they'll love you, if you're digestable for Tiktok or whatever garbage social media platform, youre great. If you're binary and passable enough as not-queer, the cishets will love you, and likely a good portion of queer folks will too. But the kinky transgender person who calls themself a fag is considered not proper by default. Unless they specifically create a persona for themselves that dulls things down, they're disliked.
Do you ever try to find a specific image of a character online, but it's the internet so you end up seeing shit you would rather not see while still not finding the picture you want?
Anyway I found it after an hour
😝
go here and let me know what your short term top artists from spotify (within the last 4 weeks) are in the tags!
The fucking internet knows I'm on my period. This is fucking insane. Like......boundaries?!???
Original comic by Duckuncle
Original comic by Duckuncle
The internet has become essentially 5 giants sites all sharing screen shots of each other and not much else.
The internet phenomenon
The funny thing about the internet, is that once you spend hours and hours scrolling and listening to thousands of people talk about themselves and certain experiences, you start to absorb their feelings.
I've seen so many childhood trauma stories that they've kind of imprinted on me even though my childhood was mostly fine. I see memes that make me go "lol that's such a vibe" but they're not actually relatable to me personally, they're just so widespread I've seen them over and over again until I mistake their familiarity for relatability. I nod my head in solidarity when women talk about being harassed by men, even though that has never actually happened to me (yet). I see people posting about how single and desperate for a bf/gf they are and I'm mentally like "omg so relatable" before I remember that I am literally a-spec and have only ever had one real crush. The tropes wind their way into my psyche and twist my perception of what is real for me and what is not. It's strange.
My (least) favourite thing about the internet is if you make a slight mistake even if it's not serious about 40 people will reply telling you you're wrong like they can't see all of the replies of others word for word saying the same thing and you replying going "oh my bad" sometimes you don't even have to be incorrect.
look i know the supply chains have been interrupted but i ordered that fresh inspiration a good two years ago and i’m still waiting for it to arrive… yeah i’ll take stale inspiration if that’s all you’ve got. it’s tumblr i’ll just scrape the mould off they won’t know the difference