*Rant Alert* TL:DR Culture and the Lazyness of some people

[Kbb]

Many studies out there are analyzing how the actual brain chemistry of society is changing.  The mind is very adaptable to changes in input.  People that are blind can develop skills over their life that help them to compensate etc.  The information/input of today is compressed into 30 second commercials to convince you to buy a product, billboards as you drive by, and immediate results from the internet.  The studies I have looked into see our brains adapting and changing to utilize small packets of information instead of the long absorption process.  Kind of like the process stream of a computer.

In short, parts of the world are in transition to a different way of thinking (both physically in the brain and in principle).  People will clearly have their opinions, but we do not know yet if this different way of thinking will be a good thing or bad.  Just different.

My 2 cents for what its worth.

[PigFish]

I call this writing to the lowest common denominator. I don't do it!

Writing is fun for some people. While it can be a chore, I would rather write than edit video. I would prefer to talk on the phone than text, and email fits in between.

Writing something worthwhile and reading something worthwhile are both pleasures. It is a matter of taste. I am likely 'the one' on this board most accused of writing tomes. Don't like it, gain nothing from it... skip it? You have the right not to read my stuff!

I would like to think that I can keep a reader's interest, but not all readers certainly. This is the lowest common denominator aspect. Not all people will be interested in what one has to say, and I just don't worry about those people.

I think it is a skill to write and keep interest. If you are interested in the topic, yet not in my writing that is my fault. I try to avoid this, as I would prefer to write to 'everyone that has the interest.' This is closely related to insulting people as they read written material. One cannot possibly control all the emotions felt by all the people that will read his material, nor their mentality or the degree to which they have interest or ability to understand. You simply cannot shield and interest all parties whey you write passionatly.

When dealing with individuals you will have to compromise. And an author may have to compromise on many aspects and thoughts to be successful. Whether it is clarity of thought, or the obscurity of offense, writing, as any form of communication is a skill. One cannot please all the people all the time, and I will conclude my writing by saying that it is a waste of a passionate writer's time to try!

Cheers! -Piggy

[Lotusguy]

For as long as there have been generations, the older generation has complained about the younger generation and the perceived decline in standards, civilization, dress, music, manners, et cetera.

It's simply human nature - get over it.

[Colt45]

I'm under the impression that the popular social media platforms were really designed for shorter snippets of information - I guess if we engage on these platforms it makes sense to try and be concise. Blogs / Vlogs seem more appropriate for more in depth discourse.

I'm not sure I believe it's really a kind of cultural decline as much as I feel it's history re-repeating itself......

P.S. I sometimes think that shortened attention spans are a result of so much information being so readily available.

[Jeremy Festa]

The TLDR culture is a reaction to a lot of internet "noise," and justifiably so.  We do not know the writer's credentials or ability to communicate a message or story. I often start reading something and realise it's rubbish and stop. Time isn't money, but it is certainly precious. If it is a publication we are familiar with and pay for, then one's approach is certainly different, as we know the calibre is going to be better than someone's internet rant. 

Lucky I know (to a certain degree) who you are. Otherwise that post would have copped the TLDR filter from me. It's a good thing. 

[El Presidente]

To my mind there is a general lack of good grace. Call it manners. I don't believe it is specific to the "younger generation".  

Long posts on any forum are not everyone's cup of tea. One's options are:

1. Read it thoroughly.

2. Skim it

3. Move on. 

To reply to such a post can take the form of:

1. engagement (agree/disagree...discuss)

2. post nothing

3. a "thank you" as a general acknowledgement

It takes a "special" breed of individual to post a complaint on the length of the post.  It is a nice judge of character. 

 

Still, my pet peeve is intolerance of other people's opinions. With all the information at our fingertips there appears to less inclination to explore and challenge one's own beliefs. This has nothing to do with youth as people of my own generation are some of the worst offenders.  To learn, discuss, read & listen broadly is one of life's great pleasures.  What a wonderful age we live in for that to occur.  

The ability to have a civil exchange of ideas with others appears to be a skill in decline. 

 

[PigFish]

29 minutes ago, El Presidente said:

To my mind there is a general lack of good grace. Call it manners. I don't believe it is specific to the "younger generation".  

Long posts on any forum are not everyone's cup of tea. One's options are:

1. Read it thoroughly.

2. Skim it

3. Move on. 

To reply to such a post can take the form of:

1. engagement (agree/disagree...discuss)

2. post nothing

3. a "thank you" as a general acknowledgement

It takes a "special" breed of individual to post a complaint on the length of the post.  It is a nice judge of character. 

 

Still, my pet peeve is intolerance of other people's opinions. With all the information at our fingertips there appears to less inclination to explore and challenge one's own beliefs. This has nothing to do with youth as people of my own generation are some of the worst offenders.  To learn, discuss, read & listen broadly is one of life's great pleasures.  What a wonderful age we live in for that to occur.  

The ability to have a civil exchange of ideas with others appears to be skill in decline. 

 

... nicely stated my friend.

-R

[Leopolis Semper Fidelis]

As my late father used to say, "If the writer can't grab your attention in the first couple or so sentences, you're wasting your time proceeding further".  Who am I to disagree with Dad?

[Fuzz]

For all those TL:DR people, take up speed reading.

[Leopolis Semper Fidelis]

Another observation: crude, blasphemous, offensive, etc., language is to be observed more and more in written communication nowadays.  That says a lot about modern society.  Let's hear it for good manners, grace and respect. 

[rhcolbert]

Valid. Lack of tribe, lack of culture.  Everyman, everything with no identity is perfect consumer.  No depth and no time for anything.  

This is my only online presence for a reason. People who seem to enjoy slowing down and depth. 

[anjimj]

Even at work I find my emails that I send out that are too long to read will not be read nor will I get a quick reply. I find that you have to keep emails short and sweet to get any attention even though emails may require some insightful thoughts which may require me to post an email with 300 words or more. It's too bad it's come to that. I'm finding that picking up the phone and calling the person is a better form of communication these days. 

[1LegLance]

There is hope out there....both my sons (26,19) read and enjoy sitting on the patio with a good cigar, great conversation and slowing down life. They also have friends who would rather sit, talk and be present vs living a snippet life. So know that there is hope in the world....but then again maybe is has to do with how my wife and I spend more time reading that watching tv

[PapaDisco]

Isn't it referred to as "Internet Time?"  Sort of like a "New York Minute" being less than 60 seconds?  The click through habit of surfing the net trains us to be very short focused and limited in attention span.  It's not a 'modern' thing, it's more directly related to the infusion of technology into our daily lives.

Recall that there's no such thing as multi-tasking.  What we're really doing, as we pop from one SMS to email and back to our web page, is quickly shifting from one task to another, not handling multiple tasks at once.  This technological time share of our brain bandwidth trains us to not focus and not  sustain a common thread of thought.  And so whenever we sign on to the web, we unconsciously sign on to Internet Time, which tolerates nothing requiring over 20 seconds of concentration.  Sad.  

Social networks and technology can do a great job of connecting like minded people, friends and relatives over great distances, but its biggest contribution seems to be in training bad habits into our brains.

[teamrandr]

I personally  think society is doing the best it ever has.  I am sick of the fear mongering.   It is called change.  

[rhcolbert]

33 minutes ago, teamrandr said:

I personally  think society is doing the best it ever has.  I am sick of the fear mongering.   It is called change.  

Why? Not attempting to be rude or argumentative.  I'm actually very curious about your thoughts.  What specific society? What are the values and metrics you are applying to come to this conclusion?

Reason I ask is I've got a couple set of competing metrics that I struggle with when I attempt to measure success/failure of society if you will.  I'll preface it wirh society being the Western Europe to specifically the new experiment of American society.

the bad first. Community and self reliance (self being a strong group of few, not sole individual).  While many are connected wirh millions all over the world with the advent of communication technology and ease of travel, there is a lack of depth that can only be fostered with significant time and effort put into ones close to you.  I see people know more or are feigning concern about those in distant lands more than their neighbors.  Sadly, it seems that only catatrophies stop this trend and bring people back to the evolutionary roots of what we were made for; groups of maybe a few hundred max that band together for survival.  Outmoded now, but science shows the about of people we can have meaningful relationships with and how doing so helps us psychologically. As we move away from this, mental health issues skyrocket.

the positive.  Trade, advancements in Heath and welfare, quality and standards of living, justcto name a few.  The modern age and how society functions has rapidly in teased this.  Simple example, I can get cigars from Cuba that have been qc'd in Australia to my door.  Prior to these advancements, my outlet would of been moonshine and rancid chewing tobacco given my geographic location.  My healthcare is not reliant on maybe one traveling doc.  I have access to specialists of all kinds.  What might of killed me years ago is now a minor issue.

in summary, there's no better or worse.  Only trade offs. As is with everything I life. Do you trade tribal belonging and better mental health for expanded options in your choices and advances in physical health care?

chose which problems you are comfortable with in the society you want I guess. What started this thread is just a result of the society we've chosen.  

[Smokin Joe]

On 04/20/2017 at 5:42 PM, polarbear said:

I recently finished re-reading my favourite fiction novel. It was 700+ pages of joy and happiness.

Which book?

[teamrandr]

11 hours ago, rhcolbert said:

Why? Not attempting to be rude or argumentative.  I'm actually very curious about your thoughts.  What specific society? What are the values and metrics you are applying to come to this conclusion?

Reason I ask is I've got a couple set of competing metrics that I struggle with when I attempt to measure success/failure of society if you will.  I'll preface it wirh society being the Western Europe to specifically the new experiment of American society.

the bad first. Community and self reliance (self being a strong group of few, not sole individual).  While many are connected wirh millions all over the world with the advent of communication technology and ease of travel, there is a lack of depth that can only be fostered with significant time and effort put into ones close to you.  I see people know more or are feigning concern about those in distant lands more than their neighbors.  Sadly, it seems that only catatrophies stop this trend and bring people back to the evolutionary roots of what we were made for; groups of maybe a few hundred max that band together for survival.  Outmoded now, but science shows the about of people we can have meaningful relationships with and how doing so helps us psychologically. As we move away from this, mental health issues skyrocket.

the positive.  Trade, advancements in Heath and welfare, quality and standards of living, justcto name a few.  The modern age and how society functions has rapidly in teased this.  Simple example, I can get cigars from Cuba that have been qc'd in Australia to my door.  Prior to these advancements, my outlet would of been moonshine and rancid chewing tobacco given my geographic location.  My healthcare is not reliant on maybe one traveling doc.  I have access to specialists of all kinds.  What might of killed me years ago is now a minor issue.

in summary, there's no better or worse.  Only trade offs. As is with everything I life. Do you trade tribal belonging and better mental health for expanded options in your choices and advances in physical health care?

chose which problems you are comfortable with in the society you want I guess. What started this thread is just a result of the society we've chosen.  

You pretty much summed up my reasons for feeling  this way.  We are at a time of very comfortable  living.  Of course  I am speaking  from my experience  in a small American  town.  I agree with pretty  much your whole post.   

[dominattorney]

On 4/20/2017 at 1:42 AM, polarbear said:

While surfing another forum (not cigar related) I came across a thread that was discussing a complex issue and the possible motivations behind it.
While the post was fairly long and detailed, it certainly wasn't a novel by any stretch, maybe 650 words total

Before reading the post I noticed it had over 40 replies and figured the thread had descended into heated discussion and general name calling. Instead the first post after the initial was a member complaining that the post was too long and asking for a quick summery.
Obviously, the OP had put a lot of thought into the initial post and felt that what he had said over the course of his post needed to be as detailed as it was in an effort to adequately explain his stance on the issue in question.
Surprisingly, when confronted with someone who was too lazy to read his post, but not too lazy to reply to it asking for a summery, he was less than enthused.

What followed was a number of people also complaining that a post totalling over 600 words was too long and nothing worth saying should take that long to say.
It got me thinking about the rise of the TL:DR (Too Long: Didn't Read) culture often found online and in social media, often adopted by people around my age bracket.
There have been a few occasions I've posted on social media in regards to a current social issue, and my feelings towards it only to receive a number of TL:DRs from people.

How hard is it to read a damn article or well written post about something you actually care about!?
I consider it pretty selfish for someone to not only be "too busy" (or more likely, too lazy) to read something that something someone has put time into writing. If you click on a link and am confronted with a wall of text, click the "back key" and move on. I don't understand why someone would be interested enough to click the article, but not interested enough to read it, instead requesting a 10-20 word summery.

As I get older (early 30's now) I find myself sounding more and more like my father did when I was a kid. Talking to people in their late teens or early 20's I'm sure I often come off like the proverbial old man, shaking his fist and telling "those kids" to "get off my lawn", but seriously, have our attention spans gotten so short that we now refuse to read something that more than 160 characters?
Is this shift in peoples expectation of online content the fault of Twitter or simply that there is so much going on now, expecting someone to stare at the screen for 2 uninterrupted minuets is too much to ask now?

I recently had a conversation with my girlfriends little sister (she's 16) and she was telling me that she doesn't read books for pleasure. The books she is required to read for school are considered a chore and if possible she will hunt online for a detailed (but still short) summery of whatever reading is required for her classes in an effort to avoid having to "slog" through a 350 page fiction novel.
We then moved onto the fact that 90% of her communication with her friends is either via text or Snap Chat. The texts she does send are mostly emojis (I would draw comparisons to hieroglyphic communication of the ancient Egyptians if I thought for a second a 16 year old girl would know what I was talking about) and she prefers Snap Chat as she only needs to talk to her phone rather than have to make a call (if I could tell what the difference was between the two, I'd mention it). When I told her about the days when a phone would only allow a text message to be 160 characters or less (the birthplace of Twitter, I assume) she replied "that must've been so nice, no one sending you really long messages you have to read all the time". I was left almost speechless.

As much as I love social medial and all the doors for communication and community it has opened, I cant help but wonder if its making us dumber. We have the 24 hour news cycle now, but each story lasts only 5min before the next one starts and the is continuously cycled over and over. You can deep and complex discussions with people on the other side of the world, with friends and family allowed to weigh in with their opinions, but then it all gets too long and most people miss the point of the conversations. I can send my partner a picture of the sun rise in NYC for her to see in Aus but I once spent 20 minutes watching to girls photograph their food at a café. We have all of the world knowledge in our pockets, accessible to us at any time we want, but instead we look at cat videos and watch clips of other people playing video games.

I wonder where we're heading as a culture, sometimes. If taking 5 min to read something someone has written is all too hard, how long will it be before people stop having meaningful or difficult conversations?
What happens when the only reason people write books are so they can be adapted into a film or TV show to be easily consumed by the masses?

I recently finished re-reading my favourite fiction novel. It was 700+ pages of joy and happiness. Reading it was like slipping on a comfortable jumper. It helped me unwind during a stressful month of work and home life. I looked forward to the 90min a night I could curl up with this old book and forget about what was waiting for me.
What happens if that goes away?

What book brotha? The only one I come back to over 400 pages is the brothers karamazov, but always interested to hear suggestions. 

[puromaniac]

A good discussion on human variation in time use and motivation and accessing and enjoying information and more. Would keep of team of sociologists and demographers and statistical wonks working months to explain it concisely. Probably want a fat grant to boot.

It makes me wonder if there is a parallel with what I see increasingly (admittedly with no stats to wonk over) in society: a passionate dislike of being inconvenienced. I am an avid walker. (Yes I walk and smoke cigars, but let's not get distracted by the aesthetic and personal preferences implications.) Many--and I use many liberally--drivers are a prime example. Can't be inconvenienced. May slow down grudgingly but too many are loathe to stop or yield or look both ways or, cigar-gods forbid, let you know if they are turning. 

Some may write it off as rudeness or idiocy or worse. But can't help but think it boils down to an increasingly human disdain of tolerating even minor inconvenience.

Any parallels? Or just off topic?

[Colt45]

42 minutes ago, puromaniac said:

 I am an avid walker.

Any parallels?

I think it's a two way street (pun intended). I walk, bicycle, and drive my car on the roads around my house - there is little to no shoulder. I'm always cognizant of the safety issues for all envolved. While driving my car, I've lost count of how many times I've encountered walkers / joggers two or three abreast in the middle of the road. Always fun when driving around a blind bend with them coming at me. Same for groups of bicyclists. Single file, folks.....

Again, I really don't think any of what's being discussed is anything new. Change / gentrification / homogenization has been going on since the time of the ancient Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, etc....

[PigFish]

I think it has little to do with walkers, bikers or drivers! It has everything to do with egocentrism. Egocentrism abounds! Do you think that someone would stop to help someone stranded on the road... no! Help a lady get a box of something in her cart or off a top shelf at the store. Maybe round up the neighbors elderly dog so he does not get hit by an egocentric motorist??? It just does not happen much anymore.

I think we are from the 'I/Me' generation. There is no 'you and yours' in 'I/me.'

Rant over! -Piggy

[Hypersomniac]

As some others have stated, the TL:DR mentality is a symptom of a larger problem. What it is a symptom of is debatable. 

I think that the impatience shown by TL:DR or rushed, dangerous driving or what have you, is not so much of an issue of egocentrism; but rather a feeling that one has to fill there day with too much. In my mind, it is not a problem of selfishness, it is a cry for help. At least from an American perspective, it feels like you are judged by how much you work or how much you do. You wouldn't believe what people have said upon hearing that I am taking 3 weeks of FMLA leave and forgoing a paycheck (only one paycheck) to spend time with my newborn son and my family.

People these days feel like they need to work constantly, lest they be considered lazy or that they need to consume information as fast as possible, lest they be left behind in a conversation (never mind that the 140 characters of "news" they read on twitter gives them zero understanding of the issue). People don't cook at home so much as order out because that is too much work and takes away from other things they might need to do. 

Is it any wonder that with the increased go-go-go mindset has led to an increased stress level, or more people becoming burned-out? I make relaxation a priority, and as a result I am rarely stressed, I am happy, I am motivated, I am effective. I am quickly moving up in the company I work at for the simple reason that I am willing to work my ass off (because I also relax and am not worried about being burned out or off of my game). Realistically, people do not understand how to relax; they do not understand or experience leisure.

I recommend reading Josef Pieper's "Leisure, the Basis of Culture". We as a collective whole need to regain our perspective on leisure and let it transform our lives for the better.