Flash the Readies

Now the internet as a MEDIUM allows much greater access for the many many people who do not like using text that much, and younger people are functionally FORCED to use digital spaces and also you probably don’t spend a lot of time dealing with older people who WEREN’T part of the I Prefer Text block back when the internet selected for them.

Signed: An Information Worker Who Has Both Massive Numbers of Coworkers and Patrons From Older Demographics Who ALSO VASTLY PREFER VIDEOS and Send Them To Me/Ask Me For Them/Discover Whole New Fields Of Interest Because Youtube Has Instructional Videos.

(I am so fucking serious you guys anyone who thinks Gen X "naturally has an easier time with text" has no fucking idea how many people their age actually loathe, hate and struggle with text and absorb and prefer video-media . . . .because you have nothing to do with them, because the disconnect is that big. I do. They come to my public library to ask me how streaming works because they just discovered that there's so much shit they can actually learn - yes, I do mean Generation X, yes, they do come to my public library to learn how to use technology because they did not know and only recently realized that Holy Shit, Video Shit Online Is Fucking Amazing - because it turns out that streaming videos especially in short bites of attention-span work great for them for learning shit! Amazing! Who could have predicted this! I even teach many of them how to use Text-to-Speech when they get this downcast face realizing that their thing is still Very Text Heavy online, because text is unpleasant for them.)

(Please stop assuming that your personal preferences and those of the population that was previously hyper-selected for you because the practicalities of the format demanded a certain kind of mind to use efficiently is a universal for a chunk of time.)

(But also meanwhile: please send me the text article, I absolutely am capable of reading and retaining like twelve times faster than anyone can talk.)

This has been yet another episode of "for the love of god the next time you're convinced something is a big generational change take thirty seconds and ask yourself 'is it perhaps that there was previously an excluded or hidden or otherwise unexperienced population of This Thing that I am now experiencing, rather than a New Phenomenon/Massive Change?'"