#illiteracy

I think for people who are literate, the experience of listening to a book and reading a book are very similar because I think the ability to read words on a page and think deeply about them improves your listening comprehension which provides a better experience when it comes to listening to a story.

For people who struggle with literacy, listening can be a good experience and a good accessible entry to reading, but the experience will be different and it does not serve as a replacement for the necessary skill of reading. But I would still encourage people who cannot read yet to listen because that could potentially lead to reading.

I also think an unnecessary pressure created by social media to read as many books as possible in a short year has made many people, some of who can read, develop a habit of playing an audiobook but not necessarily listening to what is happening in said book. And once that audiobook plays to the end, it's marked down as "read" on their "completed" list even if they couldn't tell you what the book was about or what happened in it.

And I LOVE audiobooks. They've been great for commute and walking my dog, because not only can I make those opportunities to read more books, but I feel like listening to them gives my brain some nice stimulation during mundane but necessary tasks that need to be completed (not that bonding with my amazing doggie is mundane...in this case, I get to do two things that I love at the same time). But I don't think I could, in good conscious, tell someone that I've read 27 books this year as of now (July) if a good portion of those books were not also physical books (14 physical books...so about half).

As the video goes on, outlining what happens in the various different sections of game, it becomes increasingly clear that the devs did, in fact, make it pretty obvious and easy to understand the story using several clear metaphors that are not difficult to interpret.

Thankfully the youtuber's interpretation in the end was one that I think is probably the most supported read by the text, but he kept talking about it as if it was some huge task that required "piecing together" several other community theories.

I just felt this chill go through me at the idea that several adults were struggling this hard with imagery and metaphor that is not particularly subtle. The internet complains about literacy crisis, but I had usually just attributed that to people looking for reasons to argue for the dopamine hit, or quickly misreading because they were skimming and not fully engaged.

Not like, genuinely incapable of understanding symbolism.