Staggering insight into our post literate society! (The Age of Reading is over)

YouTube ^ | Jul 23, 2026 | Cheere Denise

[ProgressingAmerica]

No description has been added to this video.

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TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: literacy; reading

[ProgressingAmerica]

This notion of a post-reading society has generated a lot of buzz. I think many of the people getting bent about it are partially misreading the facts of the whole picture.

Open source audio books can partially overcome this problem.

There is plenty of elitism that makes people (mostly young people) look down on "old" books, but likewise there is a very real issue that reading takes a lot of time. It's way too inconvenient.

A large portion of this problem is only a convenience problem to overcome. We can overcome that.

A large portion of people simply want a preference for some way to consume the book that is more convenient, and when that convenience is missing the book gets rejected outright.

[GOPJ]

Most publishers are white liberal elite jerks... they publish crap most people don’t want to read.

[ProgressingAmerica]

Haha yes there is plenty of that too. However the refusal to engage in the act of reading is being extended to long written book from years ago and even ages ago.

[GingisK]

Internet content is usually pretty lame when compared with printed counterparts. Books seem to contain a lot more quality content and are written to higher standards of language. Video documentaries contain 5 minutes on content that is repeated in numerous ways in order to fill the hour.

[sphinx]

The anti-reading thing is epidemic, and it will contribute to the accelerating class stratification of society. We will end up with literate elites and sub- or marginally literate serfs.

People who find a passion and/or have real intellectual curiosity will self educate outside of the schools.

The literate elites may not do much reading by historical norms. But in the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king. And the elites who want to herd the serfs like cattle will have to be literate enough to generate their propaganda.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Video Transcript Summary

Summary of the YouTube video (Chia Denise reacting to Rose Horwich’s Atlantic article “The Age of Reading is Over”):

The video discusses a compelling Atlantic article lamenting the end of reading as a widespread cultural practice and the resulting decline in cognitive abilities, attention spans, and societal depth. The host strongly endorses the piece as a “call to action” and personal reality check.

Key Points from the Article (as covered):

• Declining Reading Habits: Fewer than half of American adults read any book in 2022; only 38% read fiction. Daily pleasure reading dropped sharply (from 28% in 2004 to 16% in 2023, including audiobooks and e-books). Gambling now outpaces reading as a leisure activity. The decline affects all ages, including heavy-reader demographics like college graduates, women, and retirees.
• Simpler Content: Bestsellers today feature much shorter sentences than a century ago. Classic complex works (e.g., Dr. Zhivago) have been replaced by young adult fiction, graphic novels, manga, and light romance even among adults. Children’s books like Diary of a Wimpy Kid dominate.
• Falling Literacy Skills: Fourth/eighth-grade reading scores have declined for a decade. High school seniors show poor proficiency in analyzing themes or arguments. Nearly 30% of adults now struggle with basic inferences from multi-page texts (up from under 20% in 2017). Teachers report reduced “reading stamina” and buy easier materials (graphic novels, simplified classics).
• Education System Failures: Schools assign fewer full books and more short excerpts for test prep. Devices flood classrooms from kindergarten. Professors at colleges (even Harvard) now teach basic text comprehension and defend the value of reading full primary sources against student complaints that reading is an unnecessary burden.
• Harvard Examples: Students resent dense reading, use ChatGPT to “translate” books like A Clockwork Orange (mistaking its slang for Old English), and view reading as professors arbitrarily withholding information instead of just summarizing.
• Tech & Media Impact: Television began the shift to post-literate society (McLuhan, Postman). Smartphones, infinite scrolling, notifications, and multitasking (including audiobooks) worsen comprehension compared to focused print reading. Attention spans have collapsed; people absorb less and crave constant stimulation.
• Broader Cultural Costs: Reading builds deep thinking, empathy, character analysis, and understanding of human nature (via authors like Dickens, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky). Society is losing this in favor of shallow, fast entertainment. Children’s literature has shifted from themes of responsibility, initiative, and problem-solving (e.g., Henry Huggins) to exaggerated rebellion, victimhood, and fantasy where characters need no personal change.
• Parenting & Societal Negligence: Overprotective parenting that shields kids from struggle produces entitled students who expect information to be handed to them. Low rates of adults reading to children (only 2% on a given day) fail to pass on the habit. The article draws a parallel to the ancient Library of Alexandria’s slow death by neglect rather than dramatic destruction—signaling a “dark age” already underway.

Chia Denise’s Take:She frames it as “convenience food vs. nourishing food” for the brain—easy scrolling/AI summaries feel good but make us dumber collectively. She urges parents to read more themselves, read classics to kids, support substantive books, and resist the decline. Reading isn’t a niche hobby; it’s essential for deep thought, self-understanding, and cultural health. The video mixes article highlights with personal reflections on parenting, education, and cultural shifts.

Overall, the piece and video paint a bleak but actionable picture: society is getting less able to handle complexity, nuance, or sustained focus, with serious implications for education, democracy, and human connection. Both recommend deliberately choosing harder, slower, deeper reading to counteract it.

[cgbg]

Many old books are available in pdf format on the web for free.

Copyright totally expires seventy years after the author’s death.

(Then of course there are “unauthorized” pdfs available as well.)

[Brian Griffin]

“The Age of Reading is over”

according to a “Youtube” video.

[MortMan]

The “oral tradition” route was taken by societies that had no viable written tradition.

It’s akin to the old joke:

Q: What did socialists use for light before candles?

A: Electricity and light bulbs.

[mewzilla]

Reading stamina is a thing.

Americans need to develop more of it.

[cgbg]

“Reading isn’t a niche hobby” said the author.

The author made one of the most common mistakes made by “intellectuals”.

They confuse what is = reality....

With what they wish would be = their wild dreams.

Reading long serious or literary books is a niche hobby. That is reality.

The author’s wild dreams are a joke.

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Now that we have that out of the way a serious discussion is possible.

Many interesting podcasters/videocasters I support can walk and chew gum at the same time.

They write and publish (often self publish to avoid censorship) and then use their videos to discuss variations on themes they have written about...

[Scrambler Bob]

Simpler Content: Bestsellers today feature much shorter sentences than a century ago. Classic complex works (e.g., Dr. Zhivago) have been replaced by young adult fiction, graphic novels, manga, and light romance even among adults.

= = =
Remembering the AI report from yesterday that AI was buying up the old books, scanning them, and destroying them.

Maybe that is true.

But eliminating the old, complex, quality stuff would match the move for simpler content.

[Theo]

TL;DR

[SaveFerris]

(post-literate society)

We are well on our way - many have already arrived

You can tell by the people who ONLY believe what
they have been fed by the Liberal Mainstream Media

I meet several of them

This is but one reason I’m using memes
(Plus they’re easily shared if people try to
make even minimal effort but few actually do)

You’re lucky if you’ve got someone’s attention for
even 30 seconds at a time

In reality your best hope is usually 7-15 seconds

Yes they’ll watch a 30-second video before they’ll
read even 2-10 pages

They’re stupid enough to believe that Nancy Peliosi’s
$3.7 TRILLION DOLLAR “Inflation Reduction Act” was
all about reducing inflation 🤦🤦‍♂️🤷‍♂️

[jonrick46]

Without the power of the printed word, critical thinking is underdeveloped and those affected easily controlled by totalitarian regimes.

[cgbg]

Yup—the old quote applies:

“It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he never was reasoned into.”

If media brainwashing convinced them it probably would take counter media brainwashing for a generation to turn it around...

[SaveFerris]

The world we all knew in the 1970s-1990s
is NEVER coming back.

It’s ALL Digital Content, Texts, Videos,
Short Soundbites, TikTok videos, etc.

There are short videos on YouTube
that have 90 million views in just one
month. Mostly non-critical of course.

Expect this to only get worse...

[dfwgator]

"... And there was a time in this country, a long time ago, when reading wasn't just for fags and neither was writing. People wrote books and movies, movies that had stories so you cared whose ass it was and why it was farting, and I believe that time can come again!"

[odawg]

The schools have removed all the classic novels that people have always read and replaced them with anti-white, anti-American, and anti-Christianity, and social justice crap.

Boys like to read adventure stories but those have all been removed. So, therefore, boys don’t and can’t read.

[rlmorel]

"...TL;DR..."

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!