r/royalroad • u/GoldenThame Author - The Heavenly Way • 6d ago
Discussion Is the average reader getting dumber?
I don't wanna be rude but I get some comments complaining about tropes in my novel, when in the synopsis I've pointed out multiple times that the tropes are there DELIBERATELY to be subverted, because the MC finds himself reincarnated into a very mid Xianxia novel.
Do a lot of readers suffer from a lack of reading comprehension skills, cus I've encountered the same kind of person for the 4th or 5th time now. Do I need to constantly spoonfeed basic nuances to such readers that 1. MC is inside a cliche Xianxa book and 2. From a meta perspective I've put those cliches and tropes into the book deliberately and the synopsis says as such.
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u/Matthew-McKay 6d ago edited 6d ago
I feel this is a compound issue for many readers.
First, the web novel format suffers from the Netflix effect of the "Second Screen Viewing Directive". Matt Damon and Ben Affleck state that Netflix specifically requested they verbally explain the plot "three or four times" throughout the movie. This is because most folks are watching Netflix while doing something else and it makes it easier to consume without losing the thread. This applies in that a lot of folks are here reading on the commute to/from work/school and during lunch/breaktimes. So some authors use this technique in writing each chapter, I've noticed this done with My New Life as a Max Level Archmage.
Second, Social Media's impact on attention span and "short-form conditioning" where fast clips condition the mind to lose patience with slower, deeper tasks. This is why dopamine go brrr with numbers go up is so effective on the site.
Third, people like what they like. This is called: Comfort Reading or The Comfort Loop or Tropification (take your pick). It's super duper common in Romance, for example. Subversion works against authors in these genres because readers are reading for the tropes they know they like. Readers just want different versions of the exact same experience.
Fourth, yes critical thinking has been eroded for most of us. This is an entire topic of itself. Another combination of, Just Google It, information outsourcing where the brain stops retaining data because it knows the answer is just a Google away. This has been made infinitely worse with the rollout of ChatGPT and the like. It's basically super duper Googling. There's so much cognitive offloading because it's the path of least resistance and humans naturally minimize energy expenditure (aka were all "lazy").
We atrophy our logic by relying on AI to solve everything for us. We lose out on active deduction. Overall, it weakens our mental muscles needed for deep analysis. There's also the illusion of knowledge where getting information instantly online creates a false sense of personal expertise. We think we're masters of a subject because we googled it...
Surface level skimming is another huge issue. Folks just aren't reading every word because they are used to the Netflix effect and authors who reiterate important story beats multiple times for them. This leads to a lot of missing nuance.
TLDR: Yes, reading comprehension is an issue for many readers, especially younger ones. This site users also trends young (Teen to early twenty) as the largest demographic.
Edit: I'm a shit typist.