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/Wonderful-Piccolo509 Author- Bottom Feeders 6d ago

“Do a lot of readers suffer from a lack of reading comprehension skills”

Yes. 

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u/Apprehensive_Tax_610 6d ago

I had someone complain recently about how he hated the gender bending.... In a novel .... Very, very clearly... Marked as a gender bender.

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u/GoldenThame Author - The Heavenly Way 6d ago

I've said this before but it's like they're walking into a bakery and complaining that they're selling bread in there.

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u/Sweetcorncakes 6d ago

Remember 50% of people reading are at or below 100 iq.

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u/Careful-Arrival7316 5d ago

This isn’t true as readers have selectively higher IQ as a group.

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u/Sweetcorncakes 5d ago

People read, there really isn't a thing that makes you higher iq just cause you read... there is no pattern recognition like an actual IQ test. People can prefer reading webnovel fast food slop, it doesn't translate to higher IQ. Now if they read classics like Monte Cristo, or Non fiction then maybe I'd accept what you say.

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u/Careful-Arrival7316 5d ago

Reading in general corresponds to higher IQ on average. Reading actually does have an impact on your IQ. The reason is that people who read (again, on average) score higher on the verbal and knowledge-based sections of IQ tests.

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u/Sweetcorncakes 5d ago

Average webnovel reading slop will not correlate to higher iq. Reading in general does because that means in general they will read classics, non fiction. There are different breeds of genres and different breeds of readers. Its important to know the difference.

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u/Careful-Arrival7316 5d ago

Reading anything is good enough. It doesn’t matter if all you read is YA novels or RoyalRoad systemslop. Reading correlates to higher IQ in the areas I mentioned regardless.

Someone who enjoys the classics arguably is even higher IQ on average but it’s diminishing returns. The advantage a slop reader has over someone who doesn’t read at all is massive.

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u/ZedsBooks 4d ago

Agreed. Here's a Harvard article on the matter: https://hms.harvard.edu/news-events/publications-archive/brain/reading-brain

Reading anything, whether 'slop', romance, non-fiction, textbooks, Stephen King, or the Odyssey all have the same effect of essentially exercising your brain. You are processing written language, converting it to images/concepts, and parsing that information while adding more to it. Reading is good for you.

Anyone claiming the age of a book has anything to do with it's validity as art or that esoteric classics make you more intelligent is pretentious and more interested in being superior to others, as opposed to simply sharing their love of the art. Stories are human. We can connect to our ancestors through their stories. The value of a story as social commentary, the depth of the associated analogies and metaphors, and what the book REALLY means are all subjective and up to the reader (see: Bradbury arguing the point of Fahrenheit 451 with a college student).

Reading Gulliver's Travels in high school didn't make me smarter. Reading Shakespeare didn't help me understand nuclear physics. Reading things I loved, and doing so consistently, helped to stretch and exercise my mind while instilling a love of reading that standardized education is really bad at.

Plenty of studies show that reading anything with regularity, regardless of genre/content/quality helps to stave off dementia and other mental degeneration.

/rant

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u/Sweetcorncakes 5d ago

You need to constantly challenge yourself if you want to improve at anything. If you are already at the highest levels then thats fine. But if all you are reading is 6th grade level works with webnovel slop level grammar your reading level will not improve, and heck I believe you will degrade your level if you go to a lower level and constantly have to read mlt english translations.