FUTURE SHOCK | Beware of illiterates online… they’re all over the place
Illiterates have a limited vocabulary. Much less the mental skills to use them. Most people dislike reading.
From the pages of The Manila Times
Yup… a “WALL OF TEX”. That’s what online idiots call a post, which is more than 3 paragraphs long. It’s deregatory in nature. It’s gibberish… too much words or information for the mentally deficient who referred to it as a “WALL OF TEX”.
If you stop to think about it, that’s actually an interesting metaphor. A wall made out of words. A wall is something that obstructs or something that must be climbed. Something to be bested! (For non-readers, I’ll save you a trip to Google. It simply means to be defeated. Why use the term bested? Because I can. LoL).
Obviously the slang WALL OF TEX was coined by someone who doesn’t like to read. A reader such as myself would have given it terms like, A Symphony of words, Themassing of terribly delicious ideas, The congregation of alphabets, A continent of thoughts. A gathering of delightful configurations!
But…NO! It’s a WALL OF TEX..DUH! NO SH*T!
What imagination! No surprise there. Illiterates have a limited vocabulary. Much less the mental skills to use them. Most people dislike reading? Well you can trace that back to our primordial origins.
Our ancestors acquired visual acumen early on. See they needed it to survive the harsh environment. Survival comes first. “SEE THAT ANIMAL..ME WANT TO EAT…SEE THAT FRUIT, LOOKS DELICOUS..ME WANT TO EAT..SEE THAT CAVEWOMAN…ME WANT TO EAT….” Get the picture? (Pun intended)
Those are the basic needs that must be met to ensure that the human race survives and propogate.
Reading and writing are skills that where acquired and developed afterwards. When survival took a backseat to developing a civilization and interacting & communicating with each other. The first form of writing was developed by the Sumerians (Why do I know this? Because I like to read!) So painting on cavewalls went out, and scrawling letters on tablets were in. Then it was on papyrus. Then goat skin. And finally, paper! Funny enough, were back to scrawling on tablets again, this time with a dreaded power supply.
Now back to reading…
It takes a lot of brainpower usage to read and most importantly TO COMPREHEND than to look at a picture. A picture paints a 1000 words. That’s true. What a writer takes two paragraphs to describe is equivalent to one image. Easy! No wonder
most people don’t like reading anymore. Oh yes, they can read but they read mostly BLURBS, CAPTIONS… AND GOD FORBID, MEMES!
Anything that exceeds 10 sentences — their brains shut down. Comprehension levels shoot off and go into the red. Their internal processors in the head burn out. And they end up with a stupid look on their faces and utter, “…huh?”
There are still readers out there but their numbers are dwindling as faster connections and high-end providers materialize. Reading has been a disappearing art form decades before the rise of digital technology. I was encountering people whose reading list were a bunch of gossip magazines & Sunday comics. But now it’s worst!
Back then I’d see paperback books carried by hand or underneath a stack of notebooks. Now you hardly see them at all. I’d like to think that with the advent of digital books & Kindle, they’re most probably stored on phones and laptops. But recent net behavior shows that reading long form is indeed on the way out.
Streaming videos are so popular because they are videos! Have you heard of streaming novels being a hit? Or streaming columns? Of course not. No such thing. But if there is, it wont be a big thing either. It will be labeled as a WALL OF TEX! Who wants to read about it when they can see a 4K resolution of a road mishap? Would you work your way to all those tedious adjectives, those taxing nouns, and vicious verbs when you can see bodies fly as they get hit by a sleeping driver who drifts to the opposite lane, goes up the sidewalk, and mow down pedestrians? You can even do replays again and again… and again.
Videos & pictures show us the here & now. Spoon feeding at its easiest. Reading takes imagination and skill. EATS UP too much cranium power.
THE WALL OF TEX as a term defines the future of reading. It is also an omen of where the new generation is headed. It’s as clear as the handwriting ON THE WALL.
From the pages of The Manila Times
