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we live in a society.
Not sure he does.
Well, if you’re following him, did you bring more clothes? Maybe you can lend him some.
That guys vote counts the same as yours. Just saying.
If he’s from California then my vote counts a little more because my state has less population. The smaller the state’s population the more their vote counts.
Almost certain they were playing it up and this is satire, sorry to spoil everyone’s fun. https://www.instagram.com/jaayfilms They started again on September 30 this year and are now in Missouri. If these content creators are good at one thing it’s creating a compelling narrative and this guy did it by getting himself called illiterate.
Oh shit, he’s in the home state of illiteracy now
I’ll admit there is a part of me thats relieved.
cmon whats his name
I feel like a longboard would be better for this.
Does he have learning disabilities? How does someone with so much motivation not learn to read
Illiterate refers to both being able to read basic words all the way up to reading comprehenson. Equally possible he simply cannot understand what he reads and is anti-intellectual as that seems to be on the rise in the US.
It is easy to have motivation to skateboard across america when you don’t have enough education to understand what doing that means.
“According to the known laws of physics, bumble bees should not be able to fly”
I hate when people use that line as some sort of proof that scientists are fools. It’s like, do y’all really think scientists are looking at bees and crying over equations that the bees (that predated any and all forms of math done by humans) somehow are making them reevaluate.
Laws of aviation. And it’s true, because planes do not flap their wings.
?
“But the Bumblebee does not know these laws, and flies anyways”
(easy to travel when you don’t have enough education to understand what doing that means)
Idunno anything about this guy, but for some folks they just weren’t taught early enough. You can learn to read at any age, but no amount of motivation can match an early education
Most likely functionally illiterate and not 100% “I can’t read,” but I’ve overestimated instagrammers before
Most people are illiterate. Literacy is a skill with levels and most people don’t actually ever reach the level required to be a fully functional person.
This meme is a great example. Most people don’t actually reach Ogre’s level of literacy. Yeah, it’s played for laughs in the fact that Ogre is smarter than the average human, but Ogre is also completely correct about the level of literacy we should expect of people, in a perfect world.
A lot about this is, in my opinion, misleading.
I don’t need to be able to read Ulysses and understand all the themes and the deeper meanings, to be literate. As to actually understand all the meanings, I would have to be familiar with the culture in which it was written and the personal perspective of the author on that culture.
I don’t think the perfect world entails that everyone (or, at least most people) is overly familiar with ancient cultures and authors.
Unfamiliarity with the context of what was written is usually why people don’t catch on themes. A person with german cultural background will not read a passage about bringing honor to your bloodline, in the same way a chinese person will. A lot of Germans are deeply suspicious of the idea of honor. I learned that after decades with Germans and their culture.
How many Cultures are you familiar enough with to be able to correctly understand a text written in it?
E.g. the “remorse of conscience” is a cultural theme. A person who reads a lot of books and seek out these themes, has a different culture than a person who only scrolls on TikTok. And if the person reading books isn’t on TikTok, they are probably unable to properly understand the themes in a TikTok.
And yes, you said that there are different levels of literacy, so you didn’t say that I was illiterate if I wouldn’t catch on the “remorse”. But you present literacy as a 1 dimensional scale. 1 level, 2, 3, etc… When it is not, your ability to correctly parse a text is not 1 dimensional. You will probably fail to correctly understand a story written in ancient china, and if you understand it, you will probably fail to understand a story written in the 1950s in Germany.
Get off the horse. Stand next to us and enjoy your pleasure of reading with other people and learn different perspectives. They aren’t less literate than you, they are differently literate than you.
Yeah, I’ve been really enjoying discussing the themes and deeper meanings in the stormlight archive, but a ton of its themes are deeply American or focused on mental illness or theology and those are areas I have background in. If I were to read the tale of genji or some Dostoyevsky I’d miss so much. I can’t imagine someone in China really getting Huckleberry Finn because it’s deeply American satire, hell I don’t expect a Brit to get it particularly well either.
Most people can’t understand the themes of works from their own culture. How many American conservatives think the Matrix supports their ideas, and brag about taking the “red pill”, not realising it’s an estrogen pill? How many people watch Rick and Morty, and proceed to idolise Rick? Or the same with Sherlock, or House? How many people think Thanos did nothing wrong?
So much of our popular media criticises the flaws inherent in capitalism. Iron Man does it. Star Wars does it. Why don’t we live in a society of socialists? When Starship Troopers was first released, it bombed. Because most people couldn’t tell it was satire. It took years for people to catch on.
Hell, most christians read the Bible and think Jesus was white! It is literally their religious identity, and they can’t be bothered to understand it.
Drag doesn’t think literacy is one dimensional. But drag does think that most people don’t meet the standard for being a functional person in any culture. If most people were literate, then most of the kids who grew up watching Captain Planet would be vegan and carfree. But they aren’t, because they fundamentally don’t understand how to think about the entertainment media they consume.
And by the way, it’s a high dragon, not a horse.
I agree with you about most people not understanding their social structural sorroundings sufficiently to lead their (collective) lives in a souvereign way.
But this is not a primarily cognitive problem. Just as much it is rooted in the social structure itself. One must take into account: Which opportunities does a given act of thinking and understanding provide an individual?
In an individualized and individualizing political, ecological, cultural landscape, understanding things critically often is fruitless. For example to ensure social affiliation or navigate through the market specifique concepts, notions and sorts of “truth” are productive. Analyzing your culture to find collective paths of historic development require different scopes.
Praxeology might be a notion you could enjoy exploring.
IMO this is important if you want both, get of the high horse and fly the mighty dragon of critique.
Drag agrees, society is to blame for the way people are.
But, people are also to blame for the way society is. It’s a vicious chicken.
Therefore, we need to educate people, like by telling them there’s more to literacy than knowing to to read something literally.
Spelling (in non phonetic languages) has nothing to do with intelligence levels - it is all to do with memory and exposure. Perhaps he never went to school, or the level of education was pathetic… or he is incredibly dyslexic. Sorry if this answer sounds harsh but I’m pissed-off at what you wrote. I know of at least one illiterate person who stands head and shoulders above the “college kids” around them. They were such an integral part of our team that were bought them speech-to-text / text-to-speech software to keep their job.
That’s why I didn’t say he was stupid. I asked if he had a learning disability which is not a taboo thing and it doesn’t mean you’re stupid. If anything I complimented him on his motivation and determination. You were just out to find something to get mad and offended over so you interjected that into my comment, even though I didn’t say that. I see that happening a lot lately with Americans. They all wanna be offended so they can moralize
or he is incredibly dyslexic
Dyslexia is a learning disability
Yes it is, so he either does have a learning difficulty (as OP suggested) and is hobbled by it or he has been let down by the education system or he’s lazy and stupid. ( might be some other reasons, too) As a result his motivation (if he had any) would be neither here nor there. Some people can’t read and write English because… they can’t. It’s that simple.
I met a guy like that in the 90’s except he was on a lot of LSD and was making his way around the world. IDK if that was true but my buddy picked him up one night and we had a party with him and he cut his dreads off and burned them so a witch wouldn’t get them. Good times!
The dreads were magic, and you helped him free him self, and now he works a white collar job
Who cut whose dreads off?
The traveling dude cut his dreads with my buddies help
That must’ve smelled horrible.
Micro cosmology is a problem a majority of Americans live with. If they can’t see it from their front porch it don’t exist. That played a major factor in the current shitshow preloading in d.c.
This is painfully accurate.
“reloading”
Give me fuel give me fire give me that which I desire?
Preloading
Lol
Here’s another one for you: ‘played a major factor in’. Not strictly correct grammatically. A better phrase would’ve been, “played a major role in”.
If one prefers to keep “factor” instead of ‘played", than there is always the option, "was a major factor’
One change of clothes for a 2-week trip… now that’s a man’s man!
I mean it’s not extremely far off compared to Ultralight hiking, you can still be hygienic (like often washing clothes), of course though you’re not winning parfume contests along the way… It’s a tradeoff to make compared to having a lot of uncomfortable weight to carry around.
Does he carry a Texas sized bottle of French cologne?
I don’t want to be his room mate.
Cologne is in Germany, not France you silly goose!
French cologne, my ass! He wears WAAAAAAY to much Axe Body Spray like a patriotic American bro who doesn’t understand geography should.
I mean, also because he’s apparently not aware of the largest mountain range in North America.
Gonna have huge calves.
Axe Body Spray. Guaranteed.
That voter is gonna learn some stuff.
I was not surprised by the presence of a giant cross necklace.
He can’t read, so that makes sense.
Apparently, Chad Caruso set the Guinness world record as the first person to skateboard across America in 2023, from Venice Beach to Virginia Beach. It took him 57 days to cover 3,162 miles, adventure adventure of 55 miles a day.
That’s actually not nearly as long as I would’ve expected. Pretty impressive.
adventure adventure!
I don’t think he knows about second adventure.
The best kind of adventure
Always need more adventure
Bit over 2 weeks but doable
Rob Thomson skated across the US starting in 2006. Also from Switzerland to China.
I have a photo from that trip handing up poster size in my house. A random waterfall panorama.
how did he skate up and over the Rockies?
My guess is that hitchhiking+skateboarding means grabbing an actual moving trailer hitch or three. Were he manually kicking the pavement with zero assistance, I cannot imagine covering 55 miles a day without it being downhill the entire time. After all, it is F L A T after you cross the Rockies. For at least a thousand miles. That or he has legs like tree trunks.
He kick flipped real hard
He kicked the mountains and then flipped them off, they felt so disrespected they moved north and waited until he had passed them.
Two weeks, huh? The US is around 3,000 miles from coast to coast, so that puts him over 200 miles skateboarding every single day… I’m not sure, but the person who didn’t know mountains exist might be dumb.
200miles/8hours of skating straight means an average speed of 25 miles an hour.
Ambitious, considering the average speed of a skateboarder is closer to 10 miles an hour, but it could be possible if he was extremely fit, had unbreakable bones, and the US was a flat plane for 3000 miles like this guy thought.
Just go faster. I don’t get it.
Paint the skateboard red if you have to.
Silly humie
Add a stripe. Maybe some speed holes.
he should have invest in a big red firework like the coyote
Go faster stripes FTW!
Add a lightning bolt. Kachow!
Paint a tunnel on the side of the mountain. Easy.
"I’m crouching as hard as I can!”
If he’s illiterate we don’t need to call him dumb
Also allegedly the Rockies, not all mountains… we hope
I doubt he is being labelled “dumb” due to being illiterate.
Doing no research prior to setting out is a great reason to call him dumb.
Though lack of research because you can’t read is a bit of a speed bump in the whole “doing research” process
Yes, but people 40 years ago managed. Youtube and a friend that can read. Hell asking random strangers their opinions on what the challenges of skateboarding across the country are.
People 200 years ago managed.
It’s extremely dumb to just go out cross country with zero knowledge though.You’re not wrong!
I will say, I learned stuff like that to be a good idea through a productive education system which also helped me learn to read
Little tiny baby speedbump
How does he use IG?
Assuming its not a parody.
You’d be surprised how little IG users can read.
You’d be surprised how functional the illiterate can be.
When I first moved to Japan, I had to use lots of websites that used untranslatable images (not text, like png or whatever and google lens was not a thing). I got help a few times and memorized what clicking on an area did more than even what the image was (which would change sometimes). This is how I got by with ATMs and various websites for quite a while. It works until something changes. Today, screen readers, google lens, and other things exist to help as well.
Sounds like just learning to read would be a better use of your time then. I mean if you already speak the language it should be fairly trivial, right?
I literally started with “When I first moved to Japan”.
To answer your question, though, learning to read Kanji is not trivial especially when each one can have a number of different pronunciations or appear in compounds where the meaning can be quite different.
Laughs in Kanji
笑
Im sorry, i don’t know Spanish.
Nice try. Still getting deported.
You do realise that in Japan they don’t use Roman letters?! Sounds are one thing, a pictorial based writing system quite another! Just as in English, the same sounding word can mean several things, so the same spelt word can mean several things in Asian languages!
How many languages can you speak?
Yeah, just look at Trump. Functional illiteracy is a real thing in the US.
All 7 words he knows? It’s called THE WEAVE!..or something.
Using a screen reader
deleted by creator
You’d be functional how surprised can be the illiterate.
Functional be you’d illiterate can surprised the be how.
Following an ignoramus, who can’t read and doesn’t know mountains exist (?) … Yeah, what a content, definitely worth the invention of Internet
