• JackbyDev@programming.dev
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      47 minutes ago

      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.

  • spujb@lemmy.cafe
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    39
    ·
    7 hours ago

    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.

    • fern@lemmy.autism.place
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      11
      ·
      7 hours ago

      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.

    • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      36
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      11 hours ago

      It is easy to have motivation to skateboard across america when you don’t have enough education to understand what doing that means.

    • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      edit-2
      11 hours ago

      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

    • abbotsbury@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      40
      ·
      14 hours ago

      Most likely functionally illiterate and not 100% “I can’t read,” but I’ve overestimated instagrammers before

      • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        8 hours ago

        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.

        • Tartas1995@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          7 hours ago

          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.

          • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            2 hours ago

            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.

          • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            6 hours ago

            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.

            • kwomp2@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              4 hours ago

              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.

              • Dragon Rider (drag)@lemmy.nz
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                4
                ·
                3 hours ago

                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.

    • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      6 hours ago

      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.

      • Nuke_the_whales@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        1 hour ago

        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

      • sparkle@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        2 hours ago

        or he is incredibly dyslexic

        Dyslexia is a learning disability

        • Noel_Skum@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          2 hours ago

          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.

  • thisbenzingring@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    45
    ·
    edit-2
    15 hours ago

    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!

  • Sam_Bass@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    166
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    18 hours ago

    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.

    • fuck_u_spez_in_particular@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      25
      ·
      15 hours ago

      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.

  • Freefall@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    38
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    17 hours ago

    That voter is gonna learn some stuff.

    I was not surprised by the presence of a giant cross necklace.

  • aramis87@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    118
    ·
    21 hours ago

    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.

  • demonmittenhands@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    173
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    23 hours ago

    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.

      • superkret@feddit.org
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        33
        ·
        edit-2
        20 hours ago

        Boring fact: The highest pass he’ll have to cross on his journey looks like this:

        If he’ll have to be rescued, then because someone ran him over.

        • Skunk@jlai.lu
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          12
          ·
          edit-2
          20 hours ago

          Meanwhile a normal mountain pass in the normal world:

            • fallingcats@discuss.tchncs.de
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              8
              ·
              15 hours ago

              Probably that the US is No. 1 in paving straight over every available surface. And that they will move mountains to do it apparently.

              • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                2 hours ago

                We have a lot of mountains. But seriously while I’d prefer trains (which would likely require the same deal), the interstate makes sense for this. Overland shipping in this country often uses it (once again, stupid compared to trains). And it’s important to understand that the interstate isn’t a public works project, it’s with GPS in the category of military infrastructure that’s open for public use

      • kozy138@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        21
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        22 hours ago

        Another fact: Society failed to educate him properly using taxpayer money.

        Perhaps society deserves to face the consequences of its actions.

        • octopus_ink@lemmy.ml
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          17
          ·
          22 hours ago

          I agree with you and have even more to add -

          Even more fun fact - the taxpayer money that will likely eventually be used to rescue this person, potentially saving their life, is an infinitesimal waste compared to so very many other things. I’m not ever going to shame someone or expect them to be billed/prosecuted/etc for their rescue unless they criminally broke the law in order to arrive at that state. (and maybe not even then)