Nobody Reads Anymore, Says Woman Who Commented on an Article She Didn’t Finish

Every week, a new essay mourns the “death of reading.” Screens have ruined attention spans, libraries are ghost towns, and apparently no one under 40 has touched a book unless it was accidentally shipped with their Amazon order.

But the loudest proof, according to many cultural critics, comes from the comment sections themselves. That’s where thousands of people confidently declare “Nobody reads anymore,” usually two sentences into an article they clearly abandoned.

Evidence piles up daily. Articles on climate change are met with comments like “This has nothing to do with the price of gas!” halfway down a paragraph about rising sea levels. Longform investigations are punctuated with users typing “TLDR” as though confessing a proud medical condition. Even obituaries don’t escape, with readers skimming past the deceased’s name to ask whether they ever tweeted something problematic.

Sociologists argue this phenomenon has less to do with the decline of reading and more with the rise of performative certainty. “People don’t consume information, they skim until they hit a word that triggers their Wi-Fi reflexes,” explained one researcher. “At that point, their thumbs write the essay their eyes refused to finish.”

Publishing insiders have adjusted accordingly. Editors now expect that the first two sentences of any article must carry the entire intellectual burden. By sentence three, readers are scrolling straight to the comments, where they will accuse the writer of ignoring a point covered in paragraph six.

Still, the panic about literacy persists. Cultural critics continue to lament the shrinking appetite for nuance, while conveniently ignoring that their own 900-word thinkpieces are shared by readers who only digested the headline.

When reached for comment, the unfinished article in question sighed, “I explained everything in detail. They just didn’t bother reading past the comma.”