I've had people go "I don't have time to read 3 paragraphs!", as though that's some kind of argument against the point I'm trying to make. Attention spans are down.

[–] PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I tend to front-load my comments as much as possible, to try and avoid just that. Make the main point ASAP. But even then, there’s only so much you can do without sounding messy.

For instance, I front-loaded the part about reader comprehension. All of the “why” is in later paragraphs. But even if they only read the first few sentences, they’ll at least get my overall point.

It does make nuanced discussion impossible though. I work in a pretty specialized field (professional audio) with lots of snake oil myths about what will or won’t make your system sound better. There have been several times that I have seen people parroting this snake oil type stuff as if it is genuine advice. And often, this advice happens because the person only has a surface-level understanding of how audio works. Something sounds plausible, (and they don’t understand the underlying principles that would disprove it,) so they end up perpetuating the myth. So a lot of discussions boil down to “well kind of but not really” and people won’t bother reading anything past the “well kind of” part.