I was going to write my blog post about Memento, because so far the movie has me completely stumped. However, while I was perusing the other post that have been made so far, I read Conor’s post. What struck me was the use of two different colors for the text throughout the post. The change from the red to blue brought my attention directly to the final line, written in a color different from every other sentence. In fact, I read that sentence first and was forced to backtrack in order to understand the significance of the last sentence.
This experience reminded me of something else that I find myself constantly guilty of. In various articles or posts throughout the internet you can find the abbreviation TL;DR appended to the end of particularly long posts. The abbreviation stands for “too long; didn’t read” and what follows those four letters is usually a summary of whatever the author had to write. The summary is usually separated, and the all-caps abbreviation attention-drawing. While reading this summary saves time (and thus, I usually do), there is a loss of comprehension that I don’t usually consider. This action probably ends up making me even less informed, however, than if I had missed the post in the first place. Rather than reading all of the information and evidence provided, I skip to the conclusion and make my own decision based on the limited information included in the brief summary. However, Conor’s post has really brought to my attention how much is truly lost in going only with the concluding line, even if it is the most eye-catching.
It's interesting that you bring up the internet here and TL;DR. I've never heard that phrase before, but it seems amazingly apt. I find that a lot of the time these days, I find that I don't have the attention span to concentrate even on a short post on the internet. However, I seem to be fine with literature and other things. It does worry me though. Is the internet ruining the attention spans of the next generation? Will people stop reading things in full and only skim?
ReplyDeleteI did the exact same thing for his blog post, and I do the same thing when I really want to know what happens the end of a story or article. We care so much about the end result, and forget about the crucial details that are in the middle. However, like we talked about in yesterday's class, I am now cognizant that I do this. Rushing to the end of the story is similar to the necessity to always know the truth.
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