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I get confused about if I’m dumbing it down for others, or for myself
I almost don’t want to. If you can’t handle honesty, truths or straightforward and shoot-straight kind of opinions. Then engaging in communication is simply not for you and nobody should have to walk on eggshells all of the time to appease someone’s incapable sense of getting the point.
Not often. Certainly not when I’m shouting into the void.
When I’m answering a question or responding to a statement, I’ll generally match the level of the existing discussion. I still try to say what I mean, but I’ll try to avoid concepts with a lot of missing prerequisites. Target audience matters too, if you ask me how orbital rendezvous works, you’ll get a different answer depending on where you ask the question. For example, I’d probably skip explaining how orbits themselves work if you asked in a community dedicated to kerbal space program or children of a dead earth, focusing instead on what the person asking is probably trying to do. Similarly, a comment in a community dedicated to real life space exploration is getting a more detailed answer than the same question in a community for the general public. Basically different assumptions about what the person already knows, and what the person wants to find out.
Simplified writing is good writing.
Simple = good
ez = 👍
i don’t bother to simplify it even though i probably should since people hate it so much they try to take their anger out on me.
I don’t think you have any need to simplify, but some more punctuation would definitely help with the readability of your comment
americans & proper grammar/punctuation don’t mix. lol
Not talking about simplified writing.
What are you talking about then
Constraining your topic
It doesn’t matter what you’re writing, using plain language doesn’t mean you’re dumbing it down. It makes it easier to read and understand what you’re trying to say. You can take corporate jargon as the opposite of this. It can be vague, different people will have different definitions of certain words.
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/writing-techniques/plain-language/
I just said that I don’t mean plainer language.
You can talk about the most complex topics with people as long as you know how to explain them in an easily digestible form. If you look at the titles of many scientific studies they will have long and convoluted titles that sound impressive, but in actuality could be refined into something much shorter and easier to understand.
That is an opinion that I used to share. No more.
I have offered a dozen strange ideas here. Not difficult or complex, just strange. They are not received well.
I read some of your post titles and there’s definitely room to improve the simplicity of what you’re trying to say.
Yes and no.
I think that there is a fine line between dumbing something down and sounding condescending. In time, I found that not treating people like morons is the best approach, i.e. accessible language and simple explanations must be used to aid in the speed and understanding of the information you are disseminating.
Because nobody wants to sit there and brainstorm something they don’t understand, they’ll just move on. But if you treat them like babies, people will just be annoyed and stop paying attention.
So its quite the nuanced subject, communication is an art-form.
We’ve all seen the “I’m very smart” people who come to social media, use random vocabulary vomit because they want to sound smart, and it happens here a lot. I agree with you, that’s great if you can, and I won’t say you “have to dumb yourself down”, but often they do it to sound smart and want to feel superior because they think most people understand.
Actually a lot of people do understand them, they’re just eye rolling at how pretentious they’re being.
There’s a balance. After all why use many word when some word do trick?
only after the downvotes.
Never assume your audience are idiots unless proven otherwise.
As my favorite philosopher, Natalie Wynn, said
I think it’s heartwarming gibberish but there is also, I think, a legitimate role in the discourse for heartwarming gibberish. Sometimes you have to explain what being trans is to a person who believes that dogs go to heaven and, in most circumstances, saying “I’m a female soul in a male body” gets the point across.
As a disabled, trans, vegan, anarchist my life and beliefs are far more complicated than I could express in a comment section. So I tend not to lead with any of those labels and instead focus on quippy one liners about personal liberty from goverment or religious institutions.
No random person wants to read my nuanced memoirs, but they will read and remember pithy snark. I’m an anarchist that sounds like a libertarian fool, but it’s the language that more people in mixed company relate to.
I’m disappointed there was no quippy one-liner or pithy snark in your comment. ☹️
I try not to label myself. it’s extremely limiting by design. and this is a space where those limitations don’t matter if you don’t let them.
That being said I often self identify in the context of conversations about my interests.
A kind of politics-flavored smalltalk. Yes, that is the local dialect.
Believe it or not, I have discussed subjects that matter deeply to me in online forums. But lately it’s just fruitless fishing.
I think we have a thousand mob-squawks posing as niche communities. Different flavors, same conversations.
Completely open and popular forums are not entirely a good thing.
Nah, I’m just this dumb.
Sup bro?
Piss.
Cum.
I think everybody should “dumb themselves down” on social media. Since you can only assume other people’s background on a given topic and their grasp of (for example) English, you should write in a way that’s understandable to as many people as possible while still getting your point across. That’s just how good communication works.
I am not talking about better communication. If I was then I would have said “use a clearer style of speaking” or something like that.
I am talking about limiting what you discuss to the popular and easily-digested.
I wasn’t just talking about using a cleaner style of speaking either. Choosing topics and the depth of these topics is part of communication as well. Those should be picked according to prior cues (the community you’re in, previous exchanged comments etc.)
“Should” is arguable. (For example you might be fishing for the few in the crowd) .
But yes, your choice of topic. That’s what I’m talking about. Sometimes it looks pretty narrow.
And if you do. Well, that carries with it it’s own bucket of implications.
I try to be as simple as I can be without compromising the integrity of the points I make.
I do so less here than I would other places.
Not really but I do know my audience and I will alter the presentation of information
I try to rewrite for an audience that’s unfamiliar with American idioms and will read any disagreement in a snotty tone of voice.
