30-second rant

[GoSeigen]

What's with the new trend of prefixing published articles with their reading time?

Are we too stoopid or lazy to work it out ourselves these days? Or is it a lame new feature of Microsoft Word or the Google equivalent?


I blame twitter. We can read ten pages of tweets but get bored with a medium-length news report.



GS

[Rhyd6]

But tweets are so essential to their lives and someone might be saying something important/derogatory/praiseworthy about us and we daren't miss that because it's sooooooooooo important!!!
I recently sat next to a group of youngsters in a pub and never encountered such a bunch of quiet youngsters. They were all so busy on their phones that they had difficulty conducting a conversation. Maybe they need to know how long it's going to take them to read something so they can set aside the time.

R6

[Slarti]

Never seen it.

Where are you seeing it?

Slarti

[stevensfo]

What's with the new trend of prefixing published articles with their reading time?

Are we too stoopid or lazy to work it out ourselves these days? Or is it a lame new feature of Microsoft Word or the Google equivalent?

GS

Probably to make us feel inadequate when we discover it's taken us twice as long to read it as it should?

If we're all allowed to have a 30-second rant, may I add my own? Why some news articles like to add prison sentences together and say things like 'The gang was jailed for a total of two hundred years.' That must be the most useless piece of information ever! I can just imagine on being asked my age at school and saying, "Well sir, the total age of all pupils in our class is 330."

Steve

[GoSeigen]

Never seen it.

Where are you seeing it?

Slarti

Hah! Went off to find some examples -- all disappeared. Scratching head. Return to article I'd read which prompted the OP. Turns out I was viewing in "reader mode" on my browser (Firefox) and the browser actually inserts the reading time after the author's name in any article which supports reader mode!

So, mystery solved: it's my own browser with the new-fangled feature, not the web pages themselves...



GS

[PinkDalek]

Hah! Went off to find some examples -- all disappeared. ...

Here's some "Long Reads" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cxqve ... long-reads should you not want to blame your new-fangled feature.

[Slarti]

Turns out I was viewing in "reader mode" on my browser (Firefox) and the browser actually inserts the reading time after the author's name in any article which supports reader mode!

Yikes!

I just went and looked for that, as I use Firefox, and it is totally horrible!

I wonder what pillock thought that would be a good idea?

Slarti