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Almost certain they were playing it up and this is satire, sorry to spoil everyone’s fun. https://www.instagram.com/jaayfilms They started again on September 30 this year and are now in Missouri. If these content creators are good at one thing it’s creating a compelling narrative and this guy did it by getting himself called illiterate.
Oh shit, he’s in the home state of illiteracy now
I’ll admit there is a part of me thats relieved.
Following an ignoramus, who can’t read and doesn’t know mountains exist (?) … Yeah, what a content, definitely worth the invention of Internet
I feel like a longboard would be better for this.
Does he have learning disabilities? How does someone with so much motivation not learn to read
Illiterate refers to both being able to read basic words all the way up to reading comprehenson. Equally possible he simply cannot understand what he reads and is anti-intellectual as that seems to be on the rise in the US.
Spelling (in non phonetic languages) has nothing to do with intelligence levels - it is all to do with memory and exposure. Perhaps he never went to school, or the level of education was pathetic… or he is incredibly dyslexic. Sorry if this answer sounds harsh but I’m pissed-off at what you wrote. I know of at least one illiterate person who stands head and shoulders above the “college kids” around them. They were such an integral part of our team that were bought them speech-to-text / text-to-speech software to keep their job.
It is easy to have motivation to skateboard across america when you don’t have enough education to understand what doing that means.
“According to the known laws of physics, bumble bees should not be able to fly”
Laws of aviation. And it’s true, because planes do not flap their wings.
?
Idunno anything about this guy, but for some folks they just weren’t taught early enough. You can learn to read at any age, but no amount of motivation can match an early education
Most likely functionally illiterate and not 100% “I can’t read,” but I’ve overestimated instagrammers before
Most people are illiterate. Literacy is a skill with levels and most people don’t actually ever reach the level required to be a fully functional person.
This meme is a great example. Most people don’t actually reach Ogre’s level of literacy. Yeah, it’s played for laughs in the fact that Ogre is smarter than the average human, but Ogre is also completely correct about the level of literacy we should expect of people, in a perfect world.
A lot about this is, in my opinion, misleading.
I don’t need to be able to read Ulysses and understand all the themes and the deeper meanings, to be literate. As to actually understand all the meanings, I would have to be familiar with the culture in which it was written and the personal perspective of the author on that culture.
I don’t think the perfect world entails that everyone (or, at least most people) is overly familiar with ancient cultures and authors.
Unfamiliarity with the context of what was written is usually why people don’t catch on themes. A person with german cultural background will not read a passage about bringing honor to your bloodline, in the same way a chinese person will. A lot of Germans are deeply suspicious of the idea of honor. I learned that after decades with Germans and their culture.
How many Cultures are you familiar enough with to be able to correctly understand a text written in it?
E.g. the “remorse of conscience” is a cultural theme. A person who reads a lot of books and seek out these themes, has a different culture than a person who only scrolls on TikTok. And if the person reading books isn’t on TikTok, they are probably unable to properly understand the themes in a TikTok.
And yes, you said that there are different levels of literacy, so you didn’t say that I was illiterate if I wouldn’t catch on the “remorse”. But you present literacy as a 1 dimensional scale. 1 level, 2, 3, etc… When it is not, your ability to correctly parse a text is not 1 dimensional. You will probably fail to correctly understand a story written in ancient china, and if you understand it, you will probably fail to understand a story written in the 1950s in Germany.
Get off the horse. Stand next to us and enjoy your pleasure of reading with other people and learn different perspectives. They aren’t less literate than you, they are differently literate than you.
Most people can’t understand the themes of works from their own culture. How many American conservatives think the Matrix supports their ideas, and brag about taking the “red pill”, not realising it’s an estrogen pill? How many people watch Rick and Morty, and proceed to idolise Rick? Or the same with Sherlock, or House? How many people think Thanos did nothing wrong?
So much of our popular media criticises the flaws inherent in capitalism. Iron Man does it. Star Wars does it. Why don’t we live in a society of socialists? When Starship Troopers was first released, it bombed. Because most people couldn’t tell it was satire. It took years for people to catch on.
Hell, most christians read the Bible and think Jesus was white! It is literally their religious identity, and they can’t be bothered to understand it.
Drag doesn’t think literacy is one dimensional. But drag does think that most people don’t meet the standard for being a functional person in any culture. If most people were literate, then most of the kids who grew up watching Captain Planet would be vegan and carfree. But they aren’t, because they fundamentally don’t understand how to think about the entertainment media they consume.
And by the way, it’s a high dragon, not a horse.
I met a guy like that in the 90’s except he was on a lot of LSD and was making his way around the world. IDK if that was true but my buddy picked him up one night and we had a party with him and he cut his dreads off and burned them so a witch wouldn’t get them. Good times!
Who cut whose dreads off?
The traveling dude cut his dreads with my buddies help
That must’ve smelled horrible.
Micro cosmology is a problem a majority of Americans live with. If they can’t see it from their front porch it don’t exist. That played a major factor in the current shitshow preloading in d.c.
“reloading”
Preloading
Lol
Here’s another one for you: ‘played a major factor in’. Not strictly correct grammatically. A better phrase would’ve been, “played a major role in”.
If one prefers to keep “factor” instead of ‘played", than there is always the option, "was a major factor’
One change of clothes for a 2-week trip… now that’s a man’s man!
I mean it’s not extremely far off compared to Ultralight hiking, you can still be hygienic (like often washing clothes), of course though you’re not winning parfume contests along the way… It’s a tradeoff to make compared to having a lot of uncomfortable weight to carry around.
Does he carry a Texas sized bottle of French cologne?
I don’t want to be his room mate.
Cologne is in Germany, not France you silly goose!
French cologne, my ass! He wears WAAAAAAY to much Axe Body Spray like a patriotic American bro who doesn’t understand geography should.
Axe Body Spray. Guaranteed.
I mean, also because he’s apparently not aware of the largest mountain range in North America.
Gonna have huge calves.
That voter is gonna learn some stuff.
I was not surprised by the presence of a giant cross necklace.
He can’t read, so that makes sense.
Apparently, Chad Caruso set the Guinness world record as the first person to skateboard across America in 2023, from Venice Beach to Virginia Beach. It took him 57 days to cover 3,162 miles, adventure adventure of 55 miles a day.
That’s actually not nearly as long as I would’ve expected. Pretty impressive.
Bit over 2 weeks but doable
adventure adventure!
I don’t think he knows about second adventure.
The best kind of adventure
Always need more adventure
Rob Thomson skated across the US starting in 2006. Also from Switzerland to China.
I have a photo from that trip handing up poster size in my house. A random waterfall panorama.
how did he skate up and over the Rockies?
He kick flipped real hard
He kicked the mountains and then flipped them off, they felt so disrespected they moved north and waited until he had passed them.
How does he use IG?
Assuming its not a parody.
You’d be surprised how little IG users can read.
You’d be surprised how functional the illiterate can be.
Yeah, just look at Trump. Functional illiteracy is a real thing in the US.
All 7 words he knows? It’s called THE WEAVE!..or something.
When I first moved to Japan, I had to use lots of websites that used untranslatable images (not text, like png or whatever and google lens was not a thing). I got help a few times and memorized what clicking on an area did more than even what the image was (which would change sometimes). This is how I got by with ATMs and various websites for quite a while. It works until something changes. Today, screen readers, google lens, and other things exist to help as well.
Sounds like just learning to read would be a better use of your time then. I mean if you already speak the language it should be fairly trivial, right?
I literally started with “When I first moved to Japan”.
To answer your question, though, learning to read Kanji is not trivial especially when each one can have a number of different pronunciations or appear in compounds where the meaning can be quite different.
Laughs in Kanji
笑
Im sorry, i don’t know Spanish.
Nice try. Still getting deported.
You do realise that in Japan they don’t use Roman letters?! Sounds are one thing, a pictorial based writing system quite another! Just as in English, the same sounding word can mean several things, so the same spelt word can mean several things in Asian languages!
How many languages can you speak?
Using a screen reader
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You’d be functional how surprised can be the illiterate.
Functional be you’d illiterate can surprised the be how.
Two weeks, huh? The US is around 3,000 miles from coast to coast, so that puts him over 200 miles skateboarding every single day… I’m not sure, but the person who didn’t know mountains exist might be dumb.
200miles/8hours of skating straight means an average speed of 25 miles an hour.
Ambitious, considering the average speed of a skateboarder is closer to 10 miles an hour, but it could be possible if he was extremely fit, had unbreakable bones, and the US was a flat plane for 3000 miles like this guy thought.
Just go faster. I don’t get it.
Paint the skateboard red if you have to.
Silly humie
Add a stripe. Maybe some speed holes.
he should have invest in a big red firework like the coyote
Go faster stripes FTW!
Add a lightning bolt. Kachow!
Paint a tunnel on the side of the mountain. Easy.
"I’m crouching as hard as I can!”
If he’s illiterate we don’t need to call him dumb
Also allegedly the Rockies, not all mountains… we hope
I doubt he is being labelled “dumb” due to being illiterate.
Doing no research prior to setting out is a great reason to call him dumb.
Though lack of research because you can’t read is a bit of a speed bump in the whole “doing research” process
Yes, but people 40 years ago managed. Youtube and a friend that can read. Hell asking random strangers their opinions on what the challenges of skateboarding across the country are.
People 200 years ago managed.
It’s extremely dumb to just go out cross country with zero knowledge though.You’re not wrong!
I will say, I learned stuff like that to be a good idea through a productive education system which also helped me learn to read
Little tiny baby speedbump
Can confirm I live in ZA WARUDO!
Lol, what a country
Fun fact: mountains are big.
Source?
Not-so-fun fact: He’ll have to be rescued with taxpayer money
He has a skateboard though
And the skateboard is the fastest way to get around Lego Island
You’ve just triggered a memory. Something about vehicles zooming around Lego Island. Were you able to get out of them while they were moving so that they kept going?
Oh I have no idea, I remember very little of that game. Something about a helicopter crash and a race you had to use the skateboard for. It was the fastest vehicle.
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I don’t believe so, no
Probably will find a half pipe somewhere.
Mountain valleys are nature’s halfpipes writ large.
Boring fact: The highest pass he’ll have to cross on his journey looks like this:
If he’ll have to be rescued, then because someone ran him over.
Meanwhile a normal mountain pass in the normal world:
That’s just the section of the map for drift challenges
What does this mean?
Probably that the US is No. 1 in paving straight over every available surface. And that they will move mountains to do it apparently.
Do you see the picture? What’s confusing to you?
Could also get snowed in somewhere or unable to get to shelter during a major storm.
I mean he should get to the East Coast around 70 days from now, what are the chances he’ll see snow before January 30th. Guess he can turn around and ride back through the Appalachian Mountains in February. No snow there right?
Another fact: Society failed to educate him properly using taxpayer money.
Perhaps society deserves to face the consequences of its actions.
I agree with you and have even more to add -
Even more fun fact - the taxpayer money that will likely eventually be used to rescue this person, potentially saving their life, is an infinitesimal waste compared to so very many other things. I’m not ever going to shame someone or expect them to be billed/prosecuted/etc for their rescue unless they criminally broke the law in order to arrive at that state. (and maybe not even then)
You can only teach someone as much as they’re willing to learn.
You’ve hit the nail on the head there. They didn’t teach him.
What about small mountains tho
You keep your mouth shut
“If Forrest Gump can do it, so can I”
Gump didn’t even have a skateboard
From the sound of it, the skateboarding guy must have never watched Forrest Gump. He would have known it would take more than 2 weeks, just by seeing Gump’s beard grow.
Nuhuh. that movie took only 2 hours and 22 minutes, and that walking sequence took up about 10~20 minutes, he just has really strong beard growth when he walks. If Forrest can do it in 20 minutes, I should be able to do it in 2 weeks! /jk
The late great Forrest Gump?
