I have never read a book in my life. I might as well be illiterate, and most people around me might as well be too. Most libraries are vacant, and bookstores are gone. But all these people are doing fine - we put anything down on paper, and despite its incoherence it seems fine by standards that have stooped for reasons I do not know. I can turn in something that makes absolutely no sense, and an instructor from a decent school will tell me that he enjoyed it. Or an instructor won’t enjoy it, but since most people don’t write anything comprehensible anymore I’ll still be fine. I can cruise through my education and get a job while barely having read much at all. Everyone frequents some variant of flimsy entertainment - cable news, cartoons, social media - so why bother trying to read anything worthwhile anyways if nobody else is? Does reading actually make you more curious, more intelligent, more human?
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Notes -
It is a measure that someone cared enough to invest paper in it. In my experience if something is printed, there's still the occasional godawful thing but it raises the 5th percentile substantially.
(also while I love the freedom that comes with writing a web novel, most of them would still benefit from an editor)
There is, of course, a lot of dreck on the web because it's so low-cost. But there's also the occasional gem that is not tainted by worldly concerns such as "having to appease a publisher".
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