Reading slowly is a vital technique for understanding information how it actually is instead of how it was written to be perceived. Slow reading is the idea behind “Read the Subtext”. Instead of offering emotional language to invoke a reader’s reactions, details are laid out plainly to inform the reader.
Mainstream and Social Media
No matter where you get your news, headlines and details are going to be sensationalized to an extent. Search engines and content recommendation algorithms optimize for user engagement, and sensationalized content increases user engagement. So how are you supposed to actually get facts?
I’ve written about X’s Community Notes feature in Meta’s Threads, and why Twitter’s fine. I think its an exceptional feature, although its not without its flaws. Its one of the newest ways to add detail to someone else’s post that doesn’t get buried in everyone else’s responses. And despite the aggressiveness of content on X, in my experience I tend to see posts from people on both sides of the argument, which is vital to getting the whole picture.
Is opinion fact?
Obviously, opinion is not fact by definition. Rather news is from a traditional news outlet or from a social media account, no matter how unbiased they say they are, articles will always have some degree of bias, or opinion.
Some things simply are not going to have true facts. Developing stories have facts associated with them, but they are facts that were known at that time. These facts constantly change though as more information becomes available. This is where opinions can come into play. Opinions like posts on X can sometimes be our only source of information, but you have to take care with how you read them.
Having an opposing side to your own view is important in deciphering what is actually fact. Part of reading slow is being ready to acknowledge and actively search for flaws in your own understanding with sources that contradict your own. This does not mean to take what people say at face value, but be ok with reading information that you may not actually agree with. Remember that just because you read something doesn’t mean that you have to believe it, but also not believing something doesn’t necessarily mean the entire piece is garbage.