but some of it is because 50% of the way through their brain is tired of reading text. AND THAT, is problematic.

Yep.

This reminds me of how often people mistake skill for “natural talent”.

“Natural talent” exists, but someone without any particular natural talent who still has spent thousands of hours doing a thing is going to run circles around someone with “natural talent” who never put time and effort into practicing.

And I think when that skill is “reading”, people don’t power through the moments when their brain rebels, gets frustrated, or gets tired. So they hit that block, and don’t push through to overcome it. They go do something else…but they go do something else every single time. So a block that would be frustrating but minor in the big scheme of things gets codified in one’s mental image of themselves.

And once you have this idea that you are or are not something–that conception can turn into a huge mountain to overcome.

(As an aside, our parents have huge influence on if we think we “are” or “are not” something. It’s very worth it when you think you “can’t” do something to go back and look at your life and check if that voice in your head is yours, or if it’s the internalized voice of a parent who didn’t know what the fuck they were talking about!)

(Both people who were belittled as “stupid” and those who were constantly called “smart” can end up kinda “malfunctioning” later on, thinking they can’t do something. The ones called stupid think they can’t do something because “they’re dumb”, while the one called smart has been conditioned to fear not being 100% perfect, so they don’t even start because minor, genuinely trivial failures loom as large as the destruction of the entire earth in their minds!)