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It's funny, I had a girlfriend in college that said I used "5 dollar words" regularly. It's wild that what should regular speech patterns are almost made fun of now.
Three syllable words, and multi-clause sentences are already misunderstood online to the point of people treating you like you're an asshole for deliberately confusing them.
God, this drives me crazy. I wrote a simple 4 sentence response to someone the other day, and they responded with "thanks Chat GPT". As if there's no possible way that I, a human, could write a few sentences without the help of AI.
It's been going on for years, too. Apparently a five-sentence email is just too much for some people, so now I see stuff like a five-sentence paragraph, followed by "sorry for the wall of text" and I'm just like, that's mot even long! That takes like maybe seven seconds for me to read
One of my pet peeves is when you’re discussing something that has some degree of nuance and complexity, and in response to writing a comment that’s three paragraphs long someone says “I’m not reading a whole book.” Sorry, sometimes there are points worth making that can’t be distilled down to a single sentence. The implication that you’re being unreasonable for typing a few paragraphs to explain something is obnoxious, as is the stubborn insistence to remain ignorant.
“I’m not reading that whole book!” Ok, remain a dumbass then.
One guy in my husband's college course takes out his phone every time there's text on the board, asks chatgpt to summarize it (it's a bulletpoint list???) and then saves the summary as his class notes. His profs are on the verge of murder, and every fucking person in their program hates him. And he's not learning shit.
The world is leaning towards anti intellectualism now, why is it surprising? Lots of people are conservative, anti vax, very short attention spans and want short term gratifications and thinking long and hard about something hurts their tiny brains so they reject it.
It’s always been anti-intellectual. I grew up as a smart kid in the eighties, and I had to hide it or I would get bullied. It’s always been “lame” to be smart in the eyes of the dummies.
On the border of X/Milleniall and I got absolutely destroyed for playing video games. Right around the end of the 90s the "normies" started picking up controllers is when I'd say it started being something that wasn't a social death sentence.
Idk that feels different. The bullying of nerds seems more juvenile and childish. Basically an extension of "that person is different let's make fun of them for being different".
Modern anti-intellectualism is more "Your knowledge about a subject makes me feel bad. Feeling bad makes me feel like you are attacking me. So you should stop talking" or "discussing this idea makes me uncomfortable. So you are a bad person for discussing it".
The former is an attack on the person. The latter is an attack on the concept of thinking about things.
It's the same thing. Both are insecure about difference and their own incapabilities. Both are falling back on cultural anti-intellectualist movements that have always been there. Most don't grow out of it.
The only difference is that the latter has wrinkles and abnegated their responsibility to learn and grow.
I definitely see what you're saying but as a nerd at least in the 80s it was the things you were saying. You were correcting people because you knew the answer, but that's a bad thing. Or trying to share your knowledge of games and instead of either not wanting to be around you they would have to also try to quiet you or make fun of you until you were a social pariah. If you loved reading, you can expect your book to be taken out of your hands and thrown or water poured on it. So it was a lot more than just being called a nerd. And unfortunately, sometimes there was also physical abuse.
Even then, 80s into the early 90s, some groups of people felt that you knowing a lot things they didn't was a personal attack on them. 🤓
You know what's worse? There's a bigger problem that subsumes anti-intellectualism. It's the anti-pause culture. Thinking for more than a few seconds is being demonized by too many people. If I pause for a few seconds, assholes assume I must be dumb, and if they have to pause, they assume I'm trying to be a smartass.
We are not computers. We have the right to be buffering without being pathologized by armchair assholes. "are you uh millennial pausing or like Gen Z staring?" It's called thinking! Let me think god damn it!
Flowers for Algernon. The internet provided an unending source for information and intellectual betterment. People now see how the world operates, and are willfully choosing to regress back to simple stupidity and ignorance.
Leaning? That ship has sailed my friend! I was a nerd in HS in the 70’s and was chided by people for using 50 cent words, and implied I was calling them stupid for using words they did not understand. Well, they were stupid. I never said or implied anything about their intellect, but it was my fault. After the last 10 years I’m done with these intentionally ignorant tools.
Just as a caution, this very post is also reductive and a symptom of the lack of complexity our entire society is being reduced to.
Equating conservatism as being anti-intellectual is not accurate. Many fiscally and socially conservative voices have been snuffed out of the establishment Republican party. Part of this is expressly because anti-intellectual rhetoric has surged in the Republican party since LONG before Trump, (probably around the Clinton admin is when I think the party really embraced it as a strategy). Again the Republican of today /= a conservative, though, granted it's really hard to tell.
The phrase "anti-vax" is being used to pigeon-hole and dismiss everyone from people who are critical of US funding of gain-of-function research, to people who believe that the Regan-era immunity to lawsuits for pharma companies producing vaccines, to people who believe that no government should infringe on their own bodily autonomy due to mandatory health care (and yes, restrictions to health-care, such as contraception).
It's this very lack of complexity that has created such strange political alliances for Trump to exploit.
If you want a world with more nuance, complexity, and principled people making honest compromises (you know, like a democracy), AND you want fewer people who are just doing coalition building to "win"... and are willing to make a deal with the devil to do it, in spite of all the truly awful and/or stupid political stances they have to accept in that deal... THEN, your critique needs to embody the complexity you wish to see in the world... so that your would be allies feel they have a chance at shaping a better world WITH you, instead of each side thinking they have to BEAT the other utterly before they can "do democracy the right way".
The politics of winning... is designed entirely around the side willing to do the most extreme thing to suppress their opponent. It worries me every day that we may already be too far down that road to come back.
No matter what political side "wins" that conflict, when they exit out from the other end of that process...they will be unrecognizable to the thing they started as. ...and the loser, as always, when power, fights power, to gain power...will be the people.
If you want to live in a world of 5 dollar words... make the effort and use them. Be precise, be nuanced...and stand your ground by defining what exactly your ground is, not who your friends are, and not who wears the same jersey.
Yeah the other thing i found out in life is a lot of people are curious at all. Just numb from the neck up wandering around the world. They see something interesting and dont even consider it.
To me, curiosity is what's important in a person's smarts. I honestly don't mind most stupid people. They didn't ask to be stupid. Asking a stupid question is still showing curiosity - a desire to understand things, no matter how simple or flawed their premise is. I can like someone who isn't smart, but is curious.
Hell, there's plenty of topics where I'm a total dumbass. "Ignorant" is the base state of every person ever born. Ignorant, stupid, and curious is still a decent person.
It's people without curiosity that get me. I remember a video about Formula 1 drivers, who compete all over the world. They had them try to place famous landmarks on a map - landmarks from cities they've visited yearly for most of a decade. One driver couldn't even put most of them in the correct hemisphere.
I couldn't stand someone who has visited a city every year, and has no idea where it could possibly be on a map.
Curiosity is a better character trait to have than almost any other, and there's few things worse to lack.
Accusations of chatgpt anytime someone is able to express complete thoughts with any type of logical consistency. The ability to spell, communicate clearly, utilize punctuation, etc is automatically suspicious to a lot of people.
Our society is so incredibly dumbed down that communication that seems more complex than teenagers texting each other automatically instills doubt and even disdain. Thinking about that makes me feel ill.
How about the $5 version? Just read the letters to John Quincy Adams from his mother, who received no formal schooling, just from her mom or hanging around their house library. Here's a sample from one of the letters as he traveled.
(BTW, if this was me, I'd be like, hey dude, answer your texts please to let me know where you are. And don't just go goofing off, try to do something useful with your life.)
Abigail Adams: "Your letter, last evening received from Bilboa,* relieved me from much anxiety; for, having a day or two before received letters from your papa, Mr. Thaxter, and brother, in which packet I found none from you, nor any mention made of you, my mind, ever fruitful in conjectures, was instantly alarmed. I feared you were sick, unable to write, and your papa, unwilling to give me uneasiness, had concealed it from me; and this apprehension was confirmed by every person's omitting to say how long they should continue in Bilboa....
If you have a due sense of your preservation, your next consideration will be, for what purpose you are continued in life. It is not to rove from clime to clime, to gratify an idle curiosity; but every new mercy you receive is a new debt upon you, a new obligation to a diligent discharge of the various relations in which you stand connected; in the first place, to your great Preserver; in the next, to society in general; in particular, to your country, to your parents, and to yourself."
(what he owes to himself): To become what you ought to be, and what a fond mother wishes to see you, attend to some precepts and instructions from the pen of one, who can have no motive but your welfare and happiness, and who wishes in this way to supply to you the personal watchfulness and care, which a separation from you deprived you of at a period of life, when habits are easiest acquired and fixed; and, though the advice may not be new, yet suffer it to obtain a place in your memory, for occasions may offer, and perhaps some concurring circumstances unite, to give it weight and force
I was working at a gas station part time in college during the 90s. My boss pulled me aside and said no one likes you because you use big words. I started using bigger words around the fat dumb whore (she was fat and cheated on her husband multiple times so I feel justified in using that language.)
I used to read the thesaurus for drum… I would say I have a great vocabulary, given that friends have mentioned they thought I was making up a word until they looked it up to confirm.
I am glad that I’m old because I would not be surprised my kids’ peers might scream “AI” or ableist at me for using some terms.
I’m increasingly seeing it used as a mockery of people with sophisticated vocabularies. People feel there is some vanity attached to being eloquent because that’s how rich and pompous people talk on TV. So they think using “expensive words” is classist.
Many genuinely think that this language exists to deceive and confuse and nothing else.
In truth, having a rich vocabulary is liberating, however what does seek to decieve and confuse is misusing language through doublespeak which can include substituting words that have nuanced meanings inappropriately for words that are more common.
An example is substituting Vocabulary for Vernacular when they are actually different if done with the deliberate intent to appear smart to the listener.
Affectation is the word they are looking for. And there was a time every person who learned to read wanted to spit words right back in the face of the oppressors.
A love of curiosity is a love of learning the truth. Stay curious.
Love having my dictionary and thesaurus nearby. People should feel less ashamed to openly use these. I recently went back to university and started reading authors like Asimov. They’ve both challenged my literacy and I’m always looking stuff up! But it can be so rewarding to understand more and more. It’s worth the work. You just have to put aside your ego. Plus you can get such pretty ones these days (not necessary, but it’s nice).
This should be a normal part of reading. I want to read a book that uses words I don’t know, so I can learn new words. If I’m a third of a way through a book and haven’t had to look up a single word, then that book isn’t challenging enough for me. It doesn’t mean I won’t finish it or that the book isn’t good. And I can definitely appreciate an “easy read” between books sometimes. But that’s not the reading level I want to stay in.
Also kindle has a built in dictionary and thesaurus and keeps a log of every word you’ve looked up along with the sentence it was in the book. It’s a great tool if you’re a kindle user.
Is it ableist to have difficult words in your books, such as words that are more than two syllables long? Some people think so, including this person.
"There is absolutely nothing wrong with readers asking for easier words. If that upsets you so much, check your ableism."
I'm not entirely sure that this person knows what ableism is. I am disabled with a neuroimmune condition, so I'll offer a quick definition. It is discrimination against people with disabilities. But this, on the other hand, almost reminds me of saying it's like fat-phobic to have salads on a restaurant menu. It's not. We already know that there's a literacy crisis in America. Over half of US adults read below a sixth grade level. And by the way, the books that I, and possibly you if you are an avid reader, were reading in sixth grade are not the books that this data refers to when it says sixth grade level. They mean books like this, Holes, which are not all that challenging and should not represent the maximum difficulty that a grown adult can read. A study also found that the number of Americans reading every day has declined three percent each year from 2003 to 2023.
Do you think it's a good idea to have a nation or world filled with people who are incapable of reading a text any more complex than a paragraph from this book and understanding what it means? It reminds me of this film, Wall-E, where everyone is just a mindless consumer. And it's more than that. If you have read 1984 by George Orwell, you might remember that the government gradually cut down on the amount of words the people were allowed to use. And while that was the result of a totalitarian regime, rather than people willingly giving this up on their own as a result of not reading books anymore, the ultimate result was that people in Orwell's world were unable to have complex thoughts, and thus revolutionary thoughts.
Language is the structure with which we construct thoughts, and if we don't have complex language, if we no longer understand complex language, we will no longer be able to have those complex thoughts and will be happy to just consume slop. Reading will become a thing of the past, something for boring old people and weirdos. In some circles, it already is. And I think that positioning people with intellectual ambition as ableist is a way to almost shame people into being lazy and ignorant. Nerds used to get bullied, but now it's not just nerds who are really into calculus, it's people who can fucking read. As someone who faces legitimate ableism due to my chronic illness, I think it's a complete cop-out to say that challenging people with words they might not know is ableist. There is nothing wrong with being upset about the fact that our reading skills as a country, and probably as a world, are declining at a rapid pace as our screen time goes up and our attention spans continue to shrink. And in the end, we become less and less aware of what we are even missing.
I think a tiny minority of people or ragebait bots do this. They will latch onto anything that hasn't been levied an accusation and then hit it.
There was that bed that shows up every once in a while. It has like a built in table and cupholders and looks super cozy and all that. Someone made the comment that they are getting lazy just looking at it. This was back in the day when twitter went by 7 letters and not 1.
Immediate accusations of ableism because "
...this bed helps people with xyz problems." They couldn't elaborate how it was better than a regular bed and wouldn't rebut folks who insisted it was worse. Occupational therapists had to jump in and go "there isn't any world where I would suggest this to a client/patient"
Or just READ books like that. There are plenty of easier to read books out there. Free at your local library. Hell, the librarians will even help you FIND them.
Unironically, K-6 Chapter Books would be wonderful for people who would prefer easier-to-understand literature. They can be wonderful works with characters and stories that are just as impactful as books that necessitate higher-reading levels.
Hi-Lo books are written to accommodate older readers with low reading capability. They’re good for teen and up audiences with learning disabilities who want to practice reading.
Best response. This is the paradox of the Internet, while one could now create and distribute EXACTLY what they wish to see in the world, we've mostly become the mindless consumers she references from Wall-E except we use the Internet to complain about it all.
The absolutely privilege of asking someone else to change their art for you. I cannot think of a more pure expression of main character syndrome.
Imaging telling Faulkner he was being "ableist" with with Absalom, Absalom! It honestly might have gotten you a rap on the head with his cane to wake you up.
Or, as he criticized Hemingway's writing:
"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to a dictionary."
It isn’t a bad thing to meet people where they are and make sure that you either provide a definition or enough context clues to understand a few word they don’t know.
That said it is more up to the reader to find a book at their reading level. I feel like some of the issue could be the marketing as many might feel odd going for teen and YA books when that is the reading level they are at. Personally it doesn’t bother me as I know I am at a higher reading level but they can be fun books to read.
Honestly, this is another reason I believe 50 shades of grey became so popular. It was a smut novel written at a 6th grade level, our grandmothers (many of whom didn't have a full education) were reading smut at higher reading levels in the 80s & 90s.
Also, government forms... during Obama's administration, many government forms were rewritten to be know higher than roughly a 6th grade level for accessibility.
Similar with news, reading archived newspaper articles from the 50s to 90s compared to current newspaper articles is WILD. Some news organizations are now leaning heavily into slang, such as "gooning".
I was reading an article from People magazine, a celebrity tabloid, from the 80s and it was shocking how well-written and long it was. I didn’t realize how much dumbing down of everything that I have just accepted over my lifetime.
Right? We have practically infinite knowledge in our pocket; look it up, learn it, and share it with friends in conversation. By the way, should I capitalize after a semicolon?
It's even more exciting when the kindle's dictionary doesn't have it and you have to turn airplane mode off to let it connect to Wikipedia or go look it up on your phone.
I am not a native english speaker. Too many native English speakers can be really mean when it comes to things like that, or even that I have an accent when I talk English. I just don’t understand it.
They're just jealous. Most American English speakers only speak English, so you are already ahead of them just by speaking more than one language. Of course, I don't know if the same is true for European English speakers.
One of the best things about using an e-reader, is that if I come across an unfamiliar word, I can just highlight it and get the definition. I would have killed for that when I was just a wee reader trying to sus everything out with context clues. Might have been able to pronounce some things correctly a lot earlier as well.
I'm reading an actual book right now and find myself trying to hold down my finger on the paper to see what a word means. I have released that we are quite spoiled when it comes to having the world's knowledge literally at our fingertips.
Damn. I was unaware of that before now. That said, I’m not even trying to dunk on the commenter in the video, I just refuse to accept that people need to lower their language to cater to people who don’t understand. The writer gets to decide what the minimum bar is for their books, and the reader gets to decide if they want to rise to that level or not. I’m a grown-ass adult and I still enjoy a good young adult fiction novel from time to time, not everything has to be War & Peace or Shakespeare but not everything has to be Diary of a Wimpy Kid, either. There’s enough books for everyone to find something that suits them.
There are actually a lot of really good books in the children's section.
That being said, the instant I turned 12 and could get written permission to go into the "adult" section of the library was one of the happiest days of my life. True, librarians would often let me sneak in there before that anyway, but I couldn't check anything out from the adult section until I got permission.
I write more than one paragraph and use a word more than 3 syllables on this app, and I get at least 2 kids coming to tell me my comment is AI generated.
Like I think I got that accusation once using the word “thalassophobia” when in a thread talking about fears. 🤷♂️
I get accused of being AI all the time. I read a theory that AI’s writing style is similar to millennials, so now the younger generations think millennials are AI.
We are the best educated generation in America, and the last one that got into reading books and magazines and paper newspapers before AI slop and smartphones or common high speed internet access came to be.
Omg that makes so much sense. I apparently write like AI and get accused of being a bot now 😭 I just really love an em dash and using punctuation. Ugh.
Even worse you use bullet points or a numbered list for anything or dare to break your thoughts up into clear chunks that aren't just a wall of words.
I have to remind people that these LLMs were trained heavily on professional writers and academic papers, so this style that the kids want to call out as "obvious AI" is literally just what we used to call "competent communication".
Thalassophobia and submechanophobia have been my kid’s favorite words since she was like, 10. She’s double exceptional (severe ADHD + academically gifted) and absolutely could have learned those words from some fancy four+ syllable book, but she didn’t. She got it from watching horror game walkthroughs on YouTube. We’re not talking about a curated, upper-middlebrow algorithm either, it’s riddled with brain rot.
My mother-in-law, who has degrees in English Lit and linguistics rolled her eyes and told her that she didn’t think she actually had thalassophobia and just wanted everyone to know that she knew the word, that everyone knows and she can stop reminding us. Granted with the ADHD my daughter tends to repeat words, but she wasn’t saying it over and over, just brought it up in a couple conversations. Even people who theoretically shouldn’t be dicks about it are dicks about it.
I posted about this in another thread recently. I hate it. AI detectors literally look for bad writing. If your writing isn't shitty enough and makes too much sense, it's flagged as AI.
You have to play dumb to pass as human. What a depressing state of affairs that is...
When referring to a comment I made that is only a paragraph long. I know you probably know but to any little ones reading, a paragraph is supposed to be 3-4 complete sentences. That’s BARELY writing for 20 seconds. It’s really, REALLY not difficult.
How long does it take these people to write a single sentence. Hell, I'm usually commenting on mobile and it takes less than 10 seconds to write most of my sentences.
I'm all for having signs and even newspapers written in a more simplistic language. But as she pointed out, there's no need for fiction to be simpler. Those people could just read other books. Most adults with literacy issues have undiagnosed dyslexia.
The best thing about having the kindle app on my phone is that if I find a word I don't understand, I can just highlight it and check it on a dictionary.
Before, I'd have to put my book down, get up, find the dictionary, go back to my book, find the word again, then find it in the dictionary (which took forever cos I can't spell) and then digest the word, fit it into context, then put the book down, put the dictionary away, and then go back to reading.
The thing about reading on a kindle and in paper, is when you are engaged in a book but see a word you don't know only to tapp on it and realize you are holding a paper book 😂
I can write/read 'difficult words' in books because I fought my way out of severe dyslexia by reading and writing books. It isnt easy. They just dont want to put in any effort to learn new words.
Mind you, the word that started all of this was the word 'scrying.'
That wouldnt be ableist, which was the point of the OP. Marginalizing people with a learning disability would be ableism. Mocking the intellectually lazy and incurious is just mean, not ableist. So, feel free to talk all the shit you want.
English is my second language and I grew up poor. My schooling was all public. I went to a City university.
The library is free, so I read a lot. I'd look words up I didn't know in the dictionary, since despite being the youngest in the house, I had the best command of the English language.
I often get told I "talk white" or "must've grown up rich". Like poor brown people can't walk to the library and read?
Yes! Thank you! I was labeled a "poor student" and constantly in trouble in school because I slept through classes because I was bored. I didn't do homework because it was boring. I was chapters ahead in the book, why should I do an assignment for stuff I already know so the other kids can fail it and make us spend two more weeks talking about it? I was bored all day in school why should I have to go home and do boring homework there too? In HS (public) I had a biology class. It was boring. I slept through most of it. On the final I scored a 96. Highest grade in the class. The "smart girl" flipped out because I must of cheated. I scored 4 points higher than her and she was the second highest grade and sat on the other side of the classroom. The teacher asked who I would have cheated off of since I got more answers right than her and was no where near her. I just read and comprehend things at an above average rate, but public schools work towards averages. That means the below average kids slow the pace for everyone and the above average kids have to wait around for everyone else to catch up. You go ask some children to wait patiently in a room with nothing to do. See how long that lasts before they complain, nap, or start acting out.
It was maddening! I was also educated in a public high school and we were the nerdy group of kids so we kind of naturally gravitated to D&D, MtG, Pokemon and all the research and data rabbit holes there. We had some peers who "literal talked around a point" and made us go through concepts that like 75% of students understood.
Some of the teachers were cool. Could read or work on other projects in their class and some teachers expected you to pretend to be busy because apparently doing other work was inappropriate and distracting to folks.
I feel like this is becoming more common, because I feel it too with some of the replies in this thread. Europeans attempting to dunk on America’s literacy while demonstrating their own lack of? Bots?
Public education right now DRAGS less capable students through education 🤷🏻♀️ I know because I am experiencing this with one of my children. I begged for the school to set them back an year and was refused..... 😔 year on year it just doesn't get better, no matter how much we try because there are failings upon failings from previous years
If you don't like the metrics, change the criteria to fit the reality you want.
It was something I saw happening when I was in school. Hell, I had teachers tell me that as soon as they could they were getting out and not looking back. That was 15+ years ago. In my state it was all pushed towards charter schools and alternative education, and frankly, that hasn't produced the most equipped or reasonably adapted individuals either from my experiences with dealing with people who have no grasp of the metric system.
But look at all of these students graduating and equipped for the world ahead!
If people want books with simpler words & sentence structures there are PLENTY of books for them to read still. Especially with all the fast produced slop books coming out these days...
I wish more popular books were written with an elevated vocabulary and more assumption of intelligence of the reader. I love romantasy but its all spelled out so clearly for you, you dont even have to think. Its all just very topical. It's like fast food. Its definitely delicious, but sometimes you want something with a complex flavor profile.
Its by design. If you cant read bills and things your voting on, you can easily get taken advantage of. Critical thinking skills are rare now. People are so used to being spoon fed everything
I think people confuse capability with gumption. You’re not disabled if you can figure out a complex word or text but you just don’t want to take the initiative to figure it out.
And if you’re not disabled, then it’s not ableist of complex texts to exist.
Are there people who are never going to understand complex texts completely, sure. The accommodation would be making available texts that those people can understand, and those texts already exist.
Wow I was reading at a 10th grade level in the 5th grade but this was in the early 70s. She spelled it out very well. The fact that people would rather just blindly believe whatever they’re told instead of researching it themselves is scary. Google and dictionary.com can be our friends. Maybe having an advanced degree is clouding my judgement against those who refuse to put in the work.
All of my friends read and I never travel without my Kindle.
Before you run to that cliché old trope of “Americans are so dumb, hur durp!” You might want to try some of that reading comprehension yourself. Here’s a study from 2012 (if you can find a more recent one, I’d love to see it) that shows the US is on-par with the UK, Germany, Denmark, Austria, and Cyprus. Only slightly behind Canada, Sweden, and Australia, but ahead of Ireland, France, Spain, and Italy.
UK has 18% on level 1 or below. And 14% at 4/5. Both significantly better than OECD average.
US has 13% in the 4/5 bracket so at the "top" end so behind UK but same ball park (what is 1% or 33m people between freinds?) And beating ORCD average. But US is shockingly 28% for level 1 and below. 56% higher than the UK and below OECD average.
The UK's figure is shocking to me. The US's is an unforgivable failure.
That is taking "lazy" to depths that I will never, ever respect. If you can't be arsed to look up a word you don't know, you deserve to be Darwined out of existence.
People can figure out they have a lower reading level and there are books dedicated to those kinds of readers (look at Orca Sound Publishing or any decodable books for adults)
If you are unable to understand something that you are reading because the words are too complex (as opposed to you having something like dyslexia frustrating your efforts), it is a simple matter to have your phone out and look up the words you do not understand.
If learning new words is too much effort, just stick to something for younger audiences. There is plenty of perfectly fine storytelling in the YA section.
Hot take, not every book needs to appeal to everyone. There are lots of books out there, find some with a style of prose that you prefer and at a reading level that suits you.
Poor reading skills (I’m talking about people who don’t have learning disabilities that truly prevent them from reading or make it much more difficult like dyslexia) isn’t a disability: you can improve your reading skills.
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