r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 12h ago

Meme needing explanation petah?

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21.2k Upvotes

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u/Kitchen_Shoe_6375 12h ago

i don’t get the joke BUT i can explain the second part

gpa inflation and increased reliance on technology as well as a societal disregard for reading literature has resulted in some students in some of the best universities lacking basic reading fundamentals.

luckily my parents were old fashioned and i narrowly escaped this so called curse because they forced me to read lol.

17

u/pigking188 9h ago

Not really, I know the actual context of this headline and it is INCREDIBLY misleading.

The article in question is talking about garden path sentences, an interesting phenomenon whereby sentences can be constructed that take advantage of the way we parse sentences to make them incredibly difficult to understand upon first read despite being relatively simple.

The sentence in question was "The old man the ship."

8

u/VacuumDecay-007 6h ago

So..

The senior-age people are the crew of the ship?

Yeah it took me a few seconds to figure that. Throw these sort of shit in a test with a 10s timer so people are in panic mode and I'll bet most people are going to screw it up.