my lecturer once told us to discuss whether "malaysia malas membaca" is a false narrative created by the privilege projecting that reading is ONLY superficially about owning and reading physical published materials.

the questions she posed: "so is reading tweets not reading? facebook posts? is getting emotionally evoked and riled up from issues they read from different sources not reading?

now reflecting back we too have succumbed to this mentality. the thing is we DO read. our people has been reading since before the internet too. it's yet another generalised misconception and limited perception on things.

quoting her, she said there are studies that shows malaysians read more than what they perceive. they say they don't read but result shows that they actually do.

by having this mentality, the gap is wider between diff socioeconomic groups. so people w less privilege have more negative perception on their ability to acquire knowledge (read) from diff sources as they believe they "don't read" or "not smart enough to read."

padahal dalam facebook bole je berperang respon to a certain route of thought. tapi takkan berkembang because they believe they can't, reading is for the "intellectuals" only.

with this mindset they lose opportunities to have discourse and exchange opinions. bc of this social perception -- " i belong down here, reading these stuff, while u bijak pandai kaya lads are up there"

everyone now wants beautiful captions accompanying their photos. we build impression on ppl through the captions. those are reading. nak betulkan grammar sebelum post kat fb. that keinginan pon resulted from reading.

the fact that orang kita bole emotionally evoked by chain message and fake news pun show that there is reading ability sebenarnya.

so imo to inculcate reading culture among malaysians (culture as in encourage many ppl to read critically, fact-check w reliable sources, read beyond their own stances n beliefs) we have to dismantle the "malaysians don't read" first.