About half the posts and comments I see are referencing things I’ve never heard of and sound like complete gibberish. Whole comment chains full of in jokes and weird quotes.

Happens to me every time I read an article on quantum physics. Pretty sure the universe is just messing with us at this point.

And there’s a small but significant number of people on the internet who use “can” and “can’t” interchangeably.

Pretty much every time I stumble across a post from tumblr, yeah.

What?

Generally, if you know the meaning of all words, and the grammar is correct, you should be able to read and understand it.
Most of the time the problem is that you don’t know the meaning of all words.
Even if you know one possible meaning of every word in the sentence, words can have multiple meanings and you’re probably unaware of that which the author meant.

This post made me think of it as it’s a good example of this.

That particular post is a combination of poor English grammar, is deeply referential to pop culture, and also has missing/skipped/misspelled words. Don’t feel bad its hard to parse.

Here is his post corrected:

No it’s because I don’t leave my house anymore unless I’m going to work or grocery shopping . Also because I haven’t been drinking at bars, and I don’t use apps. My carapace may is not be as chitinous as a xenomorph (referencing the 1970s and 80s Ridley Scott/James Cameron movies Alien/Aliens where the aliens had exoskeletons and acid blood), and I don’t have me a heart beating with the acid blood , . but Instead my personality is books and jokes, and but at least I don’t reproduce parasitically…(wait…shit I guess we do…)

Does that make sense now?

Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

The sample provided isn’t typical English communication. Context is critical. Use of language as well.

It’s not you. It’s them.

Perhaps someone “in the know” can help you understand the context and explain the missing subtext. I certainly couldn’t. That post was confusing for many more reasons than one.

I understood it with context clues. Reading things on the internet definitely feels like I am reading an entirely different language sometimes.

Sometimes when I am scrolling past things, I pickup the words wrong because the words are matched to the look of a word instead of what the word says because I am not actively reading. That results in me reading headlines very wrong because my stupid brain filled in too many gaps and error corrected the headline to say wild shit. I scroll up to find out more and see the mistake. I wish I had an example.

I understood the reference post as I’m far too deep into degenerate internet culture, but I have definitely experienced what you say. I think sometimes people write in a way that simply doesn’t welcome people not on their wavelength. And that’s okay!.. as long as they don’t expect broad understanding.

I found that text difficult to parse, due to a relative lack of punctuation. This means that I spent my energy trying to parse the sentences and my brain struggled to engage with the meaning and significance of the text. Maybe if I tried reading it again a few more times, I’d find it easier to follow and therefore easier to understand.

Maybe it’s just as well that I never tried to read any Joyce. Or maybe if I’d tried, then I’d be better prepared for this. 🤷

Seems it was culture in your example. Culture may give new meanings to words. You don’t know one, you can look it up. But if you don’t know five words at once, you are lost.

I have a nephew that I’m certain has some flavor of a schizo affective disorder. When he’s in the thick of it I cannot for the life of me figure out what he’s trying to communicate to me, which makes me very sad

Yes, sometimes i am unable to process the meaning of sencente despite knowing eveey word

In my second language, yes. Sometimes I just lack the specific cultural references to understand the phrase. In english, no. Can’t say i’ve ever confused myself with a sentence unless it was meant to be confusing (eg garden path sentences).