The Hostile Reader’s Taxonomy

There is nothing easier today than criticizing writers.

I agree that writers should do their due diligence to earn readers’ trust (I don't always, forgive me). The other side of the social contract is worth exploring, too.

The Hostile Reader’s Taxonomy

Reading as Class Gatekeeping
The academic who dismisses anything not written in proper disciplinary jargon. The technical expert who treats clear writing as evidence of shallow thinking. The critic who uses "accessible" as a slur. They've made certain reading practices into membership cards. If you can't write to satisfy their shibboleths, you don't belong.

Weaponized Incomprehension
The academic peer reviewer who claims your argument is "unclear" when they simply disagree, forcing endless revisions that never satisfy, because clarity was never the issue. The manager who responds to a carefully reasoned memo with "I don't understand what you're asking for" as a socially acceptable way to say no. The hostile comprehension is strategic. They understand perfectly well but feign confusion as a power move.

Extractive Reading
The grant reviewer who only reads your budget page. The hiring manager who only scans for keywords matching the job description. The journalist who interviews you for an hour but only needs a provocative 10-second quote. They aren't reading to understand your thinking. They're strip-mining your text for the single extractable element they need, discarding everything else like slag.

Reading as Hostile Audit
The fact-checker reading only to prove you wrong. The X user reading only to find the one sentence they can quote-tweet with "Um, actually..." These readers approach every text as adversarial, assuming bad faith, searching for errors rather than engaging with ideas.

Performative Non-Reading
The conference attendee who asks a question you explicitly answered in your talk. The executive who asks you to "send me the deck" then makes you present it anyway because they won't read it alone. The committee member who clearly hasn't read the proposal they're now criticizing. They've turned not-reading into a status performance. Their time is too valuable, you must accommodate their refusal to engage.

The Status Signal of Non-Reading
The founder who brags about never reading books, only "curated summaries." The politician who proudly admits they don't read briefing documents. The influencer whose engagement with a text consists of reacting to someone else's thread about it. Aggressive non-reading becomes cultural capital, a signal that you're too important, too busy, too action-oriented to waste time with sustained attention.

Format Tyranny
The executive who demands everything fit on one slide. The military commander with their five-paragraph field order format. The consultant's mandatory 2x2 matrix. The VC's required pitch deck template. They're not just preferring certain formats. They're refusing to think in any mode except their prescribed container. Your ideas must mutilate themselves to fit their template or they won't be considered at all.

The Hostile Reading Environment
The boss who insists on "quick sync" calls instead of email because they won't read. The Slack culture that treats any message over three lines as a "wall of text." The colleague who responds to your carefully written analysis with a thumbs-up emoji.

Selective Engagement as Aggression
Your colleague who answers only the easiest of your five questions, ignoring the substantive ones. The reviewer who fixates on a single typo while ignoring your argument. The respondent who replies only to nitpick your phrasing while refusing to engage your actual point. They've read enough to wound but refuse to read enough to engage.

The Ultimate Hostility: Reading Only to Dismiss
The reader who scans only until they find a reason to stop engaging. The "I don't need to read past the first paragraph" dismissal. The "TL;DR" as aggressive refusal. These readers approach your text already certain they won't find value, reading only long enough to justify their pre-existing judgment.

Jeremy and Claude