Dumbing down

This is a common accusation leveled at people who try to simplify things. Sometimes ‘dumbing down’ is just a pejorative term for ‘simplifying’, which implies that the accuser thinks some stigma attaches to it.

I suppose it could be said that if people are made to feel stupid, dumbing down is a fair accusation. But I don’t think I’ve ever come across that when talking to users – they’re generally grateful for something they can understand.

A related criticism is infantilisation. This is where your tone of voice makes the reader feel patronised. Be careful not to do this.

Opposition to simplification can be motivated by genuine worries about misrepresenting something difficult as something easy. Or perhaps there’s a concern about omitting important nuances and subtleties.

But sometime, I suspect more cynically, the objector feels it devalues their role as experts, and gives everyone access to their priestly knowledge.

Ian Bogost, writing in The Atlantic, thinks it’s just laziness, and points the finger at academics:

I suspect that what scholars and other experts really mean when they express worry about dumbing down is that they don’t want to be bothered to make the effort of reframing their work for audiences not already primed to grasp it. It’s hard to do and even harder to do well.

1. Ian Bogost (2018), The Myth of ‘Dumbing Down’, The Atlantic, October 26, 2018