I can watch older movies without subtitles, but not newer ones. The sound is all "mushy", and you can only make out a little over half of what people are saying.

Not to mention having to constantly fiddle with the volume control as the movie shifts from barely audible to freight-train-in-your-living-room. And the headache-inducing camera shake. Newer movies are a chore to watch.

I think flat screen TVs + crap sound engineering on modern streaming platforms => watch with subtitles.

It's like they stopped teaching actors how to enunciate and audio techs how to mike anyone up anymore.

We could blame Christopher Nolan for inventing the genre.

My gf has one damaged ear, so she finds it helpful for her actual hearing issue. I just find text easier to understand than speech. I've been annoying my family with subtitles for decades lol

I've also always thought people are turning the tv up way too loud, and if they can't hear good enough for tv they should just turn on subtitles instead of making the whole house loud. Idk if sound quality is actually worse now, or if people have finally learned some shame about blasting their audio at everyone around them.

I use subtitles about 10% of the time, maybe they are too lazy to turn them ON and OFF?

I learned this over the holidays. My 25 y/o (millennial?) fluent English speaking sister-in-law started a movie on Netflix on the TV with English subtitles on. It wasn’t an accident.

At least they can read.