Most posts that are over 10 lines will almost always contain a TL;DR. I think the problem stems from the fact that comments are supposed to be short and so if you make a long comment without a TL;DR your post is not going to be read. Another problem stems from the fact that people expect to get as much information with as little actual thought possible in a short amount of time; they always want new topics to stop their boredom. That stops actual discussions from taking place as in a few days people will have already moved on to another thing without enough time to have a think and create a discussion. The structure of the website also makes it so that if you disagree with someone you can simply downvote them, and a -1 score will mean that nobody else will see your post. You could describe this as censorship, the 'hive mind' of the subreddit at hand will silence you for not following their exact beliefs and acting in the manner they themselves act. Of course this is not true for all subreddits, many of which engage in well thought discussion, but the website overall creates an aggressive environment for everyone else that detters any sort of argument.
I have to agree with you on this. I catch myself reading a comment and getting distracted by other comments because the comment I was reading was going on for too long. I caught myself doing this with your comment actually. After I passed the sixth line I just went to the next comment. Ended up returning to your statement and laughing at how I fit in as the person you're describing.
Haha, I would lie if I said that i don't skip over long posts as well. That's entirely fine if all you wish to get is a quick fix of information and news which is what most redditors want and what reddit seems to be best for, but it doesn't abide so well with thoughtful discussion.
I noticed a huge drop in my ability to read long articles after being on reddit for so many years. Especially because of the whole "Didn't read the article, went straight to the comments" mentality. Even reading books that I'm not too interested in has become a struggle, especially when I'm in school. I'm glad that this community is discussion based, I'm trying to make a conscious effort in what I'm reading and this is a great change a pace.
Funnily enough i experienced the opposite. Before joining reddit I wouldn't read articles if they were too long, or books in general. This was mainly because the articles or books that i read didn't interest me, but after joining a number of subreddits i found stuff that i was interested in. Now i usually look forward to a 2000 word article, and I have a number of books that i wish to read on my bucket list. I do have to agree that sometimes i go to the comment section first to get a TL;DR of the article but at least now i do read more that before.