Sometimes I'll skip just to see if the article's worth reading and go back and read it for real if it seems to be. Sometimes I'll just skim because, as you say

Sometimes I'll skip just to see if the article's worth reading and go back and read it for real if it seems to be. Sometimes I'll just skim because, as you say, a lot of articles take forever to get to the point. Reading the first sentence of each paragraph seems to work well. There are a lot of reason we skim, some good and some bad. The nature of articles, etc., on the Internet encourages skimming. It's like reading the newspaper used to be, except the newspaper is a million times larger and of much more uneven quality. I read fewer books than I did 30 years ago before I was regularly online, but probably read as much, or more. Of course, a lot of what I read is fluff or crap (or both), which concerns me, but oftentimes comment sections can be informative and insightful.