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It forces people to not write a complex English sentence, is what it does. You literally can't express complex thought without multi-tweeting. Which is annoying
by Bud 11y ago
It forces people to not write a complex English sentence, is what it does. You literally can't express complex thought without multi-tweeting. Which is annoying.
There's concision, and then there's nuking the concept of the paragraph.
I for one welcome our new longer-Tweet overlords.
- bad_user 11y agoThe length of your entire message: 285 chars Length of "You can't express complex thought without multi-tweeting": 56 chars (took "literally" out, because that's incorrect).
- DanBC 11y agoIs that "you can't", or "you can't"?
- Bud 11y agoIt's "one can't".
- Bud 11y agoYes, thank you for the char-counting. I'm aware that my comment was not the height of profundity, nor was it particularly long. However, I do occasionally post more interesting things, and some of them need to be longer, because they discuss a complex issue or cite many facts. My comment was not intended to, in itself, justify the need for a longer Tweet length.
- tomswartz07 11y agohttp://reddit.com/r/iamverysmart http://reddit.com/r/iamverysmart
- mason240 11y ago>"You can't express complex thought without multi-tweeting" This is not a complex thought.
- michaelmrose 11y agoWhich doesn't make it wrong.
- bmm6o 11y agoThis response tactic is tedious every time it comes up. "Tweets r 2 short" is never a valid complaint unless the limit is below 16 characters?
- michaelmrose 11y agoThis is a non argument. Dismissing an argument out of hand as invalid because you say so adds nothing to the discussion. Feel free to expand that to an actual argument
- bmm6o 11y agoAll I'm saying is that the tired "count the characters of the comment that says tweets are too short to contain a complex thought and point out that it fits within a tweet" method of argumentation doesn't prove anything except an ability to count.
- michaelmrose 11y agook got it
- fwn 11y agoI guess the 16 character notion is a classic https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum Not exactly a non argument.
- theseatoms 11y ago"Literally" is not incorrect. http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/literally "Literally" can mean "virtually," or "figuratively."
- tertius 11y agoYes and this is unfortunate but modern.
- dudul 11y agoFrom your link: "Since some people take sense 2 to be the opposite of sense 1, it has been frequently criticized as a misuse. Instead, the use is pure hyperbole intended to gain emphasis, but it often appears in contexts where no additional emphasis is necessary." Seems literally incorrect to me.
- pklausler 11y agoWe need a new word that non-figuratively means "literally", then.
- phpnode 11y agoI propose "figuratively".
- pklausler 11y agoSorry to reply to my own post. It bothered me that I literally knew no good substitute in English for "literally". Did some research, and the best that I found is the phrase "without exaggeration", which actually seems usable to me and might be more likely to be understood than "literally" is today. "I got literally hundreds of bug reports today" may not be appreciated correctly (a listener who doesn't know me might think that I got 12 and I'm just whining), but "Speaking without exaggeration, I got hundreds of bug reports today" seems airtight. Or maybe it's time to import >>wörtlich<< into English.
- fwn 11y agoI guess there is a subtle joke in using "literally" in a context where it's about the actual amount of letters.
- lhnz 11y agoYou can express complex thought in short equations (and in fact it is often preferable), so why would it be the case that it couldn't be expressed in just 140 characters? It doesn't make sense.
- smt88 11y agoShort equations don't express complex thoughts. They express the short result of complex proofs, which are themselves essentially definitions. Math is a process of describing reality using definitions built on definitions. The analogy to communicating social, political, or creative thoughts is ridiculous. If you want to prove me wrong, show me a complex thought expressed in 140 characters. Again, I agree that complex thought can result in a very interesting tweet, but the tweet will not be able to convey all the thought behind it.
- Mendenhall 11y agoWhat is the sound of one hand clapping?
- smt88 11y agoMy response in 136 characters: That thought is pseudo-profound, not complex. In this context, "sound" is human-audible air vibration. One waving hand doesn't make any.
- Mendenhall 11y agoIf nothing else, I inspired one. Well said! I appreciate that response.