> Encouraging everyone to make constant, short, pithy, public pronouncements is not a recipe for thoughtful conversation. I have a friend who switched to Twitt

> Encouraging everyone to make constant, short, pithy, public pronouncements is not a recipe for thoughtful conversation. I have a friend who switched to Twitter a few years ago and whenever the fact that I don't use it comes up, I mention that I just can't deal with the inevitable dumbing-down and loss of context that comes with such an idiotic limitation. It's a medium designed for soundbites instead of consideration and "wit"[1] instead of intelligence. His go-to explanation is that the limitations force people to be concise and choose their words carefully. Either he's rationalizing or he's extremely naive about the quality of discourse on the Internet. [1] I mean that in the most negative way possible. "Perceived wit" might be a better term to use here: I've often seen things like pleasing sentence structure used to cover a lack of veracity, a la "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem". or "YesAllWomen". While not inherently incorrect, I've seen both of those used a massive number of times in situations where they're entirely irrelevant or inaccurate. And yet, because it comes across as pithy and clever, they dominate the conversation.