1083: Writing Styles

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Writing Styles

Title text: I liked the idea, suggested by h00k on bash.org, of a Twitter bot that messages prominent politicians to tell them when they've unnecessarily used sms-speak abbreviations despite having plenty of characters left.

Explanation

SMS-speak is a style of communication which involves substituting numbers for letters and shortening phrases to get a longer idea across in fewer characters at the cost of readability. The practice began first with text messages, also known as SMS, or Short Message Service, which limited messages to 160 characters (exacerbated by the fact that flip phones without keyboards require multiple button-presses to type most letters or symbols using the phone's numeric keypad, making messages slow and laborious to compose and incentivizing users to minimize the length of their messages even further). Twitter has adopted a 140 character limit since its inception, which allowed any given tweet to be received as an SMS message with enough room for the user's Twitter handle (15 characters max). Randall is poking fun at both the stereotypical Senator and at teenagers supporting Ron Paul.

The dig at the senator refers to poor use of SMS-style abbreviations by older, less tech-savvy politicians who are hoping to appear more in tune with the modern world. Many politicians use SMS-speak in cases when their message isn't in danger of the character limit, but where they are appealing to a younger demographic, thinking it makes them appear to be "modern" to their target audience. In reality, it may do the opposite, showing that they do not understand why SMS-speak is used at all.

Conversely modern teenagers, often stereotyped as lacking proper writing skills due to character limits on services such as SMS and twitter, instead here produce coherent sentences expressing a political view (this is later discussed in 1414: Writing Skills). There is a subtle dig that being drawn to Ron Paul is a stereotypical political position for a teenager, as Paul is ideologically libertarian, and the implication is that libertarianism is a position held while younger and politically or economically naive. Randall has also poked fun at libertarianism on several other occasions, such as 610: Sheeple, 1026: Compare and Contrast, 1049: Bookshelf and 1277: Ayn Random. The teenager's tweet is almost identical to the stereotypical Paul-ite comment made fun of in the title text to 1026: "Only Ron Paul offers a TRUE alternative!". A few years ago, the sentence attributed to the teenager is the sort of thing that would stereotypically be assigned to a senator, while the sentence attributed to the senator would be stereotypically assigned to a teenager - however, now the situation has changed and so Randall comments that the internet has ended up in "kind of a weird place".

The title text discusses an idea that Randall approves of, originally suggested by a user on bash.org called h00k, where a twitter bot be created to message politicians when they use SMS-speak unnecessarily. This would presumably embarrass said politicians, which might in turn lead to a decrease in their use of SMS-speak. Randall evidently considers this a good thing, suggesting he finds the unnecessary use of SMS-speak annoying.

Transcript

[This is a chart with the above two labeled columns. The rows will be represented below in the same format.]

If you post: you sound like

"Ron Paul is the only candidate who offers us a real choice!": A teenager

"its gettin l8 so ill b here 4 prob 2 more hrs tops": A senator

The internet has wound up in kind of a weird place.

Trivia

When this comic came out in 2012, the twitter limit was actually 140 characters. It has since doubled to 280, to allow longer messages, and due to the declining popularity of SMS.

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Discussion

Politicians don't seem to be doing this too much nowadays. Don't know about the other runners, but Obama's tweets are mostly coherent, with just a pile of gibberish hashtags appended on the end. Davidy22 (talk) 10:30, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

I would love to know your opinion now after four years of Trump, lol! -- The Cat Lady (talk) 13:32, 5 September 2021 (UTC)

Additionally politicians may be tempted to use SMS abbreviations in order to come across as younger and aware of youth culture, while their target audience actually doesn't use these abbreviations at all. 83.84.33.170 23:23, 28 February 2013 (UTC)

There's also a bit of political commentary here, which has so far been skirted over, suggesting that much of the cheerleading for (the highly libertarian) Ron Paul comes from youthful and, by implication, politically naive commentators. 14:15, 15 March 2013 (UTC)Chris C

But how is that much different from the 2008 election of our current president which had a very youthful and as you said "naive" 63.149.29.1 21:44, 11 October 2013 (UTC)Robert

You seem to be missing a noun and a question mark at the end of your comment. I'm guessing your point is "hey meanie, don't just mock Ron Paul supporters (of which you are presumably one) Obama-ites deserve a kicking too as he is a LIAR". Sure. Consider that Obama heavily implied and at other times outright promised a focus on civil rights prior to election and in the early months of his tenure. For usonian voters of all ages who wanted to do the rest of the world a favor and get the west back on track after eight years of Bush's neoconservatism, Obama was the only realistic choice. The fact that he hasn't fully delivered, especially on Guantanamo, is beside the point. Ron Paul would be facing even more opposition, given that he is starkly unwilling to compromise -- but that unemergent forthrightness is part of his appeal to right libertarians. -- Cockhorse (talk) (please sign your comments with ~~~~)

I tried to fix the issues with the explanation, but would love someone to look over my edits. If I might say, this explanation was a mess before. It might still be, for all I know. Due to this uncertainty, I'm leaving the incomplete tag. 162.158.255.84 05:50, 23 August 2015 (UTC)

I reviewed the explanation and it looks great! I removed the incomplete tag. As an additional suggestion, we may want to add references to xkcds 1414 and 1045, both of which are about how sms and twitter actuwlly produce better writers/writing. I wasn't sure how to do it so I thought I'd leave a note.Bbruzzo (talk) 02:46, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

I think someone keeps trying to slip an ad into this explanation, can someone (other than user JackHirschfeld) either prove me wrong or do something about that? 141.101.105.151 07:01, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

This reminds me of abbreviating during a game like people just typing "wall" instead of "a wall is coming". Anyone else reminded of that?