WARNING essay is under progress and dev
Abstract
The idea was prompted by the following thread:
The Art of Brevity
This is NOT a dreary essay about how humanity's attention span has diminished compared to yesteryear. In fact, I don't buy that hypothesis at face value. Yes, too much screen time and endless feeds have created a new phenomenon: doom scrolling, of which most of us are guilty. But just because our "dopamine centers" get hijacked, doesn't mean that we can't concentrate. We need quality to hold our attention.
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Signal over Noise
"Signal over Noise" is one of the most impactful phrases, yet it has a lot to unpack. How much information do you digest per day? How much you do you filter?
People do this all the time; we develop a taste that tells us what types of movies we enjoy, which bands we like, which concerts we attend, what porn we watch, which YouTube videos to view, and which viral social media trends to follow.
However, parsing out the bad information from the good has been a primary tenet of the internet since its inception. Fundamentally, if you build a system, someone is going to try and spam it. Let's be honest, that is just human nature.
We all "filter" our bubbles of information flow, sometimes subconsciously. I've heard many friends begrudgingly call it "the algorithm."
Building Your Own Filter
Twitter Ecosystem
Initially, Twitter was a site based on 120 characters — that's it. The ultimate stifling of the windbag. Now, you can post videos up to 3 hours long and write essay-style tweets. It's a different ecosystem now. But it's still a place where brevity reigns supreme.