Soul of Wit

   Yes, this is going to be one of those horribly pretentious (not to mention boring) 'observations-of-society-by-an-enlightened-intellectual' posts. So save yourself, before it's too late.
A few disclaimers first:
   The control group was very small, just a few college mates. Others significant factors blatantly ignored. Bad economics, overall. But who cares? It's my ducking blog.
   Let's rewind the clocks a bit. Blogger (The blogging site) was launched by Pyra Labs in 1999 and later bought by Google in 2003. Facebook let go of its snooty "For ivy leaguers only" tag in 2004. Yahoo! acquired Flickr in 2005 and Twitter arrived in 2006. Stumbleupon though started in 2001, hit ten Million users by 2010.

Anything click?

Here's more. The average blog reader stays a nice 96 seconds per blog. You are a facebooker. You tell me how much time you spend on someone's profile, status update or a photo album. Unless one is a connoisseur who admires the 'nuances' and 'inner depth' involved in photography, one is not going to spend more than 12 seconds on a photo (I'll get to the captions later). Twitter allows only 140 characters. And if you're a stumbler, you'd have realized the point the writer's trying to drive home.
   Let's talk about two things, status updates and photo captions. Not just normal 'We are Pardayying!' photos but the aesthetic, professional worthy-of-Photog-club ones which a few friends of mine post regularly as well.
  Status messages of school goers were usually a long affair, starting with a quote or saying, then blowing it completely out of context and ending somewhat stupidly with an indifferent reference to acads or parents.

"Ncessty s da mothr f invnshn. Ma mothr joind fb. ztkfi del my acc?? Wt do i do??? :P:D:):|:( "  (Two years ago)
"Damn... hate examz...." (One year ago)
"Dang." (Now). Other examples: "Roxanne", "Inis Mona" and "Sheesh". (Don't ask me what they mean.)


     Photo captions by few school friends of mine were longer too. They felt the need to explain the pains taken, the result in mind and the means to achieve those ends. Then they became a line from the lyrics of a never-heard-of song. Now they're just one word. "Corrosion" (Describing a rusted gate), "Headspace"(Palm trees billowing in the wind) and "Diablo"(A black man in three-fourths taking a drought). Just one word.

Brevity.
  The writer stands vindicated, when they declared to the world that companies are "capitalizing on the younger generation's increasingly decreasing attention span." As supply of content (Statuses, photos, wall posts) increases, demand (Read attention span) decreases and therefore sentences began to get shorter to keep the demand going. Intelligence is being curt. Brevity is now the soul of it, pun intended.
  This will help clear the air in case you're yet to be convinced. Internet Memes. Very Short, very Sharp and very, very sexy. 
Convinced?
  This does not mean you run to your broker and ask him to buy up as many shares of that brand new internet social site where users can post and comment in only one word. And later sue me when the bubble bursts. In case you haven't noticed, I just disproved my theory by writing a 500 word post and keeping you glued till the very end. Worship me.