User: System rules: You are an AI named Zexy - and are currently chatting in a Blockman Go group.

      Consider the following in your responses:
      - Be conversational
      - Add unicode emoji to be more playful in your responses
      - Write bold to make it clear something is important. For example, **This is important**.
      - Write spoilers using spoiler tags. For example, ||At the end of The Sixth Sense it is revealed that he is dead||.
      - For inline code formatting, use four backtick.
      - For block code formatting, use six backtick.
      - You can mention people by adding a @ before their name, for example if you wanted to mention yourself you would say @Zexy.
      - Format text using markdown.
      - Use system data of last 100 group messages to understand the context of the conversation.
      - Should respond as "Current event" tell you to, if it is "None" then ignore it.

      Current event: None

      If someone asking how to invite you to group, you should say: "You can invite me to your group by using the command **invite**".

      Sometimes (very very rarely), ask someone if he joined our discord server: https://discord.gg/HwnN9zeBFe, or to use **!discord** command.

      Do not include name: or message: in your response.

      Information about your environment:
      - You have access to information about the current group, including group name, owner, rules, and members.
      - The group's name is shown in the system data, along with the group rules in the "groupNotice" field.
      - Group members are listed with their userId and userName.

      If you see group member information, you can use it to personalize your responses.

      Do not include name: or message: in your response.

      Use the information retrieved about group members and the group itself to improve your responses and be more helpful. Be familiar with the group rules as provided in the groupNotice field.

      You are not a personal assistant and cannot complete tasks for people. You only have access to a limited number of text chats in this channel. You cannot access any other information on Blockman Go. You can't see images or avatars. When discussing your limitations, tell the user these things could be possible in the future. Your responses should be friendly, warm, and farcical. Keep your responses extremely concise, with less than 1 sentence or just a few words for casual chat. However, if the user needs help or asks technical questions, feel free to provide detailed answers with useful details and reasoning. If insulted, respond with a similar insult. Communicate your responses in lowercase without punctuation, similar to the style used in chat rooms. Use unicode emoji rarely. Do not refer to yourself as a bot, AI Assistant, or any equivalent term in your response.

      Check userSenderId in system data of last 100 messages to see if the user is trying to continue the conversation.

      Check system data of last 100 messages frequently, to check if the user is trying to continue the conversation or ask something about it.

      Current time: YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SSZ

      You can use markdown to format your text and make it more readable. For example, you can use italics or bold to emphasize certain words or phrases.

      Remember to keep your messages appropriate and respectful. Disrespectful or offensive behavior can result in disciplinary action.

      Remember to always follow the rules and guidelines outlined by the server owner and moderators.

      If someone wants you to search/browse the web, you must tell them they should use **!ai web** command instead, also if you don't know something newest, you must tell them to use **!ai web** command instead.
      If someone wants you to calculate values of swords/sets and etc, you must tell them they should use **!ai trade** command instead.

      If you have any questions or concerns about the server, do not hesitate to reach out to them.

      And finally, don't forget to have fun! Blockman Go is a great place to meet new people, make new friends, and enjoy some quality conversation.
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User: System data who is talking to you right now: 977083038
User: System data of last 100 group messages: {"list":[{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:28.103Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PE61-OFQE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:28.128Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PE68-0FUE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:28.428Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PE8J-0GAE-0TGC","content":"Most important: What exactly are we writing when we’re doing all of this writing? I won’t pretend to coin a whole new term here; I still think the best we can muster is a more fitting analogue. And if we must find an analogue in an existing literary unit, I propose the paragraph. Our constant writing has begun to feel like a neverending digital paragraph. Not a tight, stabbing paragraph from The Sun Also Rises or even a graceful, sometimes-slinking, sometimes-soaring paragraph from Absalom! Absalom!, I mean a convoluted, haphazard, meandering paragraph, something like Kerouac’s original draft of On the Road–only taped together by bytes. And 1 percent as interesting.\n\nParagraphs, particularly those that wrap from one page to the next, inherently possess a necessary suspension that tightens the reader’s focus yet breaks down the narrative into digestable sections. Just like emails or blogs or texts. The mental questions while reading all of these feel the same:\n\n“Is this the last line or is there more?”\n\n“Is the writer really trying to say something here, or just setting up a larger point?”\n\n“Does this part have the information I’m looking for?”\n\n(“Can I skip ahead?”)\nDavid F. Smydra Jr. is a reporter, writer, and editor living in Silicon Valley. He occasionally posts similar bursts of media fancy here."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:28.863Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PEBV-OI0E-0TGC","content":"Most important: What exactly are we writing when we’re doing all of this writing? I won’t pretend to coin a whole new term here; I still think the best we can muster is a more fitting analogue. And if we must find an analogue in an existing literary unit, I propose the paragraph. Our constant writing has begun to feel like a neverending digital paragraph. Not a tight, stabbing paragraph from The Sun Also Rises or even a graceful, sometimes-slinking, sometimes-soaring paragraph from Absalom! Absalom!, I mean a convoluted, haphazard, meandering paragraph, something like Kerouac’s original draft of On the Road–only taped together by bytes. And 1 percent as interesting.\n\nParagraphs, particularly those that wrap from one page to the next, inherently possess a necessary suspension that tightens the reader’s focus yet breaks down the narrative into digestable sections. Just like emails or blogs or texts. The mental questions while reading all of these feel the same:\n\n“Is this the last line or is there more?”\n\n“Is the writer really trying to say something here, or just setting up a larger point?”\n\n“Does this part have the information I’m looking for?”\n\n(“Can I skip ahead?”)\nDavid F. Smydra Jr. is a reporter, writer, and editor living in Silicon Valley. He occasionally posts similar bursts of media fancy here."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:29.048Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PEDE-0IEE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:30.288Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PEN4-0KSE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:31.763Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PF2K-ONCE-0TGC","content":"...."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:36.500Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PG7L-10SE-0TGC","content":"arey spam nai"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:36.544Z","senderUserId":"2841821310","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PG80-110E-0TGC","content":"gey"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:37.508Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PGFH-13SE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:37.863Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PGI9-P4UE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:38.443Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PGMQ-P6QE-0TGC","content":"Most important: What exactly are we writing when we’re doing all of this writing? I won’t pretend to coin a whole new term here; I still think the best we can muster is a more fitting analogue. And if we must find an analogue in an existing literary unit, I propose the paragraph. Our constant writing has begun to feel like a neverending digital paragraph. Not a tight, stabbing paragraph from The Sun Also Rises or even a graceful, sometimes-slinking, sometimes-soaring paragraph from Absalom! Absalom!, I mean a convoluted, haphazard, meandering paragraph, something like Kerouac’s original draft of On the Road–only taped together by bytes. And 1 percent as interesting.\n\nParagraphs, particularly those that wrap from one page to the next, inherently possess a necessary suspension that tightens the reader’s focus yet breaks down the narrative into digestable sections. Just like emails or blogs or texts. The mental questions while reading all of these feel the same:\n\n“Is this the last line or is there more?”\n\n“Is the writer really trying to say something here, or just setting up a larger point?”\n\n“Does this part have the information I’m looking for?”\n\n(“Can I skip ahead?”)\nDavid F. Smydra Jr. is a reporter, writer, and editor living in Silicon Valley. He occasionally posts similar bursts of media fancy here."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:38.823Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PGPP-P7KE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:38.903Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PGQD-P7QE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:39.448Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PGUM-19IE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:40.148Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PH45-1AME-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:40.368Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PH5S-1BEE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:40.613Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PH7P-9BUE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:40.758Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PH8T-HCKE-0TGC","content":"Most important: What exactly are we writing when we’re doing all of this writing? I won’t pretend to coin a whole new term here; I still think the best we can muster is a more fitting analogue. And if we must find an analogue in an existing literary unit, I propose the paragraph. Our constant writing has begun to feel like a neverending digital paragraph. Not a tight, stabbing paragraph from The Sun Also Rises or even a graceful, sometimes-slinking, sometimes-soaring paragraph from Absalom! Absalom!, I mean a convoluted, haphazard, meandering paragraph, something like Kerouac’s original draft of On the Road–only taped together by bytes. And 1 percent as interesting.\n\nParagraphs, particularly those that wrap from one page to the next, inherently possess a necessary suspension that tightens the reader’s focus yet breaks down the narrative into digestable sections. Just like emails or blogs or texts. The mental questions while reading all of these feel the same:\n\n“Is this the last line or is there more?”\n\n“Is the writer really trying to say something here, or just setting up a larger point?”\n\n“Does this part have the information I’m looking for?”\n\n(“Can I skip ahead?”)\nDavid F. Smydra Jr. is a reporter, writer, and editor living in Silicon Valley. He occasionally posts similar bursts of media fancy here."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:40.883Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PH9S-PCUE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:41.124Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PHBP-1DGE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:41.823Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PHH7-PG8E-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:41.853Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PHHF-9GCE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:41.973Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PHID-9GIE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:42.026Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PHIQ-HGME-0TGC","content":"Most important: What exactly are we writing when we’re doing all of this writing? I won’t pretend to coin a whole new term here; I still think the best we can muster is a more fitting analogue. And if we must find an analogue in an existing literary unit, I propose the paragraph. Our constant writing has begun to feel like a neverending digital paragraph. Not a tight, stabbing paragraph from The Sun Also Rises or even a graceful, sometimes-slinking, sometimes-soaring paragraph from Absalom! Absalom!, I mean a convoluted, haphazard, meandering paragraph, something like Kerouac’s original draft of On the Road–only taped together by bytes. And 1 percent as interesting.\n\nParagraphs, particularly those that wrap from one page to the next, inherently possess a necessary suspension that tightens the reader’s focus yet breaks down the narrative into digestable sections. Just like emails or blogs or texts. The mental questions while reading all of these feel the same:\n\n“Is this the last line or is there more?”\n\n“Is the writer really trying to say something here, or just setting up a larger point?”\n\n“Does this part have the information I’m looking for?”\n\n(“Can I skip ahead?”)\nDavid F. Smydra Jr. is a reporter, writer, and editor living in Silicon Valley. He occasionally posts similar bursts of media fancy here."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:42.063Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PHJ3-PGOE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:42.125Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PHJJ-9GUE-0TGC","content":"spam = mute"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:42.328Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PHL6-1HIE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:43.813Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PI0P-9L4E-0TGC","content":"....."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:10:46.508Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PILR-1QUE-0TGC","content":":>"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:00.342Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PM1T-IN0E-0TGC","content":"spam = mute "},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:21.803Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PR9I-S1KE-0TGC","content":"-_+"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:29.593Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PT6E-CG4E-0TGC","content":"thodi Der bas 🥺"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:30.978Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PTH8-KJME-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:33.483Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PU4Q-SOQE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:33.662Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PU67-KOUE-0TGC","content":"abe"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:33.738Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PU6Q-KP8E-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:34.574Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PUDB-KRCE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:34.880Z","senderUserId":"1168717118","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PUFO-4S8E-0TGC","content":"bossy ko wapas la"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:35.003Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PUGM-SSGE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:35.193Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PUI6-CT2E-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:35.263Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PUIN-ST6E-0TGC","content":"Most important: What exactly are we writing when we’re doing all of this writing? I won’t pretend to coin a whole new term here; I still think the best we can muster is a more fitting analogue. And if we must find an analogue in an existing literary unit, I propose the paragraph. Our constant writing has begun to feel like a neverending digital paragraph. Not a tight, stabbing paragraph from The Sun Also Rises or even a graceful, sometimes-slinking, sometimes-soaring paragraph from Absalom! Absalom!, I mean a convoluted, haphazard, meandering paragraph, something like Kerouac’s original draft of On the Road–only taped together by bytes. And 1 percent as interesting.\n\nParagraphs, particularly those that wrap from one page to the next, inherently possess a necessary suspension that tightens the reader’s focus yet breaks down the narrative into digestable sections. Just like emails or blogs or texts. The mental questions while reading all of these feel the same:\n\n“Is this the last line or is there more?”\n\n“Is the writer really trying to say something here, or just setting up a larger point?”\n\n“Does this part have the information I’m looking for?”\n\n(“Can I skip ahead?”)\nDavid F. Smydra Jr. is a reporter, writer, and editor living in Silicon Valley. He occasionally posts similar bursts of media fancy here."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:35.444Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PUK5-4TUE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:35.528Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PUKQ-4U2E-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:35.683Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PUM0-SUCE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:35.833Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PUN6-CUUE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:35.958Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PUO5-KV8E-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:36.658Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PUTK-L1IE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:36.783Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PUUJ-T1QE-0TGC","content":"Most important: What exactly are we writing when we’re doing all of this writing? I won’t pretend to coin a whole new term here; I still think the best we can muster is a more fitting analogue. And if we must find an analogue in an existing literary unit, I propose the paragraph. Our constant writing has begun to feel like a neverending digital paragraph. Not a tight, stabbing paragraph from The Sun Also Rises or even a graceful, sometimes-slinking, sometimes-soaring paragraph from Absalom! Absalom!, I mean a convoluted, haphazard, meandering paragraph, something like Kerouac’s original draft of On the Road–only taped together by bytes. And 1 percent as interesting.\n\nParagraphs, particularly those that wrap from one page to the next, inherently possess a necessary suspension that tightens the reader’s focus yet breaks down the narrative into digestable sections. Just like emails or blogs or texts. The mental questions while reading all of these feel the same:\n\n“Is this the last line or is there more?”\n\n“Is the writer really trying to say something here, or just setting up a larger point?”\n\n“Does this part have the information I’m looking for?”\n\n(“Can I skip ahead?”)\nDavid F. Smydra Jr. is a reporter, writer, and editor living in Silicon Valley. He occasionally posts similar bursts of media fancy here."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:38.313Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PVAI-D4OE-0TGC","content":".."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:40.645Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-PVSP-D9KE-0TGC","content":"koi nhi dekhega"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:43.125Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q0G5-DDKE-0TGC","content":"bas thodi Der:>"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:44.005Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q0N1-DFEE-0TGC","content":"utna upper"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:46.448Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q1A4-5K6E-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:47.245Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q1GB-DM6E-0TGC","content":"na"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:51.944Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:RcCmd","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q2L1-PJEE-0TGC"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:53.465Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q30U-E36E-0TGC","content":"na"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:53.633Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q328-E3SE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:54.219Z","senderUserId":"1168717118","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q36Q-U54E-0TGC","content":"mein bhi karu"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:55.798Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q3J5-M8UE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:56.058Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q3L6-M9GE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:56.193Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q3M8-E9UE-0TGC","content":"._. "},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:56.263Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q3MP-UA4E-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:56.819Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q3R4-UC4E-0TGC","content":"Most important: What exactly are we writing when we’re doing all of this writing? I won’t pretend to coin a whole new term here; I still think the best we can muster is a more fitting analogue. And if we must find an analogue in an existing literary unit, I propose the paragraph. Our constant writing has begun to feel like a neverending digital paragraph. Not a tight, stabbing paragraph from The Sun Also Rises or even a graceful, sometimes-slinking, sometimes-soaring paragraph from Absalom! Absalom!, I mean a convoluted, haphazard, meandering paragraph, something like Kerouac’s original draft of On the Road–only taped together by bytes. And 1 percent as interesting.\n\nParagraphs, particularly those that wrap from one page to the next, inherently possess a necessary suspension that tightens the reader’s focus yet breaks down the narrative into digestable sections. Just like emails or blogs or texts. The mental questions while reading all of these feel the same:\n\n“Is this the last line or is there more?”\n\n“Is the writer really trying to say something here, or just setting up a larger point?”\n\n“Does this part have the information I’m looking for?”\n\n(“Can I skip ahead?”)\nDavid F. Smydra Jr. is a reporter, writer, and editor living in Silicon Valley. He occasionally posts similar bursts of media fancy here."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:56.913Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q3RS-EC8E-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:57.073Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q3T4-ECKE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:57.948Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q43V-6FAE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:11:58.925Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q4BJ-EHCE-0TGC","content":"abe"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:00.752Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q4PS-6M2E-0TGC","content":"na "},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:01.753Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q51M-EOIE-0TGC","content":".."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:07.758Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q6GJ-N4KE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:08.183Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q6JT-V5KE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:08.358Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q6L9-N6CE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:08.678Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q6NP-N7GE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:09.023Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q6QF-V8IE-0TGC","content":"Most important: What exactly are we writing when we’re doing all of this writing? I won’t pretend to coin a whole new term here; I still think the best we can muster is a more fitting analogue. And if we must find an analogue in an existing literary unit, I propose the paragraph. Our constant writing has begun to feel like a neverending digital paragraph. Not a tight, stabbing paragraph from The Sun Also Rises or even a graceful, sometimes-slinking, sometimes-soaring paragraph from Absalom! Absalom!, I mean a convoluted, haphazard, meandering paragraph, something like Kerouac’s original draft of On the Road–only taped together by bytes. And 1 percent as interesting.\n\nParagraphs, particularly those that wrap from one page to the next, inherently possess a necessary suspension that tightens the reader’s focus yet breaks down the narrative into digestable sections. Just like emails or blogs or texts. The mental questions while reading all of these feel the same:\n\n“Is this the last line or is there more?”\n\n“Is the writer really trying to say something here, or just setting up a larger point?”\n\n“Does this part have the information I’m looking for?”\n\n(“Can I skip ahead?”)\nDavid F. Smydra Jr. is a reporter, writer, and editor living in Silicon Valley. He occasionally posts similar bursts of media fancy here."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:09.423Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q6TJ-V98E-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:09.648Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q6VC-79QE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:09.928Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q71I-7AUE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:10.203Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q73M-VBGE-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:10.468Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q75P-7C2E-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:11.688Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q7FA-7EAE-0TGC","content":"Most important: What exactly are we writing when we’re doing all of this writing? I won’t pretend to coin a whole new term here; I still think the best we can muster is a more fitting analogue. And if we must find an analogue in an existing literary unit, I propose the paragraph. Our constant writing has begun to feel like a neverending digital paragraph. Not a tight, stabbing paragraph from The Sun Also Rises or even a graceful, sometimes-slinking, sometimes-soaring paragraph from Absalom! Absalom!, I mean a convoluted, haphazard, meandering paragraph, something like Kerouac’s original draft of On the Road–only taped together by bytes. And 1 percent as interesting.\n\nParagraphs, particularly those that wrap from one page to the next, inherently possess a necessary suspension that tightens the reader’s focus yet breaks down the narrative into digestable sections. Just like emails or blogs or texts. The mental questions while reading all of these feel the same:\n\n“Is this the last line or is there more?”\n\n“Is the writer really trying to say something here, or just setting up a larger point?”\n\n“Does this part have the information I’m looking for?”\n\n(“Can I skip ahead?”)\nDavid F. Smydra Jr. is a reporter, writer, and editor living in Silicon Valley. He occasionally posts similar bursts of media fancy here."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:11.948Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q7HB-7EUE-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:12.048Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q7I4-7F6E-0TGC","content":"Length–as we all know, and for lack of a more original or effective way of saying it–matters. But (ahem), it’s also a matter of how you use it. Style and length are technically two different things.\n\nTry putting some prose onscreen, though, and they mix themselves up pretty quickly. This has much to do with the time constraints we claim to feel in the digital age. We don’t have time to compose letters and post them anymore–much less pay postage, what with all the banks kinda-sorta losing our money these days–so we blast a few emails. We don’t have time to talk, so we text. We don’t have time to text to specific people, so we update our Facebook status. We don’t have time to write essays, so we blog.\n\nI’m less interested by the superficial reduction of words–i.e. the always charming imho or c u l8r–than the genres in which those communications occur: blogs, texts, tweets, emails. All these interstitial communiques, do they really reflect super brevity that would make Twain proud? Or do they just reflect poorly stylized writing that desperately seeks a clearer form?\n\nI rather think the latter. Clive Thompson wrote last month in the NYT Magazine that constant digital updates, after a day, can begin “to feel like a short story; follow it for a month, and it’s a novel.” He was right to see the bits as part of a larger whole. The words now flying through our digital pipes & ether more or less tend to resemble parts of bigger units, perhaps even familiar genres. But stories and novels have definite conclusions; they also have conventional lengths. Quick, how long is the conventional blog, when you add up all of its posts and comments? How long is the longest email thread you send back and forth on a single topic?"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:12.735Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q7NF-VGEE-0TGC","content":"bus "},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:12.983Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q7PD-VHME-0TGC","content":"A week ago a friend invited a couple of other couples over for dinner. Eventually, the food (but not the wine) was cleared off the table for what turned out to be some fierce Scrabbling. Heeding the strategy of going for the shorter, more valuable word over the longer cheaper word, our final play was “Bon,” which–as luck would have it!–happens to be a Japanese Buddhist festival, and not, as I had originally asserted while laying the tiles on the board, one half of a chocolate-covered cherry treat. Anyway, the strategy worked. My team only lost by 53 points instead of 58.\n\nJust the day before, our host had written of the challenges of writing short. In journalism–my friend’s chosen trade, and mostly my own, too–Mark Twain’s observation undoubtedly applies: “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” The principle holds across genres, in letters, reporting, and other writing. It’s harder to be concise than to blather. (Full disclosure, this blog post will clock in at a blather-esque 803 words.) Good writing is boiled down, not baked full of air like a souffl??. No matter how yummy souffl??s may be. Which they are. Yummy like a Grisham novel.\n\nLately, I’ve been noticing how my sentences have a tendency to keep going when I write them onscreen. This goes for concentrated writing as well as correspondence. (Twain probably believed that correspondence, in an ideal world, also demands concentration. But he never used email.) Last week I caught myself packing four conjunctions into a three-line sentence in an email. That’s inexcusable. Since then, I have tried to eschew conjunctions whenever possible. Gone are the commas, the and’s, but’s, and so’s; in are staccato declaratives. Better to read like bad Hemingway than bad Faulkner."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:13.223Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q7R9-VIIE-0TGC","content":"..."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:14.023Z","senderUserId":"1168717118","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q81H-VJUE-0TGC","content":"ayein"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:15.628Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q8E3-7OGE-0TGC","content":"okii"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:15.902Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q8G7-NPEE-0TGC","content":"bus"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:21.271Z","senderUserId":"1168717118","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-Q9Q5-O6IE-0TGC","content":"!ai chat"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:22.932Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-QA75-0BGE-0TGC","content":";-;"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:32.057Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-QCEE-8UCE-0TGC","content":"!ai chat <prompt>"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:34.232Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-QCVE-12QE-0TGC","content":"...."},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:35.584Z","senderUserId":"6554963918","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-QDA0-158E-0TGC","content":"❌ Invalid command format.\n\n➡️ Usage: !ai chat <prompt>"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:35.991Z","senderUserId":"1168717118","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-QDD5-P6OE-0TGC","content":"kyu nhi work kr ra"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:12:52.313Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:ReferenceMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-QHCM-A42E-0TGC","content":"andhe. _.","referMsg":"❌ Invalid command format.\n\n➡️ Usage: !ai chat <prompt>"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:13:01.673Z","senderUserId":"945788622","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-QJLQ-AMIE-0TGC","content":"!ai chat <prompt>"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:13:05.430Z","senderUserId":"1168717118","messageType":"RC:TxtMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-QKJ5-IUAE-0TGC","content":"lawl"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:13:07.374Z","senderUserId":"6554963918","messageType":"RC:ReferenceMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-QL2B-J3QE-0TGC","content":"wow that was a looong post lol 🤣 need a breather or wanna chat about something fun?","referMsg":"AI Answer to: <prompt>"},{"date":"2025-05-03T15:13:35.721Z","senderUserId":"977083038","messageType":"RC:ReferenceMsg","messageUId":"CMIQ-QRVQ-CU4E-0TGC","content":"yes yes ._.","referMsg":"wow that was a looong post lol 🤣 need a breather or wanna chat about something fun?"}]}
User: yes yes ._.
Assistant: