“THIS IS WHAT I THINK. It’s a shrewd, largely-universal observation about a particular topic or society in general. Your day and life will be better because of it and, per my aptitude for educating the masses, it’s entirely probable that I’ll dispense at least one more datum like it before bedtime. Also, the idea behind this thought was far too labyrinthine to be contained to 140 characters, but I did it anyway, ’cause I’m clever.”
   
 I wish I were as honest when I tweet as I am when I evaluate my own tweeting habits, but such is social media. It’s an interesting dynamic, really — in the world of Twitter, I, like my semi-enlightened-yet-still-tweeting-for-some-reason contemporaries, am compelled to constantly exhibit myself on my best terms possible and am given a forum to do just that, so, you know … why not?
    
The brevity of the whole thing is cool. Twitter founder Jack Dorsey chose the term “twitter” for its definition — “a short burst of inconsequential information,” which he and his creative staff likened to a bird chirping (hence the present logo). “It was just perfect … That’s exactly what the product was,” Dorsey said.
   
 Yeah. But given its creators’ acknowledgment of the site as a sort of illegitimate means of substantive communication, I can’t help but still regard Twitter exactly as I did when I first discovered it back in 2009 — as little more than a novelty and little less than the epitome of egoism. Sure, the website has plenty of practical, wholesome and/or altruistic applications now (including but not limited to Egyptian revolution and real-time updates of … whatever), but that doesn’t change the fact that it began as a condensed version of Facebook’s “status,” the absolute most narcissistic thing in social media.
   
 A tweet, regardless of content, is based on the voice of each account’s operator and on what that person thinks or wants. So aside from activists, idiots, those who “follow” exclusively on Twitter, and those who relate to other human beings in the most terse manner possible anyway — introverts, mutes, girls who communicate verbally in Internet slang-uage (lol, omg, smh etc.) —, the only people populating Twitter are those seeking some kind of attention.
    
Similarly, we “follow” because self-promotion is only half the appeal. The other half is the site’s “bite-sized” nature — Twitter gives us a piece of information in two seconds and provides it devoid of pomp, frill or extraneousness not immediately critical to the topic at hand. If details are necessary, there might be a link to a news outlet’s website or something; but that information is optional, not caked around the absolute most stripped-down representation of the issue.
    
It’s a microcosm of the newest information globalization in which only the purest form of an idea is given regard. The past two decades have forged a cultural shift in the information realm by which we’ve come to consistently expect data in miniature form. Our generation likes to get the picture and move on, and we don’t have the time, capacity or focus to engage anything that takes more than a few seconds. Incidentally, this is why reports have abstracts, newscasts have soundbites and books have Cliffnotes. The cause/effect of the whole thing is really pretty simple: As modernity augments our capacity to do more, say more, learn more and think more, our attention span shrinks.
    
As sad as it may be, this trend has significant real-world implications. Take campaign politics, for instance. A candidate’s job is to convey a message and convince a body of voters that that message is consistent with their interests, but how is this possible when the voters tune out after 30 seconds? Many politicians have taken to the mainstream by actually setting up Twitter accounts through which they can communicate with their constituents, but does this really help on the campaign trail? Do speeches need to be limited to 60 seconds? What about debates (for which this is kind of already the case)? Are we fast moving toward an era of half-hour-long National Conventions? Whoever heard someone complain about a speech being too short anyway?
    
Whatever the case, it’s an ever-changing reality. The influence of Twitter and all things similar might be undermining substantive discourse and mitigating the power of intelligent rhetoric, but it’s becoming more and more the lay of the land, and a politician’s job as a public official is to adapt to it. Obviously there’s no by-the-book remedy for adapting to social politics, but politicians are making moves to engage the problem. The only question is, are they strategizing successfully? Smell That next week.

— Sam Ellis is a senior in English & political science. He can be reached at sellis11@utk.edu.