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Comment by captain_perl | Hacker News Reader

I also thought twitter was a joke until I realized most Americans are too lazy to write a blog post, or even read one.

“No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” - Mencken (paraphrased)

http://www.thisdayinquotes.com/2011/09/no-one-ever-went-brok...

Twitter is the weird thing it is because it began with an SMS interface (hence 140 characters). It took off originally because you didn't need a smart phone or a data plan or a PC to use it.

I thought it took off because they managed to get celebrities on it.

This. Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore were amongst the first celebrities on Twitter to actually post the content themselves rather than by a manager/PR agent. This got a lot of media attention and many other celebs followed shortly after.

I still remember finding it strange to see how Ashton and Demi personally wrote short messages, since every form of communication from famous people at the time were formal statements released via the press.

That happened a couple of years after it initially took off. Celebrities only took to it after it had gained solid traction among Silicon Valley types and social media early adopters.

"Yo" did die (or at least appears zombified, with 32 Patreon supporters). One bit appears to be too few.

It’s not about being “lazy”. Most of the people I follow are both bloggers and podcasters. But not everything is not worthy of a blog post and I would hate for my RSS reader to be polluted with everything they tweet about (even if it is interesting.)

How many blog posts are being read and written by the French? The “Americans are too lazy” trope is just ridiculous.

I find that many comment like gp online are equally valid with the word “Americans” replaced with “people”. It irks me as well.

Yes, but it does preserve some uncertainty about the rest of the world. The author may only feel comfortable enough to make a comment about Americans.

This comic kind of captures what you two are getting at, though I think you are applying the idea a little more generally.

https://xkcd.com/1138/

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