The average Twitter user isn't interested in more than a tweets worth of information.

it was also baffling to me. I interpreted it as just the typical reactionary "we hate change" attitude that any online community has.

I'm not a Twitter user myself, but the character limit is what made Twitter unique. It might be fun to laugh at people who only want to read 140 characters, but we shouldn't assume they aren't going elsewhere to post and read essays. A lot of people use Twitter and reddit/Facebook/HN/ect.

The pain of embedding a long text post in multiple tweets rewards authors for succinctness, something most places on the internet sorely lack.

> revolting userbase

There's no need to insult every single Twitter user like that :-)