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Comment by _3u10 | Hacker News Reader

No actual person thinks this but it’s the take away when you compress it down to memes / read about it in media.

America has no room for nuance, it’s either every police shooting is justified or every shooting isn’t justified. It’s probably not a great way to actually run a country but it makes for great media sales / entertaining politics.

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No. In daily life America and Americans are typically nuanced. Like literally any other country.

It’s the internet that disposes of context and nuance.

Yes well said, that’s exactly what I was trying to convey.

No the internet can do that just fine, the twitterization of social media in to short quippy "bumper sicker" took the worst aspects of politics (sound bites and bumper stickers") and normalized that in to the "correct" way to debate or discuss topics.

Gone where the long form threaded topics of forums, usenet, etc, replaced with 180 characters quips

I'm sorry, I didn't get that, it was cut off at 180 chars.

Twitter has never had a 180 character limit. It was 140 characters (based on the 160 character limit of SMS), but it's now 380 characters.

I will agree that twitter irrevocably has changed the online landscape. But I believe it's the ability to instantly transmit things that has pushed towards shorter and shorter content. For example Vine really took off, and now you have Tiktok/Instagram reels/etc. Not to mention Snapchat/Periscope.

It's a lot faster to digest and get a dopamine hit from a <140 char tweet (now <380 chars) than poring over a book, so the outcome of twitter was destined to happen.

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