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Comment by satvikpendem | Hacker News Reader

Gen Z linguistic phenomenon. It's to signify a more authentic or calmer, more personable style rather than an overly literary one. It's kind of nice actually, like talking to a friend about their thoughts.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/feb/18/death-of-cap...

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It's how we all used to talk on IRC, well before Gen Z came online :)

Yes however I doubt the author was an IRC user. For chats people generay do use lowercase cause it's easier but this article is also about using lowercase outside of chats.

This user I think got it from Tumblr (firmly millennial).

Gen Z I would think default to title case because that’s what smart phones produce when not wrangled.

No they disable auto capitalization explicitly in their keyboards.

That depended on your IRC server of choice.

I grew up on some where you got flamed very quickly if you didn’t clean that up (e.g Espernet).

It goes back to the 1960s TV show, "The Prisoner".[1] In the village, all signage and maps are lower case only, and in a unique font.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osNmf_zmSyE

bauhaus in 1925 has been linked in a peer comment.

i've got a 1926 print book is 5 by e e cummings who famously often used lowercase in his prose and poems ... going back earlier than the collection i have.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_5

* my sweet old etcetera - https://web.archive.org/web/19991008163420/http://www.geocit...

still, as you're a fan of that 1960's show ... here's a few samples: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dm_iq5OicM (1985)

I'm an elder millennial, and this was a thing on AIM in 2001, and certainly before then in poetry and avant-garde literature.

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