The bait: here is a ton of text
The historical implication: because there is a lot of it, I put a lot of thought and effort into writing it
The new normal: there is ZERO signal about the magnitude of human thought and effort that went into something on the basis of its length
... and what really pisses people off about that: when AIstas intentionally abuse that social contract to their benefit.
E.g. people who pass AI content off as their own, people who don't read their own genai before pasting to you, everyone on LinkedIn
The consultant mindset set this trend before AI made it all worse.
Really? That must be some ancient history, because I've seen rambling walls of text on the internet derided for decades. I always appreciated the Feynmanian respect for economy of time over traditional formats, where if authors said their piece but still had space they'd damn well fill it.
(Of course, slide all the way down that slippery slope and you'll just hit Twitter.)