![]() ![]() So, Twitter uses 140 characters, reserving the extra 20 characters for metadata. SMS messages had a limit of 160 characters. Where did the original 140-character count come from? At first that answer looks easy: Tweets were designed to be sent as text messages. what a historical tragedy! It utterly erases an aspect of Twitter's origins that most don't even know. "My quick take on doubling the Twitter character count to 280 is. In the meantime, a few bullets of context, perspective and mathematical musings: Time will tell if the increased length of tweets leads to more consumer hours spent on Twitter, and what that might mean for the nation and the world. Talk about the truth, track his attempts to divert and remain steadfast in sticking to the real issues at hand.In a week when a Facebook founder publicly questioned the ethics and wisdom of social media, Twitter doubled down (up?), taking its infamously tight character count from 140 to 280. There is a solution to escaping from Trump’s tweeting clutches, according to Lakoff. The 2016 essay he wrote on “Understanding Trump" still holds today it’s an analysis of the driving forces that made Trump the perfect Republican candidate for 2016. Lakoff has taken it upon himself to translate the muddled language of Trumpism over the past two years. “Do you mock and scorn them, or trumpet their ridiculousness on the front page? No.” “Do you deal with a child or a deranged person by sinking to their level?” Lakoff asks. But it’s unproductive to delve into an endless spiral of “can you believe he just said that?” Our outrage at the president’s behavior is understandable, Lakoff says. As a cognitive scientist, I can tell you: repeating his messages only helps him.” They may think they’re negating or undermining him, but that’s not how human brains work. They retweet, share and repeat his messages ad infinitum. ![]() Reporters, social media influencers, and many others fall for it hook, line and sinker. “Each tweet gets his message retweeted so he dominates social media. Lakoff has a warning for journalists who are quick to take Trump’s tweets seriously. He can portray himself as a victim of the ‘establishment’ - under constant attacks (which he provokes with tweets). “The constant attacks and outrage increase his credibility with his base. No matter what he tweets, Trump’s unfounded and dangerous statements work to his advantage by painting him as a maverick alt-truthsayer. And when he wants to test public opinion, he puts out an outrageous trial balloon.” “Or when things look bad for him, he diverts attention or attacks the messenger. “The tweets either get his framing established first, knowing that whoever frames first tends to win,” he wrote. Lakoff explains the taxonomy in fuller detail in a comment thread. Looking back on Trump’s most outrageous tweets, they can almost all be classified into one of four buckets. ![]() Maybe after Mueller takes him down, he can write “The Art of the Tweet.” Until then, Americans will continue to reel from unfiltered posts like his most recent threats to North Korea and play the absurd game of trying to tell if our lives are immediately under threat or not.īut one scholar of linguistics and philosophy has masterfully deciphered the strategy behind Trump’s tweets, and it’s just the tool we need going into 2018.īerkeley professor George Lakoff posted a master key to classifying Trump’s tweeting method this week, and it’s blown up on Twitter. Over the past two years, Trump’s Twitter habits have been honed and polished into an art form. This article originally appeared on AlterNet. ![]()
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