In addition to being hilarious, this tweet is an example of the new writing styles and conventions we take for granted on Twitter.
No caps and no full stops for speed. Conversational phrases that also adjust packing, “like”, “my dude”.
Conversation
I haven’t seen it discussed anywhere. (Linguists must be discussing this in their circles, I guess.)
But it’s awesome. People are just doing it. Some people are so good at this, it’s beautiful to watch.
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Of course there’s the usual irony that a lot of the freshest and most carefully turned writing here reads as “badly written“ if you judge it as standard written English.
But actually, it’s various effective innovations ARE what make it good writing.
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Compare:
Constellations are a bit of a stretch.
Like, “I’m a lion.”
“My dude, you’re a triangle”
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The joke still lands because it’s got solid bones but correct punctuation makes it slower and fussier — worse.
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But what’s really puzzling to me about jokes on twitter is that I spent years performing comedy and sweating every detail of this kind of thing and it almost never occurs to me to tweet joke on twitter. Huh. I wonder why not. 🤔
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Replying to
There’s a joke twitter apparently where people spend time making jokes, but most of us just subconsciously insert a dash of wit into conversational tweeting while idly thinking about other things


