There is a trend on Twitter and other social Networks to write 6 words stories. Usually, someone posts a picture and the others are supposed to tell a story in 6 words inspired by that picture.
It all began with Hemingway when he was apparently challenge to tell a story in 6 words or less.
His response was :
For sale: baby shoes, never worn
Although this is a brilliant example, and it proves that a lot can be said in just a few words.
However, it’s not always the case. Most of the examples I’ve encountered at social media are rather shallow and don’t say much but that’s nothing new. It’s just the case with everything – people try and fail all the time.
What concerns me more is how bad is the influence of the social media on our attention and perception. Can we read more than 6 words at a time, without checking our phones and switching to another task? Can we efficiently express ourselves in more than 140 characters? Is our attention span really framed by the screen size of our devices?
In that honor, here is the short post.