There's a uniquely satisfying art to brevity. Minimalism will teach you that. Short films will definitely teach you that. Even the current nature of music consumption will teach you that, what with the general formula for actually being heard relying on some variation of songs > albums. At the top of this very simple but massive mountain of awesome minimalism is Twitter, ensuring that our sometimes misguided but always entertaining public thoughts are confined to 140 characters or less (preferably less).
However, if 2015 taught us anything (it actually taught us a lot), it's that Twitter is not afraid to slowly but surely modify or outright abandon formerly brand-specific characteristics in the name of a self-propelled evolution. The latest potential move, dramatically enough, stands to ruin that whole minimalism thing by maxing itself the hell out with a substantial character limit increase. Twitter is currently "building a new feature that will allow users to tweet things longer than the traditional 140-character limit," Re/code reports. Jack Dorsey and company are apparently considering a new character limit as high as *recommends you take a deep breath* 10,000 characters. Dubbed by Re/code's unnamed sources as the "Beyond 140" project, the new character limit could possibly fluctuate multiple times before making its tragic debut.
Though Twitter has not confirmed this development, current reports place the launch date "toward the end" of the first quarter of 2016. In other words, we may now be living in the final days of the glorious 140-character tweet limit. The move, another in a long line of Facebook-y changes on the platform, will reportedly maintain most of the current look and feel of Twitter by employing some form of a so-called "call to action" announcing additional content that's just one misguided click away. Why say less when you could always say more too much? (There are actually a lot of reasons).
Predictably enough, the Guardian reports that Twitter's share price promptly plummeted following news of the possible un-Twittering of Twitter. Though this possible 10,000-character tweet modification makes a bit of sense when paired with Twitter's recent thirst essay-inspiring deregulation of DMs, real Twitter heads can't help but mourn the potential death of rant-halting minimalism:
Damn. That's actually a really dope idea. Where you at, Shia LaBeouf?
