This morning, I saw a link to an article titled “20 terrifying two-sentence horror stories.” I’ve seen a few of these before, but I clicked on the article anyway. Here’s an example: I begin tucking him into bed and he tells me, "Daddy, check for monsters under my bed." I look underneath for his amusement and see him, another him, under the bed, staring back at me quivering and whispering, "Daddy, there's somebody on my bed."
That’s pretty creepy stuff, but the content is not the most important factor. These stories are limited to two sentences, which means most of them will be under 140 characters (the story above is one of the longer ones), the perfect length for a tweet. Think about the emotions this “story” invoked and the fact that just a few words can make up meaningful content. When we tweet, we become storytellers. Granted, our story may not be anything more than a simple “GTHD,” but isn’t that a story in its own? Four characters is all it takes to get the point across.
Because of sites like Twitter that limit the number of characters users can post, we’re adapting to shorter stories. We’re learning how to tell them in fewer words but still invoke the same emotions as if we were sharing the story on a full page. I’d even argue we like these shorter stories better, and this is an opinion that will likely continue in the future. Not every story on the Internet will have a beginning, middle and end, but we as users can still understand the meaning behind it, even if it’s only 140 characters.