Comment by meowface
2 days ago
Twitter and all forms of instant messaging (SMS, WhatsApp, Discord, and the older ones like AIM/MSN/ICQ) have normalized it for many years. Sam is just one of the few large company CEOs to tweet in the style other Twitter users usually use. He's adopting the native culture rather than setting a trend.
Sam still uses capitalization in all of his essays, as do most people (including young people). In essays, like this one, it's distracting without it. I predict in 10 years the vast majority of people will all-lowercase on places like Twitter but almost no one will do it for essays.
>Sam is just one of the few large company CEOs to tweet in the style other Twitter users usually use.
Just looked at the algorithmic feed on Twitter to makes sure trends haven't shifted overnight, and zero people in that sample of hundreds of tweets used all lower case in the tweets. Not in science. Not in AI. Not in maths or politics or entertainment or media.
Sam is trying to bE dIFFERENT. He isn't adopting a norm but instead he's trying to make one. It looks ridiculous.
Most people on my feed do. It's true that professionals, executives, and public intellectuals generally don't use lowercase and that Sam is trying to normalize that, but my main point was that the medium matters. Lowercase looks ridiculous for longform essays and normal for short messages and microblog posts.
> Not in science. Not in AI. Not in maths or politics or entertainment or media.
That is the professional Twitter class and is not at all representative of the norm. Click through to the replies. Sentence case is probably in the vast minority.
I promise you that it is neither a fad nor started with the AI bro.
Black turtlenecks existed before Steve Jobs wore them.
2 replies →
> Twitter and all forms of instant messaging (SMS, WhatsApp, Discord, and the older ones like AIM/MSN/ICQ) have normalized it for many years.
Half true. In SMS it was just easier, but in IM it mostly was a thing because the IM client's message boundaries acted as markers for beginning/end of sentence, making the formatting unnecessary. That's why using correct capitalization and periods for single sentences came to be associated with a more formal/serious tone, it was unnecessary so including it meant you wanted to emphasize it.
Even back then we'd use regular formatting outside of IM or when sending multiple sentences in a single message.
> He's adopting the native culture rather than setting a trend.
If this was the intent, it's really coming off as that "Hello, fellow kids" meme, rather than genuine.
> He's adopting the native culture rather than setting a trend.
Maybe he should consider there are different registers of language, and code-switching is a thing. This now increasingly applies to written language, not just spoken language.
Writing this way in structured, formal discourse would be equivalent to a CEO using internet memes and trendy slang in board meetings.
Look at AOL Instant Messenger in 1999 and this is how everyone in school wrote.
Guess what… the people who used AIM in 1999 are now middle aged…
the article has lots of caps it’s a branding and stylistic choice very e e cummings and so on not everyone likes it but clearly the author sees some utility in using caps since they name papers appropriately they also say “UPDATE” in all caps
It's 2025 and my phone has been automatically capitalizing the first letter of each sentence for about a decade. Doesn't it take more effort to do it the wrong way?
I and most others I talk to disable autocapitalization on our phones. First thing I do when I get a new phone.