I love that this is basically a “back in my day” but disguised as a problem that zoomers will have. Old man shouts at cloud but instead one day zoomers will yell at water in the sky!
Yes. That’s exactly what’s happening. I recently heard someone my age lamenting the fact that kids these days don’t know what the save icon is because they don’t know what floppy disks are. I thought “Who gives a fuck?” Then later on a TV show I saw people using the verb “Tweet” and I thought “Well that’s going the way of the dodo” and here we are.
And nothing of value was lost. In fact, I’d almost prefer that anything you say on the internet not be a permanent fixture upon the internet. Leave it up for a year, or like 10 for politicians or historical figures - but nothing that can fit in a short-post like twitter is worth saving for long.
Not to mention linguists. I read a book (Because Internet, by Gretchen McCulloch, great read) that cited many studies that used Twitter as their primary source. Basically, the linguists used Tweets as a way to understand how people talk causally on the internet; what is more causal than a Tweet?