All Atwitter

As a fairly voracious consumer of online media, I often stumble so deep into the Internet that I lose any sense of what I’m actually reading.  A couple days ago, while reading through several articles offering lots of truly awful advice on college essays (write 25 college essays in 25 weeks “because practice makes them better”), I came across one announcing the College of Charleston was testing having students apply via Twitter:

“Succinct is the new in-depth,” said assistant deputy admissions director, Chip VanDerveld. “Anybody can make a case for admission if you give them the time and space to do it; the real challenge is to convince us that you belong at the College of Charleston in 140 characters or less.”

Well, after being convinced the Apocalypse was upon us and muttering a few choice four-letter words–totaling less than 140 characters, of course–I realized I was the sucker.

Turns out, the Discust is South Carolina’s version of America’s Finest News Source, The Onion.  Yeah, like P.T. Barnum said, there’s one born every minute.  But still, The Onion’s been known to be quite prescient in that life does often imitate art.  So while, applying via Twitter and text messages isn’t happening–yet–there’s a certain dumbing down of the process that is.  But I’ll leave that for another day, another post…