this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
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It's the same philosophy, yeah. That more words means more substance and more "respect" or whatever to the message.
It's not rational at all, but people genuinely don't think that way. (Unless it's a forum/social media, then 3 paragraphs is a wall of text that needs to have a 5 word TLDR, because none of it is rational).
The exaggerated version of a simple message once you have a working relationship is silly, but there are way too many times you don't get to a working relationship at all without a wall of bullshit.
Ok, but do the people you're referring to actually appreciate prose, or just skim-read through everything?
Because I'd wager they're the latter, and at that point you don't even need to try to write something good. It's fine to send them three paragraphs where the second and third ones just paraphrase the first.
Paraphrasing the first multiple times is still a big, distracting extra cognitive load, and it needs to hold up if they actually do pay attention to it. One time they notice the obvious bullshit can end a relationship. I won't use an LLM for anything like this because it's stupid, but that's why people are doing it.
You're saying once they see the pointless fluff they themselves ask of people, for what it is, they'll feel insulted?
Paraphrasing yourself comes with built-in deniability. "Oh it's just something I tend to do, I don't mean anything by it, I can make an effort to stop if you like". And then boom, you get to be concise.
There is no way of bloating your prose that doesn't come off as insulting when done with people who don't appreciate volume over quality.