I do tend to prolixity, partly because of wanting to be rather thorough, and also because of I have a lot from previous responses to the same refuted polemics that RC persist in posting and which I can use in a current iteration of such. But sadly, much due to smartphones and effects of media on our minds, most web pages and search results prioritize brevity over more comprehensive content. When most reading on the Internet is on tiny screens and competing with so much else a touch or look away, then it is no wonder most people just follow the crowd.
Do you think that a love of brevity is "following the crowd"?
I do think people in, say, Victorian England had more time to spend reading lengthy treatises. But, not only was life slower then, there just wasn't as much written information available.
I spend all day reading. Like most people, I have to cut to the bottom line pretty quickly in the material I digest or I wouldn't be able to cover much ground.
As Einstein said, “If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”
They used to say, "Write like Hemingway...no extra words, no rambling paragraphs, be extremely economical, try to write without using adjectives and adverbs."
They called wordiness an exercise in vanity.
I have often wondered if that's where the Free Republic use of the term "vanity" for Freeper-authored threads came from.