Facebook is a kind of Twitter, a medium for people who can only take this much more as a post, writes Tswagare Namane

One of the reasons why some of us came to Facebook, as against the likes of Twitter, was because of the amount of space allowed per post. I must have started somewhere around 2010 or so and the length of posts was still restricted then - to almost a short paragraph. Immediately you went over the limit your post would be rejected with a stern notice popping up to say you were above limit. 

Tswagare Namane, Writer, poet, Cultural Theorist. Picture from his Facebook page.

Sometimes it was heartrending for you would have written what you felt was one of your best pieces, and now you had to sculpt it down to the permitted number. One thing I liked about that curfew-like situation, although in general I detested the idea of being boxed up - it felt like a kind of censorship , in that it forced on us the ability to be economical and effective with words. So those of us who were stubborn and never take things lying down fell upon writing unrestrictedly in our Notes and then posting them as links in our statuses.

This method never really took on, very few people were interested in being detoured to long ramblings in another's secret chambers. I still have a bunch of such writings somewhere that I was tagged by friends and are still unread. I used to write a lot of my poetry in my Notes then, for immediate sharing and feedback - most of which poems have seen their way into my still unpublished latest collection. Those were the days. 

Somewhere suddenly the rationing was gone and statuses now had an unlimited bottom. It was like being given a long rope to hang yourself. Some of us are quite wordy, what in ordinary talk are termed chatterboxes - I can go on and on if not rudely brought back to reality, which is why I have hit upon being a writer, a clever contraption for the containment of windbags. Thus increasingly I have since been writing longer and longer posts, only to realize people have stopped reading them - except for a few loyal friends who cannot bear to disappoint me, out of courtesy and perhaps a sense of propriety. Now I have come to the sad realization that Facebook is a kind of Twitter, a medium for people who can only take this much more as a post. 

Faceboookers are just a pretentious Twitterati, which is why they have stayed away from much more rigorous platforms - like those sites exclusively made for writers or academics and so on. There is a point as a lover of attention on Facebook (for in a way we incessant talkers are narcissists) when you reach the end of the tether - an invisible leash.