If you've been online any length of time you may have come across a news article heralding the death of the wedding: fewer people are getting married and on slow news days it seems like these articles are trotted out to fill the gap. I've come across one which inexplicably starts blaming twitter in the last quarter of the article. Twitter? I don't get it... did I miss a paragraph, or was one accidentally ommitted?

The latest social networking craze, Twitter – where users send 140-character messages in real time – attracts high-profile fans from Barack Obama to Stephen Fry, Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross. Discontent is growing in the ranks, however, with the English language suffering as a result. "The newbies have taken over", and "tweeple are jumping on the bandwagon" are two complaints posted on the internet, but that hasn't stopped the number of Twitterers growing exponentially – last week 600 partied in London (one of 174 such events around the globe) raising money to supply clean water to third-world countries. Organisers claim they raised £700,000. Why this desperate need to communicate utter banalities?

Oh, and Facebook. Continuing on, it blames Facebook. In another era, perhaps it would have been myspace or orkut.

I fail to see the connection. An 140 character limit is no more at fault than the general 'dumbing-down' of society through television 'news' sound-bytes, a lack of attention span and a focus on mindless materialism.