Forgot about the length limits… Yea it was more of a linguistics/memetics sort of phenomenon, not people being lazy. Like thieves kant, polari etc. language shapes itself to the needs of the people.
Interestingly, serving those texts was literally free for the carriers. They used the empty space at the end of blocks of data the phones were using to stay in contact with the network. That’s why it had that very specific character limit.
To be fair, t9 text entry is so much slower than modern touch screen keyboards, nuance was definitely prohibitively time consuming for a while
Also texting cost money at one point and was based on length, so you had to abbreviate.
Forgot about the length limits… Yea it was more of a linguistics/memetics sort of phenomenon, not people being lazy. Like thieves kant, polari etc. language shapes itself to the needs of the people.
Interestingly, serving those texts was literally free for the carriers. They used the empty space at the end of blocks of data the phones were using to stay in contact with the network. That’s why it had that very specific character limit.
SMS fees were pure profit for them.