Looking at some of David Foster Wallace’s notebooks from the archives at the Ransom Center in Texas, dating from around 1999, the New Yorker found that the beloved modern writer once said that the Internet was “the bathroom wall of the American psyche.”

That kernel of wisdom led the New Yorker to ask its readers to define Twitter in one tweet.

They got some very interesting responses.

@dnahinga: “Alone Together”

@Wodespain: “Communicative disease”

@Winooski: “Crouching Grammar, Hidden Manners”

@anglescott: “Twitter is the dime store in the marketplace of ideas”

@jaelmchenry: “A riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in typos wrapped in bacon”

@francesolimpo: “Twitter is like the ocean: There’s a lot to wade through, and occasionally you’ll see a whale”

@yamageo: “Twitter is the glory hole in the bathroom wall of the American psyche”

@JoeLinker: “The kisses, winging from their bowers, fly about him, twittering, warbling, cooing” (from the Circle chapter of “Ulysses”)

@Shan19the6man6: “An infinite orchestra hall, where everyone has a kazoo solo anytime they want for 140 seconds”

@safa_sandy: “A big family all watching TV together”

@Rajiv_Narayan: “The carrier pigeon of the 21st century”

@SamTheBearJew: “Logorrhea, in brief”

If you could define Twitter in a tweet, what would you say?

(Image from Shutterstock)