A good source for the mood in filter bubbles and often for pure amusement is Twitter, especially when looking at the party youths. Even if the traffic light partners in Berlin may still cuddle, you can rely on Jusos and Julis to get into each other’s hair online. Although you first have to understand everything. Permanent phrase, for example: “wjbi” – which is yes based; “based” means justified. One could comment on someone else’s thesis like this: “wjbi. But idk: in the rr in the drukos this is cringe”. The latter has been known since it became the word of the year for young people, “cringe” stands for foreign shame. Other abbreviations have to be learned by someone who went to discos instead of clubs: Drukos, meaning comments below, “real rap” (rr), unadorned talking, “idk”, “I don’t know”. If that is mixed up with the usual abbreviations for institutions, “Druko zur Stiko”, it doesn’t read nicely. In itself, however, the tendency towards brevity is commendable.
Of course, streamlined political communication is not new. Former Chancellors have understood in an exemplary manner to summarize the passage in the Basic Law on the directive competence of the head of government in a single word: “Basta” (Gerhard Schröder) or “no alternative” (Angela Merkel). And stenographers in parliaments are masters of brevity anyway. As the state parliament announced, the Bavarian stenographer team recently took first place in the guild’s federal cup writing in Apolda, Thuringia. The communication provides an interesting insight into the profession.
In contrast to the complete recording in the plenary, there are analytical minutes from committees. There is shortened, smoothed, filtered, the most important arguments in indirect speech. Otherwise, shorthand uses express script with abbreviations for common words. The young political Twitter could easily learn something. In Apolda an exact transfer was required. A text was dictated faster by the minute, at the end of the day 475 syllables per minute. A challenge, even if it was formulated neatly – no heckling like in the plenary, no blowing your nose or snoring, no mumbling politicians. At a value of 300, stenographers switch to “controlled smearing” – but the text, not unimportant, must be legible at the end. Which is based.