Communicating through social networking sites has provided an alternative to print and speech. Due to its innovative format, Twitter has been able to combine print with speech-like qualities in a virtual setting. While tweets are a new form of communication, scholars have long theorized that computer-mediated communication more closely resembles speech than writing, where punctuation substitutes for conversational cues.

Yet, Twitter’s imposed limit of 140 characters per tweet does not allow people to make lengthy posts that actually reflect their emotions. This limit, however, has incentivized individuals to find alternative ways to express the subtleties of language within a tweet. Donald Trump found the key to unlock Twitter’s full potential by creating an entirely new form of dialogue, which was the perfect match for the audience of social media. Trump’s use of language is a mixture of his personality, built through his working career, and the sentiments of the populist movement.

Trump has a solid past as a showman — in guest appearances on several television shows and then as the protagonist of his own reality television show, The Apprentice. The experience demonstrated that in order to get to the heart of a middle class U.S. American he needed to use a basic yet direct vocabulary. The rise of the populist ideology in both international and U.S. American politics opened up a niche for Trump’s specific use of language. In fact, populism is an ideology resulting from the basic fears and needs of middle class citizens, who are tired of complex political terminology and prefer clear direct communication.

Trump’s experience as a showman, coupled with the populist ideology he adopted, heavily influences the language we read on his personal Twitter account. This language is known today as flyting: an exchange of insults and boasting about oneself. Flyting was often used in the early centuries, when face-to-face encounters were the only form of communication available. It allowed one to degrade adversaries with insults while winning over masses by boasting about oneself. If flyting were used effectively, an individual could create a myth around his persona without any prior accomplishments. This is exactly what happened with many of Trump’s statements during the Presidential campaign, when he boasted about constructing a wall on the border with Mexico, or when he promised to drain the establishment swamp in Washington, D.C. Repeated phrases such as “nobody build walls better than me” or “nobody could drain it better than me” caught the public’s attention with their boldness.

The particularity of flyting, which makes it an effective language to use on Twitter, is the lack of argumentation needed to attract masses. When insulting or self-aggrandizing there is no need to give an explanation as long as the person speaking is reliable, or at least is perceived as such. Trump was considered reliable by most middle class U.S. Americans, who didn’t really care about the failures of Trump University but rather were forced to focus on his luxurious image portrayed in the media. This lack of nuance therefore fitted perfectly in the 140 characters imposed by Twitter.

Trump doesn’t resemble any other politician on Twitter. He embodies the ideal Twitter user who posts all the time about how happy and successful they are. These people don’t tweet or post because they are trying to convey relevant information, they do it to carefully craft their own identities against some imagined audience that exists only to reinforce what they need to believe. In the age of social media, we are all familiar with this kind of thinking. What we are not familiar with, however, is this kind of behavior coming from the most powerful person in the world, whose every tweet has a global impact.

Twitter found in Trump its perfect avatar because his use of language is perfect for the social network’s characteristics. Trump’s tweets are second to none in terms of uniqueness, and this is because they reflect what most of us want to see on social media: blunt, short and powerful messages.