Isn't it more of a shift though, from facial nuance to textual nuance? For me at least, I feel like text communication has become more nuanced over the years. The amount of time that I sometimes put into a single email, text or response just to get it the way I want is well above and beyond what is needed to get the point across. It also makes more sense to me in the context of a generation that is increasingly focused on textual communication as a substitute for face-to-face communication.
Makes sense? Sure. But the shift comes at a terrible price. One thing everyone agrees about the 7 percent rule is that the numbers are wrong. But the only two studies to contest it put the number closer to 20 percent. Whatever the actual percentages are, the amount of information conveyed by me standing in front of you talking is between 4 and 20 times as information-rich as you reading a transcript of what I said. All the nuance of the written word - emoticons, emojis, goofy little pictures, memes, the whole part and parcel of modern online communication - comes from the fact that we used to speak in rainbows and now we speak in purple. We've gotten damn good at speaking in purple - far better than back when we had a spectrum - but the part of your brain that speaks in purple has taken over the parts that speak in red, orange, yellow, green, blue and indigo.