OP, it'd help if you posted an example or two of what you consider to be an
essay, because that word might not mean the same thing to both of us.
But assuming what you mean are very long posts then yes, I've noticed that for years--especially since the start of the merit system. What I find annoying is when members who obviously can't write English for shit make posts that are extremely bloated, i.e., using a ton of words but which say next to nothing in terms of content. I guess they think the more they write the better their post will be judged by merit sources, their campaign manager, or whoever.
Simply because a lot of users think that posting long topics makes it highly more likely for them to receive merits; even though if you read most of those, the thread seems to be pretty forced(character and word count wise). Not to mention that some are ChatGPT-generated.
If anything, it makes me far less likely to give merits. Just freakin get to the point without all the unnecessary fluff.
Yep. And that AI-generated stuff kind of scares me, because I think it's probably made it way easier for a non-English speaker to write something that looks to be high quality in perfect English, and I'll be damned if I'd be able to tell the difference if I'm not familiar with the member's style of writing (which I'm usually not unless they're an older member, in which case they wouldn't be using AI to write posts anyway).