A Satire About Bullet Characters Taking Over Online Writing

A satire on the rise of bullet character articles and how list formatting is changing the way information is written online.

The Cold Rise of the Bullet Character Era

I’ve been publishing online since 2008, and in all that time, I never warmed up to bullet points or, to use the proper technical term, bullet characters. And before we go any further, let me confess something upfront: I, Susang6 the very author wagging my finger at these little symbols am absolutely guilty of falling for them myself. More than once, I’ve caught myself slipping them into my own information‑based articles, seduced by their tidy efficiency. So know this as you read: resisting them is hard. I’m not perfect, and I don’t pretend to be. If anything, that’s why this satire exists because I know exactly how tempting those neat little dots can be.

They always felt like the cold metal scaffolding of an article rather than the heartbeat of one. To me, bullet characters break the flow. They interrupt the conversation. They turn a writer’s voice into a checklist. And lately, it feels like they’re everywhere, marching across the internet like tiny, efficient symbols determined to flatten every story into a series of commands.

A Brief (and Slightly Embarrassing) History of the Bullet Character

Before these little dots became the tyrants of modern writing, they were… accessories. Decorative ornaments. Typographic wallflowers. In 1950, the New York News Type Book listed them alongside stars and checkmarks basically the typographic equivalent of “miscellaneous drawer items.” They weren’t leaders. They weren’t organizers. They were just cute little dots hoping someone would notice them.

Their name comes from the French boulette, meaning “small ball,” which feels appropriate because they’ve been rolling downhill ever since.

By the 1960s, they started sneaking into long documents as “type-breakers,” the typographic equivalent of tapping a glass to get attention. By 1971, they had evolved into full-fledged list markers, dividing text into digestible chunks like tiny hall monitors telling paragraphs where to stand.

But the real coup came in the 1980s, when personal computers arrived and PowerPoint was born. Robert Gaskins, in his 1984 proposal for the software, practically handed bullet characters the keys to the kingdom. Suddenly, every idea needed to be “concise,” “scannable,” and “slide-friendly.” Bullet characters saw their chance and took it.

By the late ’80s, they were everywhere corporate memos, engineering reports, school assignments. They multiplied faster than rabbits and were twice as determined.

And then came the Challenger disaster. Physicist Richard Feynman famously criticized NASA’s bullet-heavy slides for oversimplifying critical information. Did the bullet characters feel shame? Regret? A moment of introspection?

Of course not. They doubled down.

By the 2000s, they had become the default structure of digital communication. Unicode even gave them their own official codeU+2022 like a tiny badge of honor. And today, they’ve expanded their résumé to include password masking, where they hide your secrets behind a row of smug little dots.

So yes, bullet characters have a history. And like most empires, they started small, got organized, and then took over everything.

From Helpful Tool to Hostile Takeover

Somewhere along the way, bullet characters stopped being a tool and started becoming a takeover. Articles that once had rhythm and personality now read like instruction manuals. Instead of a writer guiding you through a thought, you get a list telling you what to think, what to do, and when to stop. It’s efficient, sure. But efficiency isn’t connection. Efficiency isn’t warmth. Efficiency isn’t why people read.  

Where the Bullet Characters Roam

If you’re wondering where these little symbols have set up their colonies, you don’t have to look far. SEO blogs practically roll out the red carpet for them, especially the ones that promise to “boost readability” by turning every idea into a tidy little dot. AI-powered content tools have become their breeding grounds, churning out list-shaped paragraphs faster than a human can blink. Even platforms that once celebrated long-form storytelling, like Medium and Substack, now host posts that read like someone fed a diary into a spreadsheet.

Corporate blogs have become full-blown bullet sanctuaries, with their “top ten takeaways” and “five-step frameworks” marching in perfect formation. And news aggregators have joined the parade too, offering bullet summaries before you even reach the headline, as if the article itself is optional. It’s a whole ecosystem now, a digital savannah where bullet characters roam freely, multiplying in the wild while paragraphs hide in the tall grass hoping not to be replaced.

The Illusion of Professionalism

I suppose bullet characters are popular because they’re structured. They look tidy. They look “professional.” They make even the weakest writing appear organized. But when I see them, I click away. Not because I’m stubborn, but because something in my brain whispers, “This isn’t a human talking to you.” And nine times out of ten, it’s right. These little symbols, technically called bullet characters, have become the calling card of AI-generated content. They sound polished but feel hollow, like a brochure written by a robot who has never met a reader but has studied several diagrams about them.

Formatting as a Symptom of Machine Writing

The rise of bullet characters isn’t just a formatting trend. It’s a shift in how people write or rather, how machines write for them. And as these characters spread across articles like ivy on a brick wall, the stories underneath get harder to see. The voice gets quieter. The humanity gets lost. And the reader, who came for a conversation, ends up with a list.

Why I Still Try to Write Like a Person

Maybe that’s why I’ve always resisted them. Not because I’m old school, but because I still believe an article should feel like someone pulling up a chair, not someone handing you a clipboard. I want writing that breathes. Writing that wanders a little. Writing that remembers it’s talking to a person, not formatting for an algorithm. Bullet characters may be taking over the internet, but they’re not taking over my articles. I’ll keep my paragraphs, my flow, and my human voice even if the rest of the world is busy turning their stories into lists.

Your Turn: Are Bullet Characters Helping or Hurting?

And now I’m curious how you feel about the rise of bullet characters. As they keep popping up in more and more online articles, do you find them helpful, or do they make everything feel a little colder and a little less human? I know how they hit me, but I want to know what you think about this formatting takeover.

Disclaimer: No Bullet Characters Were Harmed in the Making of This Post

And before I wrap this up, let me say this plainly. This non‑bullet blog post was written by me, Susan (pen name: Susang6), with my AI assistant at my side. Yes, I said AI. I lead every article, every idea, every direction, and Copilot collaborates with me the way a good editor would nudging, refining, smoothing the edges. Every piece we create together gets edited and re‑edited more times than I care to admit, because the words have to feel right. They have to sound human. They have to sound like me. No bullet characters were harmed or used in the making of this article.

Image Credits
All satire image prompts were created by Susang6 and generated by her AI assistant, Copilot, illustrating the formatting rebellion one chalkboard at a time.