Because

There's a clever little internet usage that I noticed popping up over a year ago.  Perhaps it is older and I didn't notice.  It is a shorthand explanation that intentionally does not explain: because. As in I never considered going into nursing.  Because excretions. Or We're not vacationing there this year.  Because money. I like it, generally. Cute. Efficient.  No more explanation needed.  You should just see.

The problem with it is that the kite string can get quite long, until the kite is invisible. A long string can contribute to the humor, as the subtext "this is just obvious" gets funnier if you have to actually work it out a bit. Wear clean underwear.  Because hospital.

Or the text exchange

Come home by 10
??
Because mother.

But the longer the kite string the more territory is being skipped over, regarded as not even worthy of mentioning. Things can get ambiguous.

We should be affirming homosexuals who visit, because Bible.
We should not be affirming homosexuals who visit, because Bible.

In that instance, the declaration that no further explanation is necessary is an avoidance. Consider the statement: "He stopped going to high school to go skiing all the time. Because Switzerland." Consider the gradual changes through Because Colorado. Because Vermont. Because Maine. Because West Virginia.

I had only partly thought this through.  I had seen some FB and internet comments using this humorous shorthand that I thought were not quite fair, a vague sensing that they were leaping to conclusions or leaving out counterarguments that made the leap not so obvious as they thought.  This crystalised for me when I read the article over at the Atlantic, the stupidly-named (because tangent) America has a New Preposition, Because Internet. The central examples were all snarky comments by liberals.  Why would this be more attractive to liberals? Is this a selection bias because of who the author reads? Is it because it's a younger demographic? Or is there something about this usage that appeals to a certain personality type?  (I have trouble imagining how it could be connected to some theory of government or proposition about social justice.)

I skimmed the rest of the article.  When some interesting question comes before me, some puzzle that I can work on in my own head, I tend to fade out from the sermon, lecture, conversation, or reading I am supposed to be attending to.  Because ADHD.  Because entertainment.  Because arrogant.

I had some tentatively-worded conclusions rolling around in my brain as I sat down to write this post.  Something about getting to be hip and condescending, pretending an argument has already been made, when in fact it hasn't (as in Screwtape). I should have read to the end more attentively.The professional writer said it better.

It conveys brevity. [Stan] Carey: "It has a snappy, jocular feel, with a syntactic jolt that allows long explanations to be forgone".

But it also conveys a certain universality. When I say, for example, "The talks broke down because politics," I'm not just describing a circumstance. I'm also describing a category. I'm making grand and yet ironized claims, announcing a situation and commenting on that situation at the same time. I'm offering an explanation and rolling my eyes—and I'm able to do it with one little word.

Eye roll pre-installed. There's your answer right there.