Why I'm starting to hate short URLs

I understand why short URL services are handy, and I know that there are times when you simply have to use them. How else are you to cram giant links in Twitter's miniscule 140 character limit?

My problem isn't so much with the truncators themselves. Bit.ly, is.gd, TinyURL, Digg, Ping.fm - I don't have a beef with the service you're providing. I'm also not all that concerned with the recent shouts about how one of those services being compromised could make reaching thousands of shared links impossible.

The thing that's really pissing me off is the way shortened links are being utilized.

Example. If you're browsing a social news site and you find a cool story, you post a tweet with a link to, say, the Digg submission or Slashdot article. Why? You'd rather share a snippet or summary with us than the actual article? Why make your followers and friends jump through an additional hoop?

Worse still are truncators with preview pages, like the one that got me started on this rant. A bit.ly link in my Twitter stream which TweetDeck couldn't expand for me sent me to a preview page. The preview page sent me to a Slashdot item. From there, I was finally able to access the original post.

Enough is enough. It's a waste of bandwidth, time, and it's a needless annoyance. If you read a post and you like it, go ahead and use a truncator. But for crying out loud - point it directly to the item of interest and spare me the song and dance.