You are going to have to excuse a few paragraphs that will likely come off as narcissistic– I don’t care for it either, but I need the context before I really get into my thoughts.
—- self-indulgent context starts here —-
I feel like I’ve developed some sort of conversational problem, or a misalignment of conversational etiquette in all its various forms. I am pretty sure that a lot of this has to do with how communication has developed as a result of rapid technological permeation, and how my high level of involvement within the technological sphere.
There are a lot of things to consider when it comes to communicating with me. For one, are you simply trying to reach me? If you know me pretty well or are in a stage when you are getting to know me, then one of the first things you’ll learn about me is that I hate talking on the phone. I could draw up all sorts of cute little analogies or similes to express how much I hate talking on the phone, but that is giving it more time than it is worth. I just don’t like it. The physical requirements of it– even any sort of hands free setup sucks. I’m like an iPhone or an iPad when it comes to multi-tasking, I just can’t do it. So for me, talking on the phone requires full concentration. So basically, it is forcing myself in a situation where I have to drop every single thing I am doing and focus on a conversation that I can probably have more efficiently. Before anyone starts thinking that I am sounding a bit inhuman or impersonal about this, let’s just consider a couple points: one, the phone is not a good medium for an in-depth conversation. Obviously, talking to someone in person is unrivaled, but I even find other means, such as maybe a video chat sort of set-up isn’t so bad (but it is kind of foreign, even for me, so I don’t really use it for that) and furthermore, some sort of text format, whether it is just sending messages or e-mails or an instant messaging sort of scheme. There is a lot less static and interference in both regards. When you talk with someone in person, you have the complete communication toolset at your disposal. Even in a really distracting or noisy environment, this blows the phone out of the water. A phone call to me is about 45% repeating things, 45% me asking someone to repeat what they said and 5% original material.
Now there is the textual element of communication that I cited as being superior to the phone. You lose some-up-to-a-lot of the immediacy, as well as the ability to communicate non-verbally (though as a population, we really have gotten quite good at using ’emoticons’ and other similar non-verbal expressive devices, even if it is still infinitely distant from the amount we communicate by expressing ourselves in our body and face language), but you gain a lot in your ability to carefully construct a thought. Now, if the extent of your textual travails tends to look like this, “hey. i c-n u @ park place. y were u ther?” — then this probably isn’t going to be applicable, but I tend to have a lot more faith in ourselves as communicators than that. This whole concept of a well-constructed thought goes a long way. For one, if I’m speaking, it gets old if I am constantly stumbling and fumbling around my words because I can’t quite word it properly– or if I need long pauses to get things worded just right. It also isn’t as necessary, because you get to volley around with people in a conversation and the completion of the thought via a collaborative thought process tends to happen rather rapidly. When I am typing or writing to someone, every word can have as much weight as I want it to, and this is something that I think tends to get taken for granted. Furthermore, these thoughts and word conglomerates are instantly archived. I find that it isn’t so much that I can always infallibly interpret what someone is trying to say or express as a complex thought or emotion, because stuff always gets lost in translation, per se, but it does allow me to really understand how well I get what someone is saying when I am talking to them. Maybe at first I think I get it completely, but then I mull over it some more and realize that I could very likely be completely misinterpreting how this person actually feels or what they are thinking about a specific thing, especially when their frame of reference for something is much greater than my frame of reference of a particular thing. This naturally makes me a much more inquisitive person in text-based communication than I am in speech. In fact, the last time I asked a question vocally was when I worked at a cafe when I was 17.
“Can I take your order?” — or something to that effect.
Pulling away from the merits of written communication and back to my initial point, the phone just doesn’t cut it for me. I treat it as a last resort, so obviously, if you are trying to reach me, the phone is the worst way possible. The second major consideration in communicating with myself is for what purpose is it? Is there some sort of goal or directive to it? I think it is gotten to be pretty well-accepted (as a whole, I mean) that most of the time, text messaging is the best method for this. For that, I’m glad. I also appreciate the redundancy of it. For instance, do you have a goal of wanting to talk to me? Fine, but text me and let me know first. When I think about it, this is entirely impractical and far from the most logical, though I tend to favor these types of thought processes anyway, and I think a lot of the way I’ve done things in life tend to seek this type of unnecessary unorthodoxy. With that said, there are some practical merits to it also. I mean, sometimes we might not be well-equipped to call someone and talk, or really any sort of scenario where either you or the other person seeks a very strong communication platform, but because of the desirability or necessity of it, the things in the way can be re-aligned, thus making yourself more available to talk. I guess I’ll go ahead and try to make an example and break it down anyway.
Them: wuts up?
Me: Nothing really <– obviously not true, it could mean anything. Perhaps I am in a plan, thousands of feet in the air, about to jump and instead of ensuring (for the 50th time) that my parachute is good to go, I am texting you. Therefore, I am a rebel because my phone is on in an aircraft, and if I die its on you, but anyway, the point is that it denotes a willingness to talk. If I didn’t feel like communicating at that point, I’d really just say what I’m doing. “Hey, performing open heart surgery atm, will talk later.” I think that pretty much everyone understands this system to some degree. Also, let me point out how much better my texting grammar is compared to yours. My grammar, at all times, is nearly impeccable. I rule.
Them: cool, u busy? <– notice this person gets it. Nothing means nothing, and who knows what I’m really doing, but they got the green light to get to the point. They could have just gotten to the point in this text, but it is pushed out another cycle because they are likely intimidated by me, or were hoping that by stretching out the texting cycle one more time that maybe I’d flatter them.
Me: Not really, I am in the middle of my descent. Went skydiving today hehe! About to go into parachute mode, mc hammer, too legit to quit you know? What’s up? <– somewhat busy at the moment, but tons of availability as soon as this is out of the way. The system works! Also, I contemplated flattering them, but instead opted for the mc hammer quip. For one, that song rules. Two, they didn’t earn my smooth words.
Them: lol, awesome. well I tried 2 perform open heart surgry on me. I think i mest up, can u cum help?
Me: Sure dude, I’ll head over in about an hour or so if that works for you? <– at this point this part of the cycle is self-explanatory, and from this point the objective-based act of communication is complete. Casually interact from this point at each other’s own discretion.
The text message is so powerful because it is quick, discreet/unobstrusive and addictive. It works, whether there is a purpose behind it, or if you are just shooting the breeze.
I could continue breaking things down relative to the means of communication that I favor, but I already touched on them, so it is safe to assume that, as a whole, the best ways to reach me tend to be digital.
—- self-indulgent context ends here —-
Essentially, this is what has happened between myself and most people that I know:
My primary modes of communication have a type of incompatibility with the average person. In some ways, it feels like I am the mysterious old wizard. To the outside world it looks like I’ve become a batty hermit and shelled myself up in some unreachable tower atop an unscalable mountain– or maybe I’m just more like the guy who went crazy, started running around in a chicken costume and is hiding out somewhere in some dark, secluded, nasty cave, sleeping my life away in a puddle of my own drool.
If I follow this trail of communicative seclusion even further, it makes it even harder to manifest myself “in the real world”. See, what happens when you get cut off from everyone is that nobody hears from you and you hear from nobody (simultaneously). Then you get back catalogued in their mind and thoughts– this also happens to people you know, at with I would say is a pseudo-random involuntary selection process. Once becoming out of contact and out of mind, then you increasingly become out of sight. Therefore, your opportunities to ‘manifest yourself in the real world’ become limited by the things which require you to.. you guessed it, manifest yourself in the real world. If that dwindles, well then you really have a problem on your hands.
In such a limited existence, everything becomes a guess. “Oh, maybe I’ll shoot so-so a text and see what they’re up to,” a pause occurs, thought happens, their offspring is hesitation, hesitation is asexual and adopts the outcome, a guess, “Well, maybe not, they seem like they’ve been really busy lately, I’ll just wait til things open up for them or if they hit me up.”
You can pull out scenario after scenario ad infinitum at this juncture, because you just don’t know, it really is just a guessing game. I don’t have empirical evidence on this, nor do I feel like trying to find any right now, but I’d say that there is certainly a strong inverse correlation between the confidence in our guesses and assumptions and our level of doubt and lack of self-confidence. I’d also say that this is likely how the internet-age phenomenon of the digital community and even on-line subculture ascended to such prominence. People, like myself, get promulgated into a crowd of like-minded individuals, or rather, we congregate as a result of how we communicate and interact. It is probably what led to the stereotype of the lonely basement nerd. Only very–very–very unique people are going to prefer purely impersonal and disconnected forms of communication and interaction to actually doing something, you know, like in the same physical location with actual physical people. Allow me to speak as an introvert, there are plenty of times where I’d much rather hole up and recharge doing something to myself for a while, but even being my heavily introverted self, more often than not I will take any opportunity to go do something with people– even if I’d prefer to recharge. Getting me time is something that I can get almost anytime I want it, all it takes is free time and I can make it happen. Spending time with friends or whoever, well that is not as selfish as an act, thus requiring a lot more to line-up, hence why even introverts like myself will almost always opt to do something that might drain them a bit more than they’re used to.
Haha, it seems that I somehow also highlighted how someone who has a similar communication set-up as myself can become physically removed and disassociated from people, but my goal has been to highlight how I feel a disconnect on a basic-interactive level. So I must continue.
Setting this element of physicality or ‘real-world manifestation’ (which is really just a phrase I use because I like how impersonal it comes off) aside, the thing I have really experienced is a mental disconnect.
There was a time when my ‘text messaging game’ would frighten even a 14 year old MTV-generated girl, but those days have long since passed. Today, it has a decent pulse, but it really isn’t the casual conversational device it once was. I’d say that it is still primarily used for that, but it is more Ent-like. A friend and I might start a jovial train of thought, playing some sort of tiny, humorous made-up game, but instead of it taking a couple of minutes, like it used to, it’ll take a day or two to get passed that gap. By the time it is done, there is another stray thought that one of us mentions and thus a very small topic is chatted on in the same period of time, and that is how the cycle revolves. In person, I just don’t see people in many settings that are conducive to just talking about whatever to anyone. There aren’t many people I regularly hang out with these days (something perhaps to get into another time), and besides that, what other settings are there really? Most of the time I see someone, I am going to point A, they are going to point B, that leaves, on average, 7.8 seconds to get a few words in. I will say this, a lot of people I know (as well as myself) are very very good 7.8 second conversationalists. There is no choice but to be. I don’t work, so I can’t comment on that, but in school settings, it has always been go to class, take notes, pay attention and be bored, then get out. Vastly different from how it was in high school and below, where you are boxed in with the same people every day for hours and hours. A lot of other instances just have a lot of noise or interference in the way. The gym is a great example, because when I go play basketball it is the most lax and recreational thing I do on a regular basis. I mean, it really is just something I do out of pure enjoyment more than anything else, and there is the gym-culture, you tend to get to know everyone pretty well at least on the level that you know their gym-self, but even then, I don’t think you could really expect too much beyond it anyway, because some of my longest-standing best friends and I will go to the gym and talk very sparsely over the course of a couple of hours— because really, it just ain’t that great of a place to talk to somebody. It’s loud, distracting, the acoustics suck– so whenever you forget these facts and actually get into any substantial sort of conversation, you are almost immediately reminded that it is going to be more of a hassle than anything else; the worst instance of this being when you realize you’re actually playing a game, and you get too chatty with the person you’re guarding.
In some ways, it makes me feel like a little kid, because the best option for a decent conversation, whether casual or in-depth, with anyone at any given time is similar to how it was in my younger days. Instead of AOL Instant Messenger, I’m just using Skype and Facebook instead. Now, not getting back into them again, there are plenty of things going against this already, such as the ways people tend to communicate– not a whole lot of people are in to using these means, so that already limits the variety and selection. Furthermore, and also really to the core of what I initially was getting at, it is just hard to connect there. See, for one, it comes back to the alignment issue. For many, people are strictly using these sort of things for objective-based communication.
“Hey do you want to get some people together when I come into town?”
“You bet”
“Cool, see ya”
This is where I notice the disconnect the most. In my head, I’m thinking, “derrn man, I haven’t talked to them–like really talked to them– in (imitating Squints from The Sandlot) FOR-EV-ERR,” then I just feel like I am cheating someone, them, myself, I don’t know who, by just saying, “see ya.” Of course, I realize and accept that I have to. Either my hand is played because they log off before I can even type something like, “cool, cool, was good to hear from you and hope you’re doing well. Look forward to seeing you and everybody. Later!” — or because it just feels like I am violating some sort of unspoken code or etiquette of it all. Lord knows I wouldn’t want to do that! Or.. well.. for some reason in my head that is how I perceive it. As a result, a lot of the times I have any sort of interaction with people on these things, it just feels awkward.
WAIT
I just admitted to something like that resulting in an awkward conversation? Well, I guess that it is really more because when you just don’t have a good talk with anyone for a long time, you really have no idea what is going through that person’s head. You don’t have any clue where they are in life at the moment. You don’t really even know them anymore, for that matter. Once again, it is the guess confidence to doubt inverse correlation. You know nothing, therefore I doubt every aspect of my interaction with you. Of course, remember that when I say ‘you’ right now, it pretty much always interchanges into, “I” or “me”.
I think that is the shame of it all. I think back on times, there are few things I remember as well as a really good conversation. This doesn’t even mean I have to remember the conversation with any specificity, but it may just be remembering that it was there, and as a result I had a really close connection and interaction with someone, and that is just cool. Also, the thing with it all is that it doesn’t require some sort of best-friendship blood-brotha type of oath relationship with someone to have that. I have friends who have always just hovered above the acquaintance line the entire time I’ve known who I have fond memories of times where we just had a really good discussion on something.
I don’t really know where this leads to from this point of realization, admittance and acceptance I am at with this whole disconnect thing, but I suppose that isn’t the point anyway. To sum it all up, I really think I am just lamenting the fact that through a lot of small developments and misalignment of interactivity, I find myself missing things such as being able to chat with any random Jane or John Doe that I know.
You know, one of those things in life that you end up taking for granted. I’ve got at least a few of those.
Note: I really had to stretch to try and fit the word ‘promulgate’ in where I did, and I’m sure I didn’t nail its use at all, but I just had to use it. It was a calling, or actually, worse, an itch. Also, I think I ended up doing some weird stuff with my pronoun usage that I am not going to go back and fix for a day or two, because I just typed 3500 words, I owe myself by not having to re-read my own thoughts.
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