Instant Messing Gone Wrong (4 of 90)

It took me a while to figure out what today's (legit) post would be. But it just came to me, so here goes.

Oh Internets...:

I've come to the realization that a significant portion of my interaction with people is conducted through this lovely series of tubes we call the internet. Now, never mind the fact that many people would consider this 'sad' or what not. I am still a distinctly social creature who just happens to utilize the marvels of modern technology more than some of my counterparts. Maybe it is sad, I'm not sure, ask the experts in 15 years or so. But back on topic, the internet does pose some problems for communication.

The main problem being the lack of emotion or context. On the internet you can hide behind a lovely veil of ambiguity. Very few know exactly what you're thinking or doing when you type something. For instance, as I type this I am in PJs, I don't believe I've bushed my hair today, and I'm mouth breathing. You would never know this if I hadn't told you. Or maybe you would, depending on how well you know me (ex: if you know me well you'd know I am distinctly anti-pants while in my room, you'd also know that I am sick and therefore mouth breathing, and that the odds of me not brushing my hair on a Sunday (when I have nothing to do) are vastly increased due to my lazy nature).

Now let's concentrate on the lack of context for a moment. I am, on a whole, a very sarcastic person. I also have a tendency to make light of most, if not all, situations for various reasons. If you do not know this about me, or just do not have experience with this side of me, it makes internet communications increasingly difficult. Without the proper context, you'd have no idea if I was joking or not, even with emoticons or similar emotion markers.

Moving on to the lack of emotion on the internet. I'm not claiming that there is no emotion on the internet by all means. I'm merely claiming that at times it is difficult to interpret. On the internets something said with the purest of intentions can go horribly awry because of the lack of concrete emotional context. People cannot see the grin on my face, or hear the sadness in my voice. They only see the words (and often times an accompanying emoticon). And because of this, if you are not expertly acquainted with a persons textual speaking style, you can soon become confused as to what they actually mean.

I say all this because, I have this friend you see. And we seem to frequently get frustrated at each other in our message based encounters. Or more accurately, he gets frustrated with me for what ever it is I've typed and I, in turn, get frustrated with him for getting frustrated with me.

This is a fairly common occurrence. Now, I'm positive some of this comes from our differing natures (He tends to talk and think about more 'serious' issues more frequently than I do, whereas I tend to avoid said topics like the plague) but a large part comes from textual miscommunication. I tend to type 'lol' or ':P' as a filler of sorts. I may not actually be laughing (or I may actually be laughing, which is probably a large part of the issue) but I still use it.

These differing ways of utilizing types of information markers work in a vocal setting. So far, at least in my experience, the differences have not transferred over (well) to purely text based communication forms.

Makes me wonder if, over time, we'll learn to interpret the subtle difference in text based contexts any better than we already do. I'm not entirely sure what the point of this blog was, but here it is. My contemplations of word usage in society. And my ranting and raving about my friend who never understands what I'm trying to say.

I'll still instant message and text message though. I don't like people nearly enough to want to have to CALL them all the time. By god how did anyone ever live like that. Calling people. Preposterous.

Quote of the Day:

"We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards can produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the internet, we know that this is not true."

-Robert Wilensky