In between my fumbles of getting ready for bed last night, I caught the tail end of a joke from a comedian on the popular t.v. show Comic View (on B.E.T). And the butt of the comic’s punch line was this:
You can say whatever you want in a text message, as long as you put “lol” or a smiley face at the end of it….Your baby’s ugly…lol….I can’t stand you, your breath stinks, smiley face with the wink….
This grabbed my attention because it’s so true! In any form of technical communication, it can be hard to really tell if a person is joking around or not. Particularly if you cannot read through their dry sarcastic nature (ahem)—or maybe their just generally a mean spirited person, and only choose to show you that side through a text message, allowing you to assume that they are joking, when in terms they really don’t like you (yeesh, let’s hope not!). I’ll tell you this, if I don’t like you, I doubt I’ll waste the time or energy to respond to your dangling text message. In fact I assume if I didn’t like you, you would text message me in the first place. I won’t even go into the specs of how generally awful my grammar is when sending text messages. Here I am, an English major working on a M.A. and I hardly even use punctuation, full words or appropriate abbreviations.
Nah, it can’t be that deep. I’ll tell you this, text messaging to me is my lazy way of getting answers and killing idle time. Gone are the days of drawn out phone conversations, face to face interaction, lengthy emails, even Aim conversations to me are becoming a bit obsolete as of late. I just don’t have time to waste my life sitting in front of a computer or having a phone attached to my head, particularly when I just need an answer. Although, I will occasionally shoot out emails to get a point across (like at work, when cell phone usage is a little unprofessional).
Example: Me: What time are you done with class?
Friend: Noon. You wanna grab lunch?
Me: Sure, meet you at the dinning hall.
Simple A & B exchange which generally takes all of a few short minutes as opposed to forcing out an awkward (indecisive and distractive) phone conversation in which one of you are generally being interrupted from something more important…namely sleep…or I my case work.
This sounds selfish, but I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. And I’m not anti-phone conversation or email, there’s just a time and place. And well, certain people hold the special powers of allowing me to actually care how their day went, while 50% the people in my life do not, at least not on a daily basis.
Like for instance my parents…they call me daily and ask me the same questions, but I know it is because they love me. How was your day? What did you do?They’ve been asking me these same two questions everyday since I started pre-school. I’ve learned to accept that they are probably going to continue this ritual until both of them become senile or just stop generally caring about my lackluster life. Either or, we’ve got a good 20 more years to go…
Now I know I’m skipping around here, but I’d like to point out that I’m quicker to respond to an email or text message than I am a voicemail or a hand written letter. Something about both forms of communication just seem a little obsolete to me. And well, I’m lazy. I generally hate talking on the phone with anyone. There’s always this gaping hole of awkwardness….and one person always seems to feel that they are interrupting the other one’s life. Although on the flip side, if a good friend or family member calls, I’ll generally talk to them, even if I’m not in the mood or I’m slightly tied up. I’m horrible about returning calls though, I might as well not even have voicemail, because I often forget to check it. Even with the little envelop icon flashing at me (it’s been up there for a good week). Let’s not even get into dropping calls on the network—that’s an entirely different song and dance. Perhaps I should seek out therapy for this, I’m sure it’s not normal. It’s best to just call back if it’s that important. I apologize for my forgetfulness…I’m a little absent-minded at times.
So in short, I prefer text messaging for the quick simple answers in life. Like, where are we going to eat? Where do I meet you? What time do you get off of work? If I have something more substantial or serious to say, I’d generally leave that for face to face interaction, because it’s hard to generally tell someone’s true mood/feelings through a computer screen.
So do I really mean everything I say through a text message? Do I just say mean and surly things neatly wrapped up with smiley faces or an “lol’s” for shits and giggles? Well, you’d have to be the judge of that, for I refuse to share those details on a blog post 
.
Happy texting…;)
jelainesays
