Never stop talking.
I wrote this in Jew Law/History:
"Let's pretend for a moment that we don't have any non-verbal social cues. Let's pretend that our contact with others is limited to the words that come out of our mouths. What we have then is, essentially, a phone call. How meaningful, then, are those words? What does 'I miss you' mean when you can't see the frown on their face; when you can't tell if they're rolling their eyes or saying it to someone else? You can hear it in their voice, sure, but what happens if we lose the tone? What if we lose everything you hear and only have the language, the words. You have an instant message.
How seriously can you take words on a screen? "I miss you" has no e-hug attached to it, no regretful sigh tacked on the end. It's just eight letters at that point. About ten characters, depending on your punctuation, which can also screw with the meaning. Do you take "I love you." any more seriously than "I <3 u!!!"?
Probably.
An advantage (or disadvantage, which I'll get to) of talking online is the saturation of time. There are no pauses, theoretically. There are just moments allotted for typing or brb breaks where time essentially stops. This opens up a whole new realm for the practically slow-witted. They can take their time and compose the perfect comeback. They can express exactly what they want or don't want to say. Because of these pseudo-pauses anyone who can work Wikipedia is suddenly well-read. Anyone on Thesaurus.com has a vocabulary out the fundament! They are, in theory, ten times the person they could be without the internet by their side, without the pauses to think.
Does this make them a better person? Are they simply reaching their potential? They have more to talk about sure. They have a broader pallet of knowledge of old video games and awesome videos. They can talk about Nietzsche and Chekhov or even Panic at the Disco. But does that matter?
Between a phone call and an IM conversation... which is more genuine? Is it in IM where the person in question has time to phrase what he thinks and feels exactly the way he wants to phrase it? Or is it on the phone, where awkward pauses spring up like weeds and no one ever knows exactly what to say. You can mumble or cough or sneeze and every little mannerism you tried to cover up in your writing comes out.
If there's someone who you really care about or need to talk to who's not standing right next to you then these are really the only two ways to go about it.
Without the hugs and the nods and the smiles all we have left is the conversation."
It's relevant. Really. This is my main source of agony, at the moment. Not the whole IM/phone thing. Not entirely. I feel like I don't know how to talk to people. I feel like every conversation I get into I tend to analyze back and forth, searching the depths of my brain for the best response. There are only x number of people who I can really talk to without thinking about it. Most of them I never see. And then there are people like Ben and Michael who have developed a certain speech pattern with me.
It's everybody in between, though. My superiors, my inferiors, my crushes, my acquaintances, my semi-kindafriends... I don't know how to talk to them.
I don't go around hugging everyone (unlike Ben), so the conversation is really my only way of communicating and boy do I suck at it.
"Let's pretend for a moment that we don't have any non-verbal social cues. Let's pretend that our contact with others is limited to the words that come out of our mouths. What we have then is, essentially, a phone call. How meaningful, then, are those words? What does 'I miss you' mean when you can't see the frown on their face; when you can't tell if they're rolling their eyes or saying it to someone else? You can hear it in their voice, sure, but what happens if we lose the tone? What if we lose everything you hear and only have the language, the words. You have an instant message.
How seriously can you take words on a screen? "I miss you" has no e-hug attached to it, no regretful sigh tacked on the end. It's just eight letters at that point. About ten characters, depending on your punctuation, which can also screw with the meaning. Do you take "I love you." any more seriously than "I <3 u!!!"?
Probably.
An advantage (or disadvantage, which I'll get to) of talking online is the saturation of time. There are no pauses, theoretically. There are just moments allotted for typing or brb breaks where time essentially stops. This opens up a whole new realm for the practically slow-witted. They can take their time and compose the perfect comeback. They can express exactly what they want or don't want to say. Because of these pseudo-pauses anyone who can work Wikipedia is suddenly well-read. Anyone on Thesaurus.com has a vocabulary out the fundament! They are, in theory, ten times the person they could be without the internet by their side, without the pauses to think.
Does this make them a better person? Are they simply reaching their potential? They have more to talk about sure. They have a broader pallet of knowledge of old video games and awesome videos. They can talk about Nietzsche and Chekhov or even Panic at the Disco. But does that matter?
Between a phone call and an IM conversation... which is more genuine? Is it in IM where the person in question has time to phrase what he thinks and feels exactly the way he wants to phrase it? Or is it on the phone, where awkward pauses spring up like weeds and no one ever knows exactly what to say. You can mumble or cough or sneeze and every little mannerism you tried to cover up in your writing comes out.
If there's someone who you really care about or need to talk to who's not standing right next to you then these are really the only two ways to go about it.
Without the hugs and the nods and the smiles all we have left is the conversation."
It's relevant. Really. This is my main source of agony, at the moment. Not the whole IM/phone thing. Not entirely. I feel like I don't know how to talk to people. I feel like every conversation I get into I tend to analyze back and forth, searching the depths of my brain for the best response. There are only x number of people who I can really talk to without thinking about it. Most of them I never see. And then there are people like Ben and Michael who have developed a certain speech pattern with me.
It's everybody in between, though. My superiors, my inferiors, my crushes, my acquaintances, my semi-kindafriends... I don't know how to talk to them.
I don't go around hugging everyone (unlike Ben), so the conversation is really my only way of communicating and boy do I suck at it.