Alright so, here's a very (not) thoughtful post.
Once upon a time, there was an age where there were no computers, no cell phones, and only a man with his mailbag traveled the neighborhood streets, putting postage stamped envelopes into mailboxes.
I didn't live in this time.
But despite, I lived in a time where computer use was limited because it took over a house's phone line. And even if you were fortunate enough to have it, it cost a gold bar a minute, was slow as sin to access anything you wanted, and anything you wanted cost a few hundred gold bars by the end of the month (or day if you were daring and were downloading something.)
A time where cell phones were akin to carrying a brick in a leather pouch and powering it by cigarette lighter. Thing so big that it covered half your face, and left you with a tumor from the sheer power it exhausted, or so scientist claimed. They at least made good space of the phone by making the numbers big as your thumb, and an antenna so large and long that you could fend off a small fleet of French Army men. Then again, what couldn't fend them off, am I right? (Yeah, French war humor is way overdone. There was also a time I didn't know that.)
There was a time where the best "social networking" site you would find was not MySpace or Facebook, but an RPing chat room where you would enter in with a paragraph long introduction of your character, starting with the tiniest detail, "From the entrance of the inn, a pair of vigilante eyes scans the area of the elven bar. Searching. Their goal? A spot to enjoy a good drink." THIS was how you met people with similar intrests, although the interest was simple. Still, computers were for dorks, nerds, and geeks at this time, and they damn well liked it.
There was a time, a time where we'd go outside, because we'd HAVE to. To see people, things, buy stuff, connect to the world, and be a part of the world. If you wanted to see someone's face, you went out there and met up with them, not by use of webcam, picture text, or otherwise. Sure, taking a picture lasts long, worth a thousand words, etc. But I rather be in the movie called "Life" starring Me, and not watching someone be a dork, because no one is around them.
There was a time where our (cell) phones were simple phones. Call a person, recieve calls, voice mail (though this was a seperate product and system from the phone in most households), and hanging up by setting that sonvoabitch back where it came from. We didn't lose phones, or need to listen for a locators' beeps. They never needed to be charged up...which honestly, I'm STILL kinda stumped how older phones don't need to be plugged in, power wise. They were reliable, made you walk around the house to get the phone, and you'd answer it, as a time where people would actually CALL each other, so you wouldn't avoid the phone thinking "Oh, it's those pesky telemarketers again." Plus, an extreme lack of Caller ID (which was also a seperate techonology.)
I look at all of this, think about all these deeply, and I came to a very striking epiphany: My bonds with people were tons stronger back when I was a young lad. Maybe part of it is that I was young, naive, and trusting, but if you compare it to now, connections with other, in general, are very very lacking.
I slowly, more and more, hate texting. There's no real connection there, I feel. I can respond yeah, but I can't ever feel like I'm conveying my self, my feelings, my thoughts, properly. May it be to limitions on text itself, what I can show over tell in a small window, how much I even wanna type on a lame T9 system, not like having a keyboard would change this sentiment. It's made me lazy, and lacking in the connecting department, and somewhat makes me regret getting a cellphone.
Why don't I get rid of it? Because the second aspect of it, talking, is nice, whenever I get the rarest of rare chances to use it, and the fact that I can be left a message for get togethers is very useful when I'm out on the go. Otherwise, I really hate cellphone hijinx. It's so...empty I feel. If someone doesn't respond to a message, it could mean a variety of things to keep you guessing. "Did they get the message?" "Are they mad at me?" "Are they ignoring me?", etc. All of said examples I'm guilty of committing for not responding. It's just because I can. And I fear I'm losing my ability to handle personal contact. I feel like I'm degrading. How am I supposed to get to know someone better, connect deeper, if all I've seen from them is such an impersonal fragment from their fingertips. Very very rarely do I get anything deep over texts.
At the end of the day, when you're done texting someone, you've gone almost no-where with them. You could have gone the day without texting them, or at least, that's what I feel when I get 85% of my conversational texts (not information texts about get-togethers, or etc.)
Computers, in my humble opinion, are still a decent way to contact. Maybe not good, person, but decent. Sharing media, stuff to cry, laugh, smile about, playing together, and actually being able to TALK with one another, may it be mics or IMs, it's shooting words back and forth to each other for a prolonged period of time (san for AFKs and etc. but yeah. You can't "Away From Phone", at least I haven't seen it yet.) If not IMs or mics, there's E-mails. Of course this is very dependant on the people's effort into the mail. I've had the greatest E-mail conversations (courtosy of syntheticka ), and some of the lamest, one-sided convos ever, because the other person, for whatever reason, refused to put any effort into their messages. And in this day and age, I percieve these people as the worser end of conversationalists, because there's more to an E-mail than treating it like a questionare and answering questions.
I ran a little funsies experiment. I checked Craig's List for a person who was looking for chat and conversation. So I E-mail them, making sure to put questions to answer, and a little extra for them to work with. They did "work with" any of it, and just answered the questions. So more effort comes from my side, typing up a sizeablely short E-mail, maybe a little longer than a paragraph, with open-ended questions, one-answer questions, and things to work with. I get a one line E-mail back, not even answering one question at all. Wow, seriously? Note, they did not even ask any questions back. Personal, impersonal, and... I don't think any sentence ended with a question mark besides "What's up?" from the first mail.
Their Craigs List Ad claimed they couldn't make female friends, so they were looking for the male kind. I have a very very hard time believing they can make friends at all, and I don't think my basis of thinking this is too far off. I reversed the process last year, meeting someone who was rather silent but seemed decent of a person. She got my E-mail address, and it was pretty much the same business as above paragraph (but not an "experiment", though I feel kinda bad when I put it like that.) I put in lots of effort into the E-mail to make it readable, fun, open-ended. etc. only to get half the effort back.
Ladies and Gentlement, this does NOT define as a conversation in the slightest. Especially with something you can think about your answer and how you are to respond to something. And I feel the world is a sort of deteriorating with these lame online interactions.
We got silly shiznoe like MySpace and Twitter flitting around our series of tubes, making the situation seem so much more worse. MySpace is installing trust issues in the millions of users' heads, because when they feel ready to meet someone, it's underlying that they're not for real. And I believe when someone is done chatting over messages, comments, or whatever they do, they realize in the real life that they're not sharing as much common interest, or conversation skills, as they thought they would. Can't say this is from experience, but I can't say I've heard any good stories. So I AM looking at this from a negatively charged bias; take note.
And then Twitter. A certain someone was trying to get me to join, and then later showed me a video that turned me the extra 40 degrees or so to completely 180 off of ever wanting to get Twitter. Are we really menial enough to need to explain our daily notions. As the video stated "You're talking to nobody... and EVERYBODY!" I just don't get the...joy(?) of getting this. Anything said there can be said so many minutes/hours/days later, as far as I'm concered. Seriously, take all that stuff, throw it into a blog, and see how awesome it looks when it's all collected into one spot. Probably would look extremely lame, I'd guess. I thought talking about small-time stuff like that was what (sigh...) texting was for? At least that way, you're more likely to have a caring audience that you can explain and expand the situation onto...assuming there was anything to expand on.
I seldom talk on the phone anymore. That's probably more on the fault of it being broken, but even before then, my calls were really limited. As a man, we don't really "chat", so to be fair, it's not expected of two dudes to talk over the phone. But even then, I would rather talk to some gals on the phone. Texting gets tiresome, talking is easier,and some people I just can't seem to keep their focus unless I was talking straight to them.
That is probably the same main problem I share with computers, their focus. I can't even talk to some people through IMs because they're off doing something else ON THE COMPUTER. I am guilty of this too, because not all the time I'm able to close my stuff, or switch to another application. And yeah, sometimes the thing doesn't show you have a message or make the sound, but when I try to talk to some people, and the only answer I can get out of them is "LOL" while they continue using the internet to find pictures of 4Chan, it's very VERY frustating for obvious reasons. And if that's the respect and effort I'm gonna get from someone, then I might as well not talk to them at all.
More than ever in this current day and age, I feel my effort is being wasting to converse with the general populace, as the general populace's converseable ability lies in the internet. E-mails, IMs, Chats, MMOGs, and even if you DO talk face-to-face, from many of people, you'll be talking about something ON the internet, or even worse, talking like they're still ON the internet (EL-OH-EL!) People just gotta be straight-up acting the fool, eh...?
Now I'm not saying I'm the god of all that is conversation, not even close. Hell, I'm probably more of a hypocrit on a lot of this stuff than I know. Still, I'm hella looking to change that. Cause at this point, I don't feel very close to many people anymore. I missed having people close to me that I could just go and visit, talk to, see on the street, or call. I almost wanna rid of my cell phone, get rid of the extra costs, and make people call for me at home, and do the same back out. I wanna feel like I'm CONNECTING with people, again! Because now-a-days, I can't even get a deep conversation out of almost anyone and everyone now. It's making me bitter and much more shallow because I don't have any reason to open my brain and imaginiation to possibilities, psychologies, and socialogies. People more well-versed in this seemed to exist more when I was much younger, but now that I'm older and more grown, it seems the audience was in the generation ahead of me. My generaltion seldom cares what lies beyond their computer monitor. And all I gotta say in response to that is "Fuck that shit!" I'm gonna start breaking off this curse of lacking communication. I'm gonna start bonding with people, and being real. Really real!
If I can get THEM off their cellphone Twitter internet bullshit. :(
tl;dr version: I gotta get the fuck out of the net known as technology!
I didn't live in this time.
But despite, I lived in a time where computer use was limited because it took over a house's phone line. And even if you were fortunate enough to have it, it cost a gold bar a minute, was slow as sin to access anything you wanted, and anything you wanted cost a few hundred gold bars by the end of the month (or day if you were daring and were downloading something.)
A time where cell phones were akin to carrying a brick in a leather pouch and powering it by cigarette lighter. Thing so big that it covered half your face, and left you with a tumor from the sheer power it exhausted, or so scientist claimed. They at least made good space of the phone by making the numbers big as your thumb, and an antenna so large and long that you could fend off a small fleet of French Army men. Then again, what couldn't fend them off, am I right? (Yeah, French war humor is way overdone. There was also a time I didn't know that.)
There was a time where the best "social networking" site you would find was not MySpace or Facebook, but an RPing chat room where you would enter in with a paragraph long introduction of your character, starting with the tiniest detail, "From the entrance of the inn, a pair of vigilante eyes scans the area of the elven bar. Searching. Their goal? A spot to enjoy a good drink." THIS was how you met people with similar intrests, although the interest was simple. Still, computers were for dorks, nerds, and geeks at this time, and they damn well liked it.
There was a time, a time where we'd go outside, because we'd HAVE to. To see people, things, buy stuff, connect to the world, and be a part of the world. If you wanted to see someone's face, you went out there and met up with them, not by use of webcam, picture text, or otherwise. Sure, taking a picture lasts long, worth a thousand words, etc. But I rather be in the movie called "Life" starring Me, and not watching someone be a dork, because no one is around them.
There was a time where our (cell) phones were simple phones. Call a person, recieve calls, voice mail (though this was a seperate product and system from the phone in most households), and hanging up by setting that sonvoabitch back where it came from. We didn't lose phones, or need to listen for a locators' beeps. They never needed to be charged up...which honestly, I'm STILL kinda stumped how older phones don't need to be plugged in, power wise. They were reliable, made you walk around the house to get the phone, and you'd answer it, as a time where people would actually CALL each other, so you wouldn't avoid the phone thinking "Oh, it's those pesky telemarketers again." Plus, an extreme lack of Caller ID (which was also a seperate techonology.)
I look at all of this, think about all these deeply, and I came to a very striking epiphany: My bonds with people were tons stronger back when I was a young lad. Maybe part of it is that I was young, naive, and trusting, but if you compare it to now, connections with other, in general, are very very lacking.
I slowly, more and more, hate texting. There's no real connection there, I feel. I can respond yeah, but I can't ever feel like I'm conveying my self, my feelings, my thoughts, properly. May it be to limitions on text itself, what I can show over tell in a small window, how much I even wanna type on a lame T9 system, not like having a keyboard would change this sentiment. It's made me lazy, and lacking in the connecting department, and somewhat makes me regret getting a cellphone.
Why don't I get rid of it? Because the second aspect of it, talking, is nice, whenever I get the rarest of rare chances to use it, and the fact that I can be left a message for get togethers is very useful when I'm out on the go. Otherwise, I really hate cellphone hijinx. It's so...empty I feel. If someone doesn't respond to a message, it could mean a variety of things to keep you guessing. "Did they get the message?" "Are they mad at me?" "Are they ignoring me?", etc. All of said examples I'm guilty of committing for not responding. It's just because I can. And I fear I'm losing my ability to handle personal contact. I feel like I'm degrading. How am I supposed to get to know someone better, connect deeper, if all I've seen from them is such an impersonal fragment from their fingertips. Very very rarely do I get anything deep over texts.
At the end of the day, when you're done texting someone, you've gone almost no-where with them. You could have gone the day without texting them, or at least, that's what I feel when I get 85% of my conversational texts (not information texts about get-togethers, or etc.)
Computers, in my humble opinion, are still a decent way to contact. Maybe not good, person, but decent. Sharing media, stuff to cry, laugh, smile about, playing together, and actually being able to TALK with one another, may it be mics or IMs, it's shooting words back and forth to each other for a prolonged period of time (san for AFKs and etc. but yeah. You can't "Away From Phone", at least I haven't seen it yet.) If not IMs or mics, there's E-mails. Of course this is very dependant on the people's effort into the mail. I've had the greatest E-mail conversations (courtosy of syntheticka ), and some of the lamest, one-sided convos ever, because the other person, for whatever reason, refused to put any effort into their messages. And in this day and age, I percieve these people as the worser end of conversationalists, because there's more to an E-mail than treating it like a questionare and answering questions.
I ran a little funsies experiment. I checked Craig's List for a person who was looking for chat and conversation. So I E-mail them, making sure to put questions to answer, and a little extra for them to work with. They did "work with" any of it, and just answered the questions. So more effort comes from my side, typing up a sizeablely short E-mail, maybe a little longer than a paragraph, with open-ended questions, one-answer questions, and things to work with. I get a one line E-mail back, not even answering one question at all. Wow, seriously? Note, they did not even ask any questions back. Personal, impersonal, and... I don't think any sentence ended with a question mark besides "What's up?" from the first mail.
Their Craigs List Ad claimed they couldn't make female friends, so they were looking for the male kind. I have a very very hard time believing they can make friends at all, and I don't think my basis of thinking this is too far off. I reversed the process last year, meeting someone who was rather silent but seemed decent of a person. She got my E-mail address, and it was pretty much the same business as above paragraph (but not an "experiment", though I feel kinda bad when I put it like that.) I put in lots of effort into the E-mail to make it readable, fun, open-ended. etc. only to get half the effort back.
Ladies and Gentlement, this does NOT define as a conversation in the slightest. Especially with something you can think about your answer and how you are to respond to something. And I feel the world is a sort of deteriorating with these lame online interactions.
We got silly shiznoe like MySpace and Twitter flitting around our series of tubes, making the situation seem so much more worse. MySpace is installing trust issues in the millions of users' heads, because when they feel ready to meet someone, it's underlying that they're not for real. And I believe when someone is done chatting over messages, comments, or whatever they do, they realize in the real life that they're not sharing as much common interest, or conversation skills, as they thought they would. Can't say this is from experience, but I can't say I've heard any good stories. So I AM looking at this from a negatively charged bias; take note.
And then Twitter. A certain someone was trying to get me to join, and then later showed me a video that turned me the extra 40 degrees or so to completely 180 off of ever wanting to get Twitter. Are we really menial enough to need to explain our daily notions. As the video stated "You're talking to nobody... and EVERYBODY!" I just don't get the...joy(?) of getting this. Anything said there can be said so many minutes/hours/days later, as far as I'm concered. Seriously, take all that stuff, throw it into a blog, and see how awesome it looks when it's all collected into one spot. Probably would look extremely lame, I'd guess. I thought talking about small-time stuff like that was what (sigh...) texting was for? At least that way, you're more likely to have a caring audience that you can explain and expand the situation onto...assuming there was anything to expand on.
I seldom talk on the phone anymore. That's probably more on the fault of it being broken, but even before then, my calls were really limited. As a man, we don't really "chat", so to be fair, it's not expected of two dudes to talk over the phone. But even then, I would rather talk to some gals on the phone. Texting gets tiresome, talking is easier,and some people I just can't seem to keep their focus unless I was talking straight to them.
That is probably the same main problem I share with computers, their focus. I can't even talk to some people through IMs because they're off doing something else ON THE COMPUTER. I am guilty of this too, because not all the time I'm able to close my stuff, or switch to another application. And yeah, sometimes the thing doesn't show you have a message or make the sound, but when I try to talk to some people, and the only answer I can get out of them is "LOL" while they continue using the internet to find pictures of 4Chan, it's very VERY frustating for obvious reasons. And if that's the respect and effort I'm gonna get from someone, then I might as well not talk to them at all.
More than ever in this current day and age, I feel my effort is being wasting to converse with the general populace, as the general populace's converseable ability lies in the internet. E-mails, IMs, Chats, MMOGs, and even if you DO talk face-to-face, from many of people, you'll be talking about something ON the internet, or even worse, talking like they're still ON the internet (EL-OH-EL!) People just gotta be straight-up acting the fool, eh...?
Now I'm not saying I'm the god of all that is conversation, not even close. Hell, I'm probably more of a hypocrit on a lot of this stuff than I know. Still, I'm hella looking to change that. Cause at this point, I don't feel very close to many people anymore. I missed having people close to me that I could just go and visit, talk to, see on the street, or call. I almost wanna rid of my cell phone, get rid of the extra costs, and make people call for me at home, and do the same back out. I wanna feel like I'm CONNECTING with people, again! Because now-a-days, I can't even get a deep conversation out of almost anyone and everyone now. It's making me bitter and much more shallow because I don't have any reason to open my brain and imaginiation to possibilities, psychologies, and socialogies. People more well-versed in this seemed to exist more when I was much younger, but now that I'm older and more grown, it seems the audience was in the generation ahead of me. My generaltion seldom cares what lies beyond their computer monitor. And all I gotta say in response to that is "Fuck that shit!" I'm gonna start breaking off this curse of lacking communication. I'm gonna start bonding with people, and being real. Really real!
If I can get THEM off their cellphone Twitter internet bullshit. :(
tl;dr version: I gotta get the fuck out of the net known as technology!