Sep 3, 2008

Bring back smoke signals

It seems that fewer and fewer phone calls are actually made lately, at least on my end. People seem comfortable sending about 27 messages back and forth that may take up to an hour after thoughts finally process across the fairly new technology instead of just taking a couple of minutes to actually dial.

Try explaining this to an old person. Go ahead and sit your folks down and tell them how an inefficient message delivery system that sometimes takes forever is a far better means of communication than actually speaking to your intended party. Good luck with that.

I have a friend who won't ever answer his phone. Every form of communication with him is done via text messaging in order to guarantee a response. When I asked him why that was his preferred method he told me he just didn't know what to say.

It seems others prefer to send a text rather than speak to me. When I first got text messages it was usually just chipper little messages, funny pics, etc. Now I hear it all, from long rants to stuff I won't post about here. It seems that people are okay with typing messages in a bastardized version of English telling all tales of high drama and don't assume anything will ever be taken out of context.

I can see the benefits of texting though. It's less intrusive when trying to have a real life conversation and text at the same time, although this can be highly annoying to the present party. You can communicate quietly in situations that require it. You can also get really drunk and steal someone's phone and take it into the bathroom ensuring they, and everyone on their address book, awake the next morning to find a photo of your ass in their inbox. Not that I've ever done that....nope...never.

When I signed up for my cell plan, which was about four years ago, I got 400 free text messages to send and receive. This seemed reasonable until I looked at my bill this month and found I had over 900 messages distributed via my phone. This added up to a sum that doubled my normal monthly expenses.

I laughed and changed my plan to unlimited texting as it's worth the ten dollars a month. To think I'm not even sleeping with anyone.

"When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us." - Alexander Graham Bell

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

If technology goes any further to provide any more instant-pseudo-communication, our cellphones will be giving us orgasms (and not just from vibrating in the anus).

Most older folk don't quite "get" the so-called high-tech communication because is isn't high-tech. I think actually talking to somebody in real time is more of a bit of technological wizardy than the text message. It seems almost as though communication is devolving from coherent and real time interaction to a delayed relay of lols and wtfs.

The oldest generation can still remember life before the television and the telephone. And here we are, taking those things for granted while letting our cellular communication service providers charge us for doing things we really don't need to be doing.

When my father first came to Canada, he wrote letters to his father back in Italy because long distance telephone calls were priced out of the reach of the common immigrant. And I'm sure that written on those letters were things of much more importance than half the junk we send through text messages everyday. My father never told my grandfather that he was rotfl. He told him that he was doing fine in his new home. He told him that he found the woman he wants to marry. He told him not to worry about the family's first born male.

I would much rather have said these words to you personally, but you're a long distance phone call and I'm out of stamps. lol

Miss Ash said...

I despised texting and refused to play along when I first discovered it. I'm still not a huge fan, but I did give in and now pay for a bundle much like you. It got me... *sigh*

Grace said...

I very rarely use text messaging on my phone. I find it insanely slow to type anything on there... maybe I just need practice.

Mang said...

Well Erik, i dont think its that bad if the english language is being 'bastardized' it happens naturally in every language probably. I think the world will always have new languages, as human's we are weird creatures that like to do it THEIR WAY!

I mostly txt the one i'm sleeping with. However if i am at a noisy place or just don't want to actually talk to the person ill send a quick question/comment/fact/momma joke ( cuz mom jokes and fart jokes will always be funny to me). Thank you In Living Color!

Big Ben said...

I tend to do a lot of texting because I have a lot of friends that our "long distance" even though they live less than an hour away.

I am still really slow at it.

JLee said...

My phone is a bitch to text message on, but when I'm at work it's nice since I work in a common area. Of course my message tone is really annoying. ha