I've been thinking about how we communicate. And how this easy access to technology is driving conversation into the grave. Have you noticed that?
People nowadays are constantly talking. You can know what someone else is doing 24/7, you can know when they're active on social media, you can view their stories on Instagram or Facebook and know where they are what they've been doing. In broad terms, you know. Oh, so-and-so is posting pictures from a cafe or they put up a short clip of a concert or something. Means they're alright.
And while it's nice to know your friends and loved ones are okay, it also seems to me that it's killing relationships between people.
There's no point in asking "what have you been doing?" when you meet a friend for coffee. You already saw the pictures and commented something meaningless like "aww" or "love you". There are no surprises anymore.
Say your friend's gone on a trip somewhere. Normally, in the olden days, you would've waited till they got back to hear all about their adventures. But now, you don't need to do that anymore. You can text them anytime you want, you know what their adventures are like, you have the live feed.
And again, I love being able to keep in touch with friends and everything, but I also feel it's kinda ruining our relationship, you know? I'm thinking maybe a bit of distance is good.
And it's stopping us from creating new connections. Because nowadays, you're never alone. You always have your trust instant messaging service with you, even when you're in a far away country, with no one you know. And instead of looking at the world around and communicating with new people, you get scared and spend your entire time chatting with people back home. Which isn't why you went there, is it?
Or who knows, maybe that's just me...
Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash
Technology is killing any sort of romantic relationships as well. Any courtship. Any mystery. Out the window with this constant access to another person. Something I've always found a bit weird is that men nowadays don't ask for your phone number anymore, they ask you how to find you on Facebook. Not all, naturally, but many I've met do that.
And so, you befriend them on Facebook and before they can even ask you out, you're already fucking sick of the guy.
"Hi."
"Hi. What you doing?"
"Nothing much, you?"
"Eating"
"Oh, good for you. What?"
...Etc.
And I mean, I don't want to know when you got out of the shower or what kind of cereal you had for breakfast this morning. You don't need to know everything about someone and all this social media is doing just that. After you've stalked his Facebook page a little, chatted a couple of times about "what you doing", you already know more than you'd like to. And say you do get to set a date with this guy, what are you gonna say? What did you do today? You already know. It's absurd.
Does save you from some pretty weird situations, though, I'll give em that. The way a person speaks or texts says a lot about them and sometimes, it says you don't want to go out with this person, so that saves you a couple hours.
But mostly, this constant access into someone's life is a bad thing. I think it's the same with couples, as well. There's no mystery anymore, no time to miss the fucker. If you can chat all the time and know what they're doing all the fucking time, it's almost like you're there with them all goddamn day, and I'm sorry, but no amount of cutesy lovey-dovey stuff can convince me you'd want to be there 24/7.
Reminds me of a joke,
Couple were texting, some time at night. And the girl writes "If you're crying, I want you to send me your tears. If you're laughing, I want you to send me your joy. I want to share everything with you."
On the other end, a moment of silence, then she sees the guy begin to type, gets all excited.
"Darling, I'm on the toilet. What should I send?"
It's very true. I mean, let there be a little mystery, a little time to meet someone. I've never been a fan of this befriending someone on Facebook thing. Because it leads to conversation and it's usually someone you don't really know and it's rather hard to get to know them over texts, so it's just plain awkward. And say you do know them, say you've been friends for a while or even together for a while. There's no real reason not to text, since mostly everyone has constant Internet access these days, so this leads to oversharing. You know, there's only so much conversation you can have that can be exciting and interesting and complex and all. At some point, you run out of things to say and these days, you run out a lot quicker.
I don't want to chat with you all the fucking time, it's weird. I don't want to know where you are at any moment during a day. What happened to wondering? What the hell happened to mystery?
