Communcation Revolution: Quashed!

“I’d love to hang out, but I need to wash my hair… all day… and until later this evening. You know, lather, rinse, and repeat? Maybe some other time.”

“But, you’re the one who said we should hang out. You even picked the day!”

“Well, I did, but that was until I got so busy with paying attention to my hair follicles. Sorry!”

This person got off light. I got a non-specific vague implication of suddenly being busy. So, I’m supposed to be sad, sit at home and eat ice cream, waiting until this person says they want to hang out again, right? Instead I make other plans.

I also let it out to a few friends who all have had a similar experiences recently.

“That happened to me the other day. So-and-so who I haven’t seen in forever calls me out of the blue and we make plans. The morning before I leave to meet her, she’s all *cough* *cough* ‘I don’t feel so well’ *cough*.”

“What’s that? It just makes you never want to have anything to do with them again.”

“Exactly. Just don’t make plans in the first place. Or tell the truth.”

“Yeah, at that point the truth is not going to have a worse effect.”

I’m a little annoyed at and confused by humanity. Why can’t people say what they mean?

It makes me feel like attempted communication with most people is useless, because there’s no actual connection being made. A bunch of words spew out, you think you are on the same page, and instead you’re a million miles apart. Every once in awhile something spectacular happens and someone actually picks up what you’re putting down. You both hold onto it, run with it, and friendships are born. With all the bullshit people say and do, it’s a minor miracle.

It’s a full out miracle when it stays for the long haul. I am lucky to have a handful of friends that fall into that category.

I’m unlucky that they don’t live close by.

I’ve been a bit hard on myself lately that I don’t have the ‘buddies’ to hang out with in this area that I once had. I haven’t lived here for over five years and people have moved, moved on, changed phone numbers, changed emails, and lost touch- sometimes even fallen out. In addition, this area of the United States of America contains people with a particular attitude on friendship and communication. I grew up here. If you want to be close, you’re clingy. If you’re open, you’re a freak. Being distant is cool. Meanwhile, in college I got used to asking friends if they wanted to go to the grocery store together. I’d get calls asking if I wanted to hang out and do laundry together. I could show up at someone’s door and call up ‘Lemme in!’ and be invited to stick around for dinner.

Life is short, and people around here are spending it being standoffish. In Maine and Virgina I became close to people quickly. We found one connection and ran with it. We found joy in getting lost in the car together or driving around nowhere all night knowing exactly where we were.

I am sad because those friends are still out there, but they’re too far away. I’m sad because I did have a few people here that it took me my whole childhood to find. And they have since scattered or fallen out of view. I drive by those places and have a fit of stir-crazy nostalgia.

Moving is a terribly hard adjustment, and I’m finding that moving back after being gone so terribly long is even worse. Everything is a comparison. Everything bares a past bias that is hard to shake. When I moved back, I was hoping my views of this area were youthfully prejudicial. I hate it that I was right all those years growing up. It’s worse now that I’ve lived other places and seen that other people are like me in their approach to people and friendship.

I have plans next weekend with an old friend, and I know we will be hanging out unless there is an act of god. I know if something comes up, the truth will be told and we’ll see again soon.

I’m pissed at humanity, but grateful to my friends. Here’s to them.

Follow up posts:
Wednesday Night

Historical posts:
Communication Technology

Communication Technology

So, people have a hard enough time with regular socialization skills. Now with all the tiers of communicating, it’s a wonder anyone can keep up. It’s not just technology to master, otherwise geeks would be super-pro at socialization.

First there were people communicating at social gatherings and work.

Then there was phone.

Now there is *deep breath* AIMPhoneMSNICQCellPhoneMySpaceEmailFacebookBlogRTSTextMessageForumMMORPG *another breath* -you get the idea. You figure this would ease communication. We’d be super in touch with everyone all the time. No. Because there is no way someone is going to call you to tell you something important if they can text you even if you disabled text messaging because you’re either dirt poor or got sick of getting texts of “hi :)” (or both). Even though you told them in person that you blocked texting, they forgot and they don’t like talking on the phone. They’d rather enjoy Olympic button pressing and staring at a post-it sized screen for 5x the time it would take to say what they needed to. They scoff and think that if you really cared to keep in touch with them, you would enable texting so that you’d get that one important text out of 500. And don’t dare ask them to email you, because that’s *totally* not the same thing.

I once had a boyfriend who argued with me on the phone until I downloaded an instant messaging service to talk to him. It doesn’t matter that we had cell phones, texting, and SKYPE (back when you could dial out for free). This was his most comfortable way of communicating, so I better adapt. On some level, I can understand. You can minimize the other person, don’t need to listen to their tone of voice, can play your RTS or MMORPG, have both hands to type unlike a cell phone, and they don’t know if you got up to get a bagel or pee. On the other hand, we were kind of trying to be emotionally intimate. One other advantage of online messaging is that I still have logs from these chats. That’s what I need… a record of how much I don’t stand up for myself. Hindsight is supposed to at least be softened by memory, and here I have a .txt file showing how pathetic I can be.

Sure, check your email, but make sure you have your FacebookMySpaceLinkedInRandomNetworkingThingies configured to let you know when someone sends you a message on one of these websites. But usually, you can’t read it in your email. I go into my email, see I have something on facebook, and in facebook go to my wall or my inbox… TWO separate methods of communication in ONE networking tool that tells you through email.

Woe onto you who have more than one email. I have two… one that I have had since… before it was cool. The other I got in college and has forums for jobs and places to live and alumni and dialogs on campus and stuff for sale and calls for art. It also has instant messaging built in too… so instant messaging services open and go into your email with yet another instant messaging service and texting on the cell phone in your pocket that can also ring… I’m sorry if I haven’t got around to checking my other email in awhile.

We’re not at the sad part yet. Want to know what the sad part is..? I’m part of a generation who is used to it. Sure, I set my boundaries. I’m on facebook. I’m not getting MySpace too. I’m not enabling texting for the pope- if you’re at your cell, call me!

But I’m used to it to the point where it is ingrained in me as a socializing solution to my communication shortcomings. That’s right, I sometimes look for even more alternate forms of indirect communication… Sure, I could turn around and say something to the funny and good looking guy in my IT class who I’ve thought was pretty cool since the first class (even if he does have a girlfriend but who cares it’d just be nice to communicate). Or, instead risking getting giddy and giggling like an idiot, I’d could go run, cmd, net send…

But the instructor set his boundaries. Thou shall not abuse net send or I shall disable it. Don’t make me do it.

And then people started writing batch files that sent net sends by the hundreds… and logged into other computers with remote desktop to say ‘it wasn’t me’… and flirted using poetic computer based metaphor (Oh, wait, that was just me… and him… as far as I know).

It’s ridiculous, and I realize it. I looked myself in the eye reflecting in the monitor and made a decision.

I asked for his cell number in the parking lot. *cheers* Score one for the communication revolution! At some point in the future, we will hang out and communicate outside of class- in person!

…now I just need to call it …and stop giggling at everything he says to me in person. Yes, even I- currently rated number three most confident on the compare people face book application of all my facebook friends who also have said application- can get shy. (see documentation above)

With all the additional ways to communicate and keep in touch with people, it’s true, we still don’t know how to communicate with other human beings. The opposite sex… oh, forget about that. This isn’t Star Trek you know. We don’t have the technology.

Follow up posts:
Communication Revolution: Quashed!
Wednesday Night