What's With All the Impersonal Communication These Days?

[TheSilentType]

It seems like these days more and more people use e-mail and text to communicate.

 

Why not just pick up the phone and say what you have to say in a quicker fashion, and one that can offer immediate responses?

 

It seems like people would rather text or write out these long e-mails to communicate negative news rather than bravely picking up the phone and telling the person how they feel or how they can't come today because they are busy.

 

Have these become the new cop-out medium of communication?

[katiebour]

I prefer email to phone because it can be picked up by the recipient at a convenient time- phone calls especially with cell phones can be a jarring interruption.

 

I don't text because it costs money and I'm faster talking than typing with my thumb.

 

But I do love email because I can ponder it, edit it, consider it, then when satisfied send it, or not. It's harder to take back an inconsiderate comment made via voice.

[doiask42much]

What Katie said.

 

I just find whenever I call people, they are invariably somewhere with someone or in the middle of something. No one seems to do just nothing anymore. Actually, they're probably busy chatting/emailing/texting/jerking off to internet porn, possibly all at once, when I call!

 

Yeah, I think that's what it is! All this damn multitasking.

[doiask42much]

And yes, if it's negative news you are sending, it is the coward's way out.

[doiask42much]

And one more thing (heh): back in the day, phones were actual PHONES, not cell phones. You knew they were at home and were therefore more likely to be doing nothing. Nowadays, many people don't have a land line and rely solely on their cell phone, which of course makes them mobile and oftentimes on the go and therefore busy.

[Alexandra-Girl]

It is rather simple. We live in a serial culture. When we are done with a conversation - we sign off. When we are done with the talking to someone - we don't pick up when we see their caller ID. When we are done with a nightout - we fake an illness. When we are done with a relationship - we are never altruistic in ending it. We are all serial products. We no longer take in multiple subjects like linguistics, philosophical studies, sociology, and the mathetmatics all at once. Instead, we specialize in one field like business management and can't even make cabinets for our kitchens at home. We multi-task during the day, but our minds focus on single items. Why do we email? because we no longer have the mental capicity to recall information that we told someone 4 months ago. Our lives are over crammed and we have become serial machines.

 

We do not even have the consideration of asking a passer-byer, whom we know, how they are doing and actually have a conversation about their children and grandparents. We are bound by the clock: we have some other place to go next.

 

TICK TOCK TICK TOCK:sick:.