Texts and Phonys

I seem to have missed the boat on the text messaging phenomenon. I don’t know why, I love new techy ways to communicate. I attribute my dexterity on a computer keyboard to countless hours spent on AIM in middle and high school. I was one of the first people back in 2002 to have a cell phone without a landline. I even signed up for Facebook right away – admittedly mostly because it helped me get good notes from cute girls if I skipped class. But I haven’t come around on texting.

Texting has some useful applications to be sure. Sometimes talking just isn’t practical. It can be rude in some situations, or impossible with too much ambient noise. Mass texts save 15 individual calls and texts will auto send if a phone regains service for even just a couple seconds. Those are all good reasons to use a text message. They’re quick and to the point, couple lines, and you’re done.

Moving down in order of usefulness are the text conversations. Often 20 minutes are spent writing what could have been said in four. Sarcasm, inflection, and all the other subtleties of the spoken word are lost too. People end up using too many capitals, too many emoticons, too much punctuation, and too many initialisms. (I looked that word up, its real) It takes longer, its less personal, and there’s no positive attributes.

Descending the list of Usefulness we bottom out and pass into the realm of Totally Useless and Down Right Insulting. Most texts I happily ignore but these ones are so frivolous and inane I can’t help but get fired up about them. These messages ask general questions that are clearly involved enough to warrant an actual conversation. Sending a text like that usually means one of three things. 1) Someone thinks I’m so primitive that I answer complex questions in the few lines of a text message. 2) The sender is not smart enough to realize that they’re asking a complex question. Or 3), which is usually that case – The sender just doesn’t care. That’s fine, they’re not required to care, but don’t ask me to spend time texting back when there is minimal interest in my response.

Holden Caufield would have hated the text message. It’s the ultimate Phony Enabler. It lets someone who really doesn’t care feign for a bit as if they do. Case in point - I recently received a text that asked “How was your bike race?” I won’t bore you, the reader, with details but obviously there’s a lot to report from a 3 hour race. Weather, course description, opponents – all things that make it far too involved to respond via text. Maybe the sender didn’t care about any of that and just wanted to know what place I got. That’s fine, its nice of them to take any interest at all, but if that’s all they want to know just ask that or check online, it will be posted in a couple hours. Another friend of mine got a text from her brother asking “How’s life?” That’s a pretty broad question for a text. If someone wants to know how my life is call - let’s talk, let’s hang out, let’s have some personal communication. If you don’t care, don’t insult me by trying to pretend you do.

Don’t get me wrong, there are several good reasons for texting and those are fine. Not my first choice, but I can understand. I’m not so egotistical or self important to think people need to always call me. I do however despise insincerity.  All too often text messages are the result of someone being phony, and that makes me hate the entire genre of communication.