Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Textorama

Text messages can actually be quite tricky. They have actually caused a lot of trouble and worry that we wouldn't have ever had before the invention of this tiny little message.

I personally am a bad texter. It used to take me forever to write a short message because the phone I was using was as old as a dinosaur. Now that I have my new iPhone, I am a fast texter but I'm still pretty bad at it. I'm an awful texter because I don't really ever know what to write back to people. I try to be funny but I sound sarcastic and mean. I try to sound consoling and instead I just write a :( face. I try to flirt and be cute and it comes out dumb. Someone needs to offer a class - Showing the Right Textmotion 101.

My friend is having a text message issue as well. She hasn't heard from this guy that she has been interested in for quite some time now. Yesterday, after a long hiatus, he text messaged her and said "Hey you". How is that for literary genius? Since she decided that she deserved more than a silly 2 word message she didn't write him back. Instead she held out for a phone call that hasn't come yet.

The politics of texting between people can get so heated. My friend is now in the game of who will contact who. How will this guy ever know that she would have preferred an actual phone call. We might say "How hard is it to pick up the phone and call?" but for some, it takes more effort to send a text. When I send an important text, I think about it for awhile, write it, delete it, write it, edit it, give up and send it. Then it usually doesn't say what I want it to say anyway so I have to follow up with another text. Honestly, sometimes more thought goes into a text. You can't deny what is written down and saved in another person's phone but you can say that someone misheard you if you happen to not say what you meant to say.

So who is right here? Is it bad manners to just text message if it has been awhile since speaking? Is it better to just not say anything at all? Would a phone call really have helped in this situation? Are there classes for etiquette with phone use - Textiquette perhaps?

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