Thursday, 21 July 2011

• Texting: A Form of Hieroglyphics?

  
  I think it is safe to say that when it comes to our current generation, a huge part of dating is heavily involved with Cyberness (for lack of a better word). Nowadays we have texting, Skype, BBM/Whatsapp, online chatting, Facebook, etc...all of these different modes of communication that are really more impersonal in the physical sense and yet have so much weight in their significance in the interpretive sense. One can express a great deal of difference in their meaning in a text message simply by adding a period at the end of their sentence. 

  With a period can mean a little more serious, without a period is way more casual, and three periods in a row, can go both ways or mean confused/waiting/wondering about something.

  I'm tired.

  I'm tired

  I'm tired... 

  It's mind boggling how detailed cyber communication has gotten, and even more so that there is a method to it and that we understand it.

  The problem with these modes is when we spend hours trying to decipher these three to four phrases in our phones into more than what they are. For instance, the other day I was messaging on Whatsapp with this guy I've been dating (who also happens to be living in another continent at the moment). Now in case you don't know what Whatsapp is, it is basically like Blackberry Messenger, but for all smart phones so that you can see when a person receives a message, when he/she read it, and if he/she is typing.

  It's creepy and only makes us more stalker-like as human beings, but whatever, I was on it. We were reaching a close in our conversation, and in the past he usually says that he misses me or something along those lines and I usually reciprocate back with the same mutual feeling. So, in this particular conversation, I decided to be the initiator this time and say it.

  Do you want to know what my answer was? SILENCE. Nada, nothing, zip, zero. How do you decipher that?

  He read it immediately and never responded back. Needless to say I was shocked that not even after waiting just a little longer, he still hadn't acknowledged it. I sat on my bed picking up my phone every five minutes to check just in case I might have missed something with my phone being an inch away from my hand. I spent hours tossing thoughts around in my head as to why he wouldn't respond back.

  Maybe he was busy? Maybe he got side tracked? Or worst of all, maybe he simply doesn't mean it back anymore?

  Finally after a while later, he did respond back, but on a completely different subject, leaving me hanging still.

  I hate being this petty nonsense thing that is a prisoner to her phone, making a ruckus over nothing especially when he said nothing, but to me silence is an answer in its own way as well, and sometimes it can speak louder than anything. 

  Do you think that I am over-analyzing this, or am I simply fussing over nothing?
  Is it that we are girls who need to keep having things reinforced just so we know the other person is still on the same page?

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