Time for a chat...

For some reason I have been doing a lot of internet chatting recently. This is after completely ignoring all internet messaging programs for pretty much my entire life. I’m just naturally an email type of person where I can casually go off on thousand word rants about subjects that absolutely no one would care about. Heck, the blog was formed partially because my friends were sick of my emailing them long stories about nothing.

But now everyone wants to chat with me. I’ve apparently grown more popular recently. Either that or since everyone knows that I am unemployed and have nothing else to do I have become everyone’s favorite waste of time. It’s like I’m a human Sudoku or something. Actually, that is a pretty good description of me. You have to spend a lot of time fiddling around with numbers in order to have me make any sort of sense.

I don’t mind chatting, really. It certainly makes my days more interesting and saves me from my fear that unemployment was going to result in my spending multiple days talking to no one who wasn’t a cashier or a bartender. And if a friend needs to talk I’m there for them in any way, shape or form. But the entire internet chat concept is strange to me and really doesn’t work for me.

For one thing, I really like writing in complete sentences that actually involve grammar and punctuation. Now it is true that I have written blog entries that just consist of bullet points those individual points were well constructed. Most people I chat with can’t be bothered to capitalize words and I find myself doing the same just so I won’t look odd. Otherwise it is like speaking Shakespearean English to a drunk. True, the language is technically the same but neither of you are going to make a lick of sense to one another.

There is also the strange fact that you are holding a conversation in which neither of you are sure when the other one has stopped talking or quit listening. While some chat programs let you know when the other person is typing, which is at least a slight indication that the other person wants to speak, they never tell you “the other party has stepped away from the laptop so stop pouring your heart out because they aren’t paying a lick of attention to you.” Now that would be a good emoticon to have available. Maybe it would be a smiley face looking at a TV while another smiley face is trying to plead for attention.

But my biggest problem with chat is why don’t you just call the other person? Sure, sometimes that is not a possibility. If you’re stuck in an office there are some conversations that are better had through a chat. But it’s when people chat with me when we are both just at home sitting at our computers. Heck, it’s even after nine so it’s not like you are going to be using any wireless minutes. It just seems like another wall we put up to keep ourselves separated from people. Words on a screen are less personal than actually talking. It doesn’t bother me too much but I wonder why we just can’t talk to each other anymore. We just seem content to interact with the digital versions of each other. I think that is a mistake. Analog is a good way to go.