Tell me if you know someone like this…
You hear from them all the time. You know what they are doing, all the time. You know what they are thinking. They volunteer this information to whoever wants to know it.
But when you attempt to contact them on a personal, one-to-one level, you never hear back. Not because they don’t like you, but because that’s not the way people communicate anymore.
This is how technology turned us into narcissists, gave us an excuse to be jerks, and made us feel as if we are being communicative when we really aren’t.
Let’s look at the history. People paid attention to smoke signals, letters delivered by the postal service, and the telegraph. People originally answered the telephone, but with the advent of the answering machine and voice mail – which no one uses anymore – and text messaging, there is no reason to even talk.
Once e-mail came around we all had a way to easily write to one another, personally, but got sick of that, too, right? I mean, who wants to say something to someone else without anyone else being able to read it? So, e-mail is a thing of the past. Now, dinner plans are made between two people for all to see… because of…
Twitter and Facebook.
With Twitter, people who want to know what you think can follow you, and you don’t have to follow them. Perfect! That means you get to write what you want, whoever wants to read it can, and you’re being communicative but don’t actually have to interact with anyone else.
Facebook is a bit more cumbersome, because you have to actually accept people as your friends. Who’s got time for that? So you compromise and accept them, then broadcast your thoughts and daily routine to everyone.
There we have it. No more talking, no more letter writing (or e-mails). You, my friend, ARE being communicative on your own terms. You have an excuse NOT to reply to e-mails, text messages, or voice mails, because, after all, what can possibly be said that isn’t important enough to post on Facebook or Twitter?
Technology has officially turned us into complete jerks and made us feel that we aren’t. If you actually took the time to read this, think about how many voice mails you didn’t return, how many e-mails you were too busy to write back to, how many text messages you shrugged off (all from people who you have no problem with), all while updating your social networking site with your thoughts on how good that latte was at Starbucks.