Last Facebook Holdout? or Adventures in Anti-social networking

[pjpjpjpj]

Originally Posted by Skirge01

If you're following people you know in real life, you're doing it wrong.
If you're spending tons of time getting caught up on things, you're doing it wrong.
If you're reading things you don't care about, you're doing it wrong.
If you're following a ton of people, you're (probably) doing it wrong.

Which is why too many of my (former?) friends now have the attention span of a gnat and won't respond to any attempted communication, not a phone call, not a voice mail, not an email, not a Facebook message... but text them with a question that requires no more than a five word answer, and you get an immediate response. Before social media, they were always up for a brief chat to catch up on what's going on in their lives.

Thanks, Twitter, for destroying communication as we know it. (and these are people who are 40ish, not even teenagers)

[Skirge01]

I know what you mean, but I'm not sure that it's Twitter's fault. I know plenty of people of varying ages who all have that issue, yet aren't even on Twitter. Honestly, I think it's txting which has done that. Everyone is using shorthand to make their messages shorter because it's too much to type on a damned touch screen keyboard and that's now the default communication method.

In my mind, if it's going to take more than 30 seconds to text what I'm trying to say, it deserves a call or <gasp> an email. That 30 seconds includes if I can't get my message across via a single text because it would be 1) too long or 2) would trigger a Q&A session back and forth with the recipient because the 30 second text version wouldn't be clear enough.

[tmiranda]

You all sound like my grandmother who always complained that people spent too much time talking on the telephone instead of having "real conversations, in person, like when I was a kid".

[Skirge01]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

You all sound like my grandmother who always complained that people spent too much time talking on the telephone instead of having "real conversations, in person, like when I was a kid".

Same issue... just different tech. Your grandmother and my parents were right and, now, we're right. The only difference is that the next generation has now devolved into no only being incapable of reading body language, but also the ability to speak or write coherently. I'd venture to say it's much worse now. Just wait until we lose the ability to speak entirely...

[pjpjpjpj]

I learned how to write and speak properly, and I intend on teaching my children the same, if it kills me (or I kill them).

I still email a LOT at work, mainly because that leaves an easily-saved record of the question/answer (consulting engineering). And often those Q/A's are long.

And I was being glib about Twitter destroying conversation, I agree, it's texting and social media in general.

[KryptoNyte]

What the heck would tweeter and faceplant do without Jenner and the Kardashians? You gotta break the Internet somehow, right?

[Mark57]

Pagers started it. We had to pay by the character sent, so there was good monetary reasons to shorten what was sent, then people got lazy. We even joked about it back then that it would kill the ability to spell, etc. How little did we know how right we were.