Let's Talk

What I’m getting ready to say is part tongue is cheek, part sarcasm and part my true feelings. Though it is extremely dangerous, I’m going to let you decide which is which. Now, keep in mind, this is coming from an old guy who has gone kicking and screaming into this modern world of social media and lifeless, faceless, and sometimes anonymous communication. It seems to be an easy out from truly feeling, expressing, communicating. I must admit the irony of this moment, because here I am showing distain for the very platform I’m using to state my case. Makes me feel sort of hypocritical. Maybe not. Well, for sure not.

I hate emojis. To me they are lazy and non-committal . It’s a way to fulfill the obligatory law of texting that says you must respond, but not having to really respond. Sure it’s cute, but it doesn’t take the place of truly expressing yourself. With texting, we have removed feeling, emotion and expression from our communication and given those things over to little yellow faces and hands. Or, in some cases,  a little brown pile, which has become a cultural icon. How did we get to this place?

We now even have cliff note responses. Thank you has become TY. Your welcome is now YW. Rolling on the floor laughing is, you guessed it, ROTFL. Too long; didn’t read” is, TL;DR (I get that one a lot). Oh well, NVM. For you media  uneducated, that means never mind. I don’t even want to get into what WTF means.

True story. Early on in this abbreviated communication world, I would get texts with the very common LOL. I thought it meant lots of love, and I was having a difficult time understanding and  justifying what they were saying. I mentioned it to my wife and she began to LOL. I just sat there SMH. Google it. So, because of humiliation, and my extremely fervent resolve to keep up with all the latest trends in the social media world, I wanted to get a dictionary that would teach me what all these initialisms mean. So I called Messenger headquarters to see if I could get the proper manual that would explain it all to me. I sat on hold for 72 hours straight trying to reach a real live person. I never did. Eventually , I found this obscure, out of the way  email address somewhere under customer service. I really thought I was getting somewhere when they asked, “how can I help?”’. I sent a request for a translator manual. I got a response that said only,  GTH. I asked myself, WTHDTM?

Now, I will concede that there are times when this kind of communication is helpful in business and personal settings. Sometimes it makes things much more efficient and effective. After all, how time consuming it would be to talk with each of you

individually as I rage on and on. But, come on. Couldn’t we meet on ground somewhere in the middle?

I wrote in a recent blog that said,  “we live in an emoji world where our feelings are iconed.” We have assigned our feelings to a laughing, frowning, crying, puzzled little icon where true intentions are only inferred, not really stated. The sad part of that to me is that we have become content with that. I can’t see the sincerity in your eyes, or hear the intention in your voice, or truly feel the emotions of your heart. As someone who enjoys expressing his feelings freely, I really find myself struggling with all of this. So my kicking and screaming continues. 

Sorry for the noise.