>sigh<
The internet is a remarkable and wonderful system that allows us to find people, make acquaintances, and keep up, online. It is also a tool that fouls up and ruins some of the best intentions for that very reason.
It is easy to type on the computer and send text across the street or across the world. It isn’t somehow fair, the amount of trouble one can get into, with the best intentions, because that plain text is misunderstood or taken wrong. I know this first hand because i have a cynical and sarcastic sense of humor. A comment i make in all innocence intending to cause a wry smirk, will be taken seriously and i find myself in trouble.
It would all be so much easier if i could see their expressions to see what the other person is feeling, and it would be better if they could see me. I got in this trouble writing straight prose, long before the internet was everywhere, so i know this first hand. My sister nearly disowned me for an article i wrote in fun, making fun of extreme, sport fanatics. So it doesn’t catch me by surprise when words i type on the computer come out wrong on the other end, either.
It would also be simpler if we were to have voice, so that the tone could be heard. The little skip in the voice, warning of trouble, or perhaps a low chuckle to let the other know there is cynicism afoot. That rising pitch of the voice letting you know the stress has ramped up could save so much misunderstanding.
But no. We are stuck in our black and white text, failing to recognize the level of sensitivity of the receiver, and that listener missing the tone of your comments. Even when the comments are made straight, without a joke, there is potential for the remarks to be taken wrong.
So let’s throw out the text and go strictly with applications that let us use cam and voice, and we might be able to avoid some of the problems that accompany straight text. Of course, that will disallow everyone that is missing a cam or speakers and microphone, but if all we have to lose is our circle of friends, doesn’t that put us back in the same circumstances we were in to begin with…Losing people at the risk of trying to communicate?
Now, coming full circle, it seems impossible to communicate fully over the net. So rather than throw out the baby with the bath water, perhaps we can all try to remember there is a human on the other end of that connection and that where there are two people, there are mistakes to be made, and try to give each other enough wiggle room to try and straighten out any miscommunications.
Even when people have in-person face-to-face chats, meanings can be missed. So, we just need to always give the other person the understanding to assume that:
“I know you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure you realize that what you heard, was not what I meant.”
>sigh<
