EPISODE 12: PING! YOU’RE AN A**HOLE!!!
*PARENTAL ADVISORY: EXPLICIT LYRICS*
In 2010, RIM sold over 47,000,000 smart phones across the globe (I got this from Wikipedia, so I’m half-heartedly referencing it… I must still be in school mode). 47. Million. People. That’s a lot of “crack” berries…. Let’s assume that of those 47 million smart phones that have been sold, about 20% of them are currently in use. That’s still over 9 million users across the globe, not including the millions of iPhone & android users (not to mention regular ‘unsmart’ phone users out there LOL) who are on their cels texting, tweeting & updating away, never mind actually talking on the phone. Let’s not get into a discussion on how many people are actually using cellular phones today. The answers are obvious… How our lives and the basic fundamental principles of civil face to face conversations have been undermined through the use of texting & social media phone applications? Now THIS IS WORTH TALKING ABOUT!
I’ve got a “crack” berry and subscribe to the dreaded Blackberry Messenger (aka BBM) service. I’ve got hundreds of contacts, some of whom I don’t even know personally. I participate in BBM groups, mostly with people I know – promoters or close friends. In the realm of the BBM group, anything pretty much goes. You’ve got little “emoticons” (or whatever they’re called) – smiley faces, angry faces, etc., etc. – that assist the otherwise lazy texter in finishing sentences on a smartphone. A “fuck off…. LOL” is all too common in a BBM conversation between friends. We type shorthand insults at each other – “GTFOHWTBS (get the fuck outta here with that bullshit)”, “WTF (what the fuck)” – and quite easily, might I add. BBM group conversations are both good and bad. In a business type of setting, it replaces the conference call. Got a team of promoters looking for information regarding next week’s boat cruise? If you’re in a BBM group, you can get those answers faster than the time it would take to research it online. Are your boys or your girlfriends on BBM? Create a group and watch the LOLs fly.
However, as dope an application BBM is, you can never really gauge the person’s mood on the other side of that “crack” berry. Drunk at a club while talking to your girl? Unless you specifically stated, “WTF I’m so hammerrrreddd…” she probably doesn’t know. Stressed out at the office? Well, your sarcasm wasn’t received very well by person on the other side. Kids driving you mad in the house? Well maybe a “Fuck off, I’m busy LOL” would have been a better option than “Fuck you man, blah blah blah” in a group convo with your boys. We’re all human beings. As thickly skinned as some of us may claim to be, there’s always a limit to what a person can take in terms of friendly (or not-so friendly) ribbing. That’s why a BBM conversation can NEVER replace one that is face to face. On a platform such as BBM, you can call someone a “fuckin’ idiot” with a smile on your face. Yet that person doesn’t necessarily know that you’re smiling. Amongst friends, well of course, it’s assumed that “anything goes”.
That’s the evil that IS BBM though. You can now take “anything goes” and hurl insults at each other at will (that’s assuming that you’re in a non-professional setting, ie. among friends). Not only that, but in a BBM setting people now have a forum to say things to others without fear of any physical retribution. Call it a “Go Pass” to call your friend an asshole without worrying about him punching you in the face. Because at the end of the day, it’s a BBM convo – complete with LOLs, happy faces and any other “emoticon” you want to add. Nonetheless, WE ALL HAVE A LIMIT. And once that nerve is hit, watch out. A slight comment here, an insult there and all of a sudden you’ve got a crisis on hand. Case in point, a conversation I had on BBM last night….
I took a comment directed at our group as slightly condescending. So I lashed out in a manner that our group had been used to conducting ourselves in – with belligerent force (LOL!). Did I go too far with my comment? YES. ABSOLUTELY YES, but it shouldn’t have been something new to anyone in our group. To be honest, in a face to face conversation I would have said the same thing I had written, albeit with a smile on my face. Tone of voice cannot be measured in a text conversation. So what happened next? I was greeted with probably one of the worst personal attacks I had ever encountered. All this from a friend! Did I deserve it? Not all of it. Maybe calling him out on a couple of things was unnecessary – again, the lines between joking and seriousness on a BBM convo CANNOT AND SHOULD NOT BE DRAWN. If you want to have a serious conversation, pick up the phone. There are too many factors to deal with here. I honestly didn’t know that specific lines were drawn in the sand for different people within such a tight knit group of friends. And given the manner that we’ve been so used to speaking to each other, I don’t think I was all that wrong to begin with. Things like Twitter, BBM, Facebook statuses, should all be taken with a grain of salt. If a nerve has been hit, then say so and expect the person to stop. I would have gladly apologized and squashed it…. Matter of fact, I did, kind of, half-assedly. Nah, I egged him on…
Instead, I’ve been made to reflect on what a terrible human being I supposedly am. My life was broken down quite expertly (with some minor inconsistencies) and instead of just squashing it, a whole new bag of worms was opened as a result of a comment I had made. Even as we tried to make light of the situation, I had apparently hit a nerve so deep that what sounded like a friend’s true feelings of me as a person had come out. A lot of what was said to me was really deep and hurtful. And then just like that, ex-communication. It’s pretty sad! I’m not being sarcastic, I’m being serious. All this over a conversation in text on a cellular phone app! Really? So a phone call wouldn’t have solved this issue?
I’m not really sure what’s going to happen next. Truthfully, I’m not even all that angry. Never was to begin with. In a face to face scenario, none of this would have ever happened. Body language would have been read and we would have known to stop. Ironically, we have a friend who we all actually ENJOY giving a hard time to. Sometimes I feel as though it’s our life joy to toy with his emotions. I didn’t know that the license granted among friends to insult each other came with limitations. We shouldn’t even be doing it in the first place, but we do. That puts all of us in the wrong.
I was discussing this with another friend today and we both agreed that such a trivial issue should have never gone so far. But this is a striking reason why conversations are always better off had in person, because more often than not when the joke is on YOU, when the attack is pointed in your direction, you will naturally defend yourself and that’s when things have the potential of getting out of hand. To my friend out there who was so offended, sorry dude. I’m owning up to it, but you did say some horrible things in return, some of which are inconsolable in most cases (not this one though). Grown men speak, not type to each other.
As my buddy DJ Mensa would say, “Music is the business. Twitter is the LOLs”. The same can be said about anything to do with BBM, Facebook, Myspace or whatever. These are some of the challenges that we face in this century. This is what communication has come to. We can’t even DRIVE down the road for 20 seconds without glancing at our phones for a text. In many ways, we live for these moments, when we can have group convos with our friends because we don’t see each other often enough. Pretty soon some businesses will be conducting job interviews via chat and analyzing what or how phrases are written by job applicants. It’s probably already happening.
That’s life now. Communication is deteriorating because there are so many alternatives out there as opposed to having a conversation and settling things the old fashioned way. And as cowardly as verbally undressing someone via text is, it is also pretty cowardly to call a person out via text message. Might I also add that as cowardly as both of those are, it’s cool to just take a step back and say, “dude, that wasn’t cool. Why would you say that?” Again, there is no right or wrong here…. It’s a text message!!! It sucks, but these minor occurrences really can be prevented. Maybe we ‘friends’ should all just practice texting to each other nicely – leave the obscenities out. Or maybe we should just learn to keep personal barbs out of these types of conversations so that no one gets their feelings hurt (myself included). Or maybe, just maybe……
I should get an iPhone (Fruit Ninja, here I come)!!!!
K.