What’s That? What? That! ARGGH!
Failures to Communicate
The famous line from Cool Hand Luke is “What we have here is a failure to communicate.” It sure seems that way. Civil discourse is dead. These days a political debate might go:
“I think that Biden …”
“YOU |#!@*&% LIB!”
“YOU |#!@*&% NAZI!”
And they unfriend each other. (Fun fact: using typographical symbols in place of an obscenity is called grawlix.”)
But lack of communication is not new; people have had difficulty communicating since humans descended from the trees (they didn’t communicate all that well in the trees either). One of my pet peeves is the dangling “What:”
You’re sitting on a park bench with your friend and your friend says
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“That.”
“WHAT?”
This goes on for some time until you strangle your friend and dump the body into a trash receptacle. Sometimes your soon-to-be ex-friend elucidates:
“What’s that noise?”
“What noise?”
“Didn’t you hear it?”
Well, yes. I heard the plane flying overhead, I heard a few kids screaming, I heard pigeons cooing, and I heard you passing gas. To which noise are you referring? If your friend insists that you can read minds, proceed with strangulation. And sometimes your now sworn enemy points and says:
“What’s that?”
“What’s what?”
“On your face!”
Since your friend is not holding up a hand mirror you need to guess. Well, my eyes, my nose, my mouth, two zits. Which one are you pointing at?
On the other hand, in our daily discourse, it’s sometimes necessary to give vague answers so we can get through the day. Your friend runs into you at the chop shop and says “Hey, how ya doin’?”
“Fine.”
“Cool.”
And your friend departs to do whatever nefarious business he has in hand. If you answered “Hey, how ya doin’?” honestly, you might say:
“Well, my company is in receivership. my hip replacement failed, I found out that my wife has become emotionally involved with a cantaloupe, my son is now running around with a gang of butterfly collectors, and I learned that my goldfish has six months to live.”
Your friend, of course, is long gone and nobody will ever talk to you again.
We call these deliberately vague responses “social noise.” When we ask “Hey, how ya doin’?” we don’t really want to know how the other person is doing and we assume that the other person knows this.
But these days, this is true only of old people like me. Gen Z assumes that everybody wants to know everything it’s doing every second of the day. Social media makes this verbal diarrhea possible.
You post about every move you make, every place you go, every scrap of food you ingest, and your fifty million followers are enchanted. This works because you and your followers are not in the same room, where more restricted conversation would be necessary.
Texting can often promote uncommunicative communication because for today’s young ’uns, a text must be replied to within six nanoseconds of receipt or the sender is no longer a friend. So unlike the two fellows who meet at the chop shop, you’re stuck texting until the last trumpet sounds.
hey
hey
‘sup?
wya?
home hbu
home
what’s going on?
nothing
so what else is doin’?
Neither texter can stop texting lest it be seen as a personal betrayal. Another annoyance is you not wanting to communicate and someone else insisting that you communicate.
Hey, what’s wrong?
Nothing.
Something’s wrong.
Nothing’s wrong.
C’mon, tell me.
Nothing’s wrong.
If you want to talk about it, I’m here.
I don’t want to talk about it.
See I knew something was wrong.
It is at this point that you may commit justifiable homicide. Your friend, of course, wants only to help — as well as learn that you’re terminally ill or deeply in debt so they can enjoy some schadenfreude (or get juicy gossip before anybody else does).
Among my superannuated peers, lack of communication is often caused by a lack of comprehension.
SAM: So how are things, Joe?
JOE: What?
SAM: How are things?
JOE: You bought a ring?
SAM: What?
I’m not hopeful that communication problems will get better. What works best for me is if I talk and everyone else listens. So in conclusion — wait! What’s that?
