Why Is It so Hard to Communicate?
I tried to send a message to my niece the other day.
I couldn’t remember which platform she currently uses to communicate. Was it Instagram? Facebook? Should I send a text or maybe an email? Just give up and shout?
I had her phone number for texting, but she is of an age (and I’m demonstrating that I’m no longer that age, aren’t I?) that changes phone numbers, like, all the time.
I mean, I guess I understand.
You lose your phone, you need to get a new number.
Even with an upgrade, it’s easier to start fresh than figure out how to transfer your old number and all those contacts that you’re not actually in touch with any more. I have 307 contacts listed in my phone right now.
I’m pretty sure I don’t know that many people.
It’s the same with email accounts and what’s with that?
Do they get to a certain point on the quest for Inbox Zero and think that scrapping the old address and starting fresh is easier than looking at three-year-old invitations and seven hundred newsletters they can’t even remember signing up for and trying to figure out what to do with them?
Actually, that’s not a bad idea.
I’m old enough to remember when email was invented. I was overjoyed. It freed me from having to use the phone.
I was awful on the phone. I had to practise before I dialled, in a fog of sweaty awkwardness. I stumbled over questions and always felt like I was intruding.
With email, I could send a message when it was convenient for me and the recipient could read it when it was convenient for them. No more worries about interrupting dinner or catching new mums in the middle of trying to nurse their babies.
I was able to avoid excruciating small-talk with husbands. There were no more messages lost because of teenage offspring and their refusal to write things down.
But then Facebook came along and a bunch of people preferred that for sending messages. I did like that I could make one announcement and dozens of my nearest and dearest would see it all at once.
Then came the ability to send text messages by phone, which at first was only for emergencies because those tiny keyboards had three possible letters for each key and it was easier to just call.
But then we were back to the awkwardness.
Texting has gotten easier and there are also direct messaging capabilities on Instagram and Twitter and it seems like everyone has a different, ever-changing preference for how best to reach them and that can lead to a lot of head-scratching if you want to make plans.
You want to be sure your message gets through and sometimes I send messages across multiple platforms but then I start to look like the weird stalker aunt who doesn’t understand how technology works and I’m not quite ready for that role yet.
Could somebody please come up with a single, unchanging communication tool we could all use?
Something sturdy and basic. Maybe it could stand alone from our smart phones or computers.
We could hang it on the wall in the kitchen and attach the bit that we use to communicate to the central bit that does the processing with, I don’t know, a cable of some sort so that nothing gets mislaid. Make the cable long enough that you could walk away from the processor while you’re talking.
Oh. Wait.
That’s a telephone.
I hated those.
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