Instant messaging for social purposes really gets on my nerves nowadays. The reason is quite simple. It's so each to be phony. You don't even have to really care about the other person. A fake enthusiastic response can be made with an exclamation point! Wow! I'm really excited! In reality, I'm bored of you and I wish you would go away.
Instant Messaging doesn't reveal the true relationships between people. In real life, when someone comes up to talk, you either A. show interest B. show some interest or C. show no interest. The other person knows exactly when to stop talking to you or if they should continue. They are not led on with false pretenses that lead them to believe that what they are doing is working, or even right.
The instant messaging world is completely different. All there is is a little box popping up saying something. Easily ignored, and equally easily responded to. It's not hard to type back a response even though you dislike them. Everything is anonymous. And with the popularity of lol, how is one to know if they really are laughing out loud or not.
It's my personal belief that any relationship started online and not immediately supplemented by a face to face conversation or telephone call will not be succesfull. It's all those little things that you see when you actually see the other person that determines what kind of friendship will bloom. Online, one person is exactly like the other: just a bunch of alpha-numeric characters.
Why do I bring this up? Cuz I hate myself.
