How hard a text-based world is to live in
Read on.
I've been thinking lately of how much text-based communication we do on a daily basis - texting, emails, comments, social media photo captions. And it makes life easier, but it's also super hard.
Think about it. How do you interpret the text “Ok."?
It always depends on the context of the conversation, but it's also open to interpretation.
It could be neutral, it could be an excited confirmation, it could be an angry confirmation. And it's different than “Ok!" or "Okay." And is “ok.” with a period different than “ok” with no period? (okay maybe I'm overthinking this, LOL). And it's especially different than ”Oh ok". That one - to me - always means that someone is pissed but they're passive aggressive about it.
It's the most basic sentence. Spoken out loud, you would know the meaning immediately. But over text we have to interpret and guess how someone would say it.
There is so much missing in text-based communication. We miss out on basic nuances like:
Body language: how you stand or sit
Mannerisms: moving arms/hands
Facial expressions: eyebrows, smiles, jaw drops
Inflection: voice going low or high, laughter
When we try to convey what we are thinking and feeling through text, we have to read and re-write our sentences to make sure we come across as a certain way. You have to be optimistic and friendly and empathize and not be too short or too long or too excited or too indifferent. So then we add :) smiley faces and emojis trying to express these basic nuances that if we had a phone or video conversation could be implied without that.
There is so much more thought that goes into text-based communication than a spoken interaction. Conversations go on for hours or days.
Needless to say, it’s exhausting to communicate via text.
We put a lot of brain power into thinking of how we come across both in person and, now more than ever, digitally.
What else could we be using this brain power for?