Instant messaging is very much one of the most popular ways of communicating these days (I even wrote some of this post using it.)
I am not a particularly negative person, but I do often find myself frustrated when instant messaging people, as most people hardly get me when we chat face to face or on the phone.
Here are few reasons why I’m not a fan of the instant messaging phenomenon:
Say What?
Misunderstandings: I dislike explaining myself to other people as it is. With instant messaging, I end up having to explain myself two or three times, which is quite draining and painful and, in my opinion, defeats the purpose of instant messaging in the first place!
I didn’t mean that!
It’s awkward when you send a message and you think it may have offended them because they take forever to reply. So you get paranoid and start over-explaining and poor recipient has probably not even seen your message! It’s more likely, they aren’t offended and you’ve written a crazy amount of paragraphs for nothing. Smooth.
Typing…
Why is that when you can see that someone is typing, you don’t write anything, despite the fact that you have something to say? In reality, no one is actually typing anything, but the other person has just accidentally entered a letter on the keypad so you wait and wait and wait…
That was really deep man
You’ll be deep in life-changing conversation then all of a sudden, no reply! The other person has probably lost reception, but you just have to sit and wait it out. The phone lines are against us all, obviously.
I thought this was instant
Instant messages should ideally, be instant. So it’s just a little frustrating when you don’t get a reply. You end up doing something else to try to pass the time while you wait. After an hour goes by you go back to the message page to hurl abuse at the recipient, only to realise you didn’t press send in the first place. Opps.
DO YOU HATE ME?
There is nothing more traumatising, than when you send a message and you know they’ve read it, but no reply! Though, it’s just as bad when someone sends you a message you don’t want to reply to but they know you’ve read it.
Wait, what?
It’s a nightmare instant message people with undecipherable spelling, who also seem to have ungodly grammatical/punctuation issues. Worst of all, instant messaging has no requirement to even use complicated lexis or punctuation. I’m not expecting literary works of excellence; it would just be nice to understand…
lol k
We’re all guilty of using lol for no good reason sometimes, I use a lot of ‘lol’s but it my defence I laugh a lot… lol. It does make it a little hard to work out if you’re actually sending comedy gold or not.
Don’t be shy
People type things they would not have the courage to say to your face. I do see why this can be a good thing, but at the same time it leaves a lot of unanswered questions – as the person you think you are speaking with may be being coached or may be watching their friend/relative/stranger message you.
That wasn’t for you Dad
You don’t know pain till you’ve felt the feeling of sheer terror when you think you’ve sent a message to the wrong person. Worst case, you might actually have done so. We all know how many issues something like that can cause, especially because you can’t retrieve what you send. But it’ll happen to us all at some point. Brace yourselves.
Do you agree? What gets on your nerves about instant messaging?