Dmac Blog

Lately I have decided that the growing popularity of instant messaging is having somewhat negative effects on society in general. Whether it is true or not, it is my belief that IM’ers have slowly redirected brain waves away from their normal destination. I have seen people IM’ing on several occasions. Something funny is typed and an IM’er will most often respond with some of the following:

OMG!!!! HAHAHAHA
ROFL heheeh!!!!!
LMAO
(insert random smiley here)

All of which seem to express extreme emotion associated with laughter and lots of body movement. The problem is that neither of the two IM’ers in this conversation is actually expressing this emotion physically. They do in fact think that it is very funny but the brain waves that are normally sent to the body to produce physical laughter and emotion have been redirected to the fingers as a form of ASCII. As you can see we have people feeling intense inner emotion while maintaining a solemn face. The fingers however can’t express the joy fast enough which is easily seen in the dramatic increase of typos during an IM’ing emotional climax.

Last but not least, email and instant messaging is being used and abused in such a way that it is creating a non-confrontational society. There was a time when people had to meet face to face when discussing sensitive issues but the awkwardness of this confrontation can now be avoided with email and IM. This is good in the sense that the little man has finally found his voice, but dealing with people face to face in a professional manner is slowly becoming a lost art.

Technology is a great thing and I make my living on it, but sometimes it goes to far. I’m tired of seeing emotionless Joe’s fingers move every time I tell a joke. I tried to confront him about it, but he stopped me immediately and said he would send me an email or catch me later on IM. GEEESSH. What do you think??