4 ms·

> Ever meet someone you didn’t like online, and realize they’re terrific in person? Online communication loses sooooo much in transit. This is so true. I have

> Ever meet someone you didn’t like online, and realize they’re terrific in person? Online communication loses sooooo much in transit. This is so true. I have a good friend who is, in my opinion, really bad at this. It seems like he has a talent to make even little requests sound aggressive when using written communication. If I didn't know him so well, I would certainly interpret that as very rude, even though in RL he's not like that. Thinking about this, I realize I have something like this as well. With close friends, I can be VERY direct in a way that's both not completely serious, but still carries my true opinion. And I think I do this without thinking too much, it just comes out (although it doesn't seem to happen with people I'm not that close with, maybe because I'm more guarded and self-conscious during those conversations). Luckily my friends can appreciate this tendency even though it would come across as super rude if I did that to a stranger. (I guess I can't say if my friend's case above is actually very similar. Maybe he, too, uses different language with people he's less close with, trusting that his good friends know him well enough.)

Aachen 3y ago
> > Online communication loses sooooo much in transit. > This is so true. I have a good friend who is, in my opinion, really bad at this. I don't think it's true at all. Most people, I can perfectly well talk to online and can occasionally have an easier time talking to than in person. The person I'd classify as my best friend, for example, I literally speak to 1-2 times a year, the rest is text conversations (at least once a week we have a longer chat I'd estimate). But I also know some people that are or were close to me who are terrible at texting. I can't seem to help them improve, either. If I'd believe that not everything can be learned to some extent, I'd say this is apparently something innate. They don't come across rude at all, in my case, but just no conversation flow whatsoever. It's a bit comparable to doing one of those interviews where you have to coax every word out of the interviewee. (There is also the category of people that only ever text on a phone (slow) or just can't type at a conversational speed in the first place (50wpm/250cpm maybe? Just a guess), or have dyslexia and find reading more than half a phone screen's worth of text a significant hurdle. That's different and not what I mean about being bad at texting.) Maybe you and the author are not people who are good at texting, and that's why you feel it is 'so true' that a lot is lost in text messages? Or maybe most of my friends and I are the outliers, that honestly wouldn't surprise me either, but either way, this thing portrayed as universal truth is far from it
- IggleSniggle 3y ago
  I agree. My spouse accuses me of only being able to communicate properly via text, and i think it's true. I am very uncomfortable in face to face interaction and struggle to find words, but the written word uses a different part of my brain and is easy to communicate with. It drives them nuts because they struggle to express themselves appropriately in writing. So we have important conversations that are very asynchronous/slow as a result. It seems to be working, though, as we recently celebrated our 20th anniversary.
  - Aachen 3y ago
    Congrats on the anniversary! That sounds like a pretty extreme form of what I meant, happy to hear you found someone who is happy to work with that system as well. Do you find that having everything on record to look back helps you? That's one thing I mind about talking: can't look up what was said or what I/we already figured out on some topic. (Occasionally that's a feature of course, but I try to avoid both using messengers that aren't private as well as needing to say things I don't want to be on a record.)
    - IggleSniggle 3y ago
      That's part of it, but the other part is that I struggle to think rationally in emotional situations (good or bad), and so using text gives me sufficient distance to express my thoughts more accurately. I also struggled with learning my native tongue growing up, and really believe that speaking and writing use very very different parts of my brain for me. Being able to step back, compose, and edit previous statements before "commit" is definitely an aspect, though.

Aachen 3y ago

> > Online communication loses sooooo much in transit. > This is so true. I have a good friend who is, in my opinion, really bad at this. I don't think it's true at all. Most people, I can perfectly well talk to online and can occasionally have an easier time talking to than in person. The person I'd classify as my best friend, for example, I literally speak to 1-2 times a year, the rest is text conversations (at least once a week we have a longer chat I'd estimate). But I also know some people that are or were close to me who are terrible at texting. I can't seem to help them improve, either. If I'd believe that not everything can be learned to some extent, I'd say this is apparently something innate. They don't come across rude at all, in my case, but just no conversation flow whatsoever. It's a bit comparable to doing one of those interviews where you have to coax every word out of the interviewee. (There is also the category of people that only ever text on a phone (slow) or just can't type at a conversational speed in the first place (50wpm/250cpm maybe? Just a guess), or have dyslexia and find reading more than half a phone screen's worth of text a significant hurdle. That's different and not what I mean about being bad at texting.) Maybe you and the author are not people who are good at texting, and that's why you feel it is 'so true' that a lot is lost in text messages? Or maybe most of my friends and I are the outliers, that honestly wouldn't surprise me either, but either way, this thing portrayed as universal truth is far from it

IggleSniggle 3y ago
I agree. My spouse accuses me of only being able to communicate properly via text, and i think it's true. I am very uncomfortable in face to face interaction and struggle to find words, but the written word uses a different part of my brain and is easy to communicate with. It drives them nuts because they struggle to express themselves appropriately in writing. So we have important conversations that are very asynchronous/slow as a result. It seems to be working, though, as we recently celebrated our 20th anniversary.
- Aachen 3y ago
  Congrats on the anniversary! That sounds like a pretty extreme form of what I meant, happy to hear you found someone who is happy to work with that system as well. Do you find that having everything on record to look back helps you? That's one thing I mind about talking: can't look up what was said or what I/we already figured out on some topic. (Occasionally that's a feature of course, but I try to avoid both using messengers that aren't private as well as needing to say things I don't want to be on a record.)
  - IggleSniggle 3y ago
    That's part of it, but the other part is that I struggle to think rationally in emotional situations (good or bad), and so using text gives me sufficient distance to express my thoughts more accurately. I also struggled with learning my native tongue growing up, and really believe that speaking and writing use very very different parts of my brain for me. Being able to step back, compose, and edit previous statements before "commit" is definitely an aspect, though.