I got my first cell phone in 2004, when I was thirteen years old. It was one of those brick-like-nokia-this-is-super-high-tech affairs. Needless to say, once I’d gotten my invitation to the digital world via this hideous, chunky technological achievement, I was hooked, as most people are to the world of text messaging.
It’s dawned on me recently though how very little things have changed since I received that fateful gift. While in the grand scheme of the United States’ lifespan this seems an insignificant amount of time, it should be noted that in this same time span Toyota released their first hybrid automobile, YouTube was created, and retinal implants to assist the blind were invented. Shouldn’t it follow suit that some degree of evolution be enacted in the love lives of young Americans? However, after speaking with numerous experts (my cynical and love-sick friends) it’s come to my attention that modern romance has in fact acted in a manner contrary to our century’s many innovations. That is to say, misguided text messages, Facebook stalking, BBM, improper use of emoticons and other technology faux pass have thoroughly devolved our generation’s romantic arena. And once I started asking my friends about their struggles with their technological love lives, a slew of stories poured out.
One friend, after a particularly long and sober (!) encounter at our school cafeteria with the boy she’d hooked up with the night before, was jubilant to find that the two could not only be around the other without awkwardly avoiding eyes, but that an actual conversation had flourished. Excited, said student sent an ecstatic and lengthy text message to her roommate, only to realize moments after sending it that she’d mistakenly sent it to the boy in question. The repetition of his name combined with the girlish wonders of “could this turn into something” left little room for damage control. Not only didn’t the boy respond, but upon next seeing her, he avoided eye contact completely.
Another friend had spent close to two months hooking up with a boy, and as formal season rolled around she waited impatiently, anticipating her inevitable invitation. But it never came, and the boy told her due to a family member’s illness he would be unable to attend formal that year. Disappointed but understanding the girl spent the weekend of formal compiling a care package for the boy, so as to alleviate some of his stress. After sealing the package with green ribbon and a heartfelt note, she logged onto Facebook, only to see a slew of pictures of the boy, arm in arm with another girl at formal, plastered all over her newsfeed. Phone calls and texts from concerned friends began to pour in, “I thought he was at his grandmothers?”, “That jerk!”, and “Have you seen Facebook?” Though we go to a very small college and even in earlier days this type of gossip might easily spread to unhappy ears, the humiliation of the pictures and the pitying friends forced this girl into social oblivion for a few days while she recovered from this particularly bad run in with “romance”.
Nights can be ruined by unrequited love, which now comes in the form of unreturned text messages. Days can be consumed by obsessive facebook stalking – analyzing the body language that the apple of your eye adopts around others (“Does his arm around her look more than friendly in that picture?” “Clearly she’s flirting with him, look at that pose!”)
Worse still with evolution of technology, the negative repercussions of alcohol have amplified. Before the dawn of constant communication, a person’s drunk escapades could at least be contained to wherever they happened to wander. Now alcohol acts as the ultimate catalyst for emotional exploitation and disaster in the form of drunken text (drext) or worse, the druken sext. Mornings are spent putting the pieces of the night back together via an assembly of humiliating text messages and analysis of jumbled words and slurred voicemails.
But do we have a choice? The love letter has been replaced with the Facebook message, rocks at your window by BBM, and the whispering of sweet nothings has devolved to emoticons sent at odd hours of the night via text. So my friends and I have decided to compile this blog, educating others about text etiquette (and we consider ourselves experts because we have literally tried and failed so many times that we can tell you from experience what works and what leaves you eating tubs of Ben & Jerry’s at midnight and watching Titanic). Textiquette is our survival guide for you all, so enjoy, and try not to mess up as badly as we have, because desperate 2 am McDonalds runs for ‘I hate my life’ fries get really old after a while.
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