Think before you chat Date Friday, April 26, 2024 - 06:07 PM PST Topic Rant I can tell its spring break because I am getting messages from bored teenagers that want me to entertain them. Bad manners and thoughtless, angry begging always annoy me. It is too bad they are so dull and needy. I got this one yesterday and thought I would share it with you all so that you can correct your own chat manners or see a new way of scraping these kids off your screen. I have replaced its name with " bored and desperate" since that makes sooo much more sense that what it was on my screen, and I have replaced my nickname with " Mistress of Manners" because I thought it was funny. So on to the mess this poor beggar made of his time on my screen: bored and desperate kid on break : have we talked? (Like its my job to keep track of its social life) Mistress of Manners: i dont know have we? (Giving it a chance to say something less dazed) bored and desperate kid on break : what part of town are you in ( Now why ask this when you don’t even know who you are talking to? And why would I tell this rabid little tyke?) bored and desperate kid on break : dunno (ah! It admits that it has no idea who it is talking to or why! Or that is what I am guessing from this word.) Mistress of Manners: then chances are we havent (Here I am being truthful. Chances are that I have never met this person either in real life or online. I avoid people that are this repetitive and needful) bored and desperate kid on break : are you in new orleans? (Here we go again. Why does it matter if it just wants to chat? It doesn’t, it only matters if it wants me to give up an afternoon to go play with it somewhere near by. And as you can see, its given me no reason to want to play with it.) bored and desperate kid on break : do you have two profiles (I thought this one was a strange question or proof that it thought it was talking to someone else. Somehow it looked at one profile then messaged me instead of the person it was intending. I have no idea how this could happen, but I will give it the benefit of the doubt.) Mistress of Manners: where would i know you from? (I try to introduce the idea of conversation as compared to petty demands.) bored and desperate kid on break : from here I guess (This is vague at best. Does it mean from this one conversation? From yahoo? From some other chat program? Is it telling me that it is "one" with my computer and that is how it know it? Clarity is so important in the written word.) bored and desperate kid on break : are you in new orleans? (I politely side stepped this question before but it failed to notice that I was not answering its questions. It apparently wanted to interrogate me to amuse itself. As far as I know I was not put on this planet just to amuse some bored kid on Monday in April.) Mistress of Manners: and why would you be talking to me? (I want to know, not what it is thinking, but IF it is thinking. That makes a difference with how you get rid of them. Also I wanted to know what passed for a reason in its head to be talking to me of all the people out there that day.) bored and desperate kid on break : cause u are pretty (I use contractions and slang when I am chatting to so I cant hold that against it, but I am not flattered by it's idea that I am pretty because it is bored.) So far all this person has told me about themselves is that they are bored and that they want to know where I live because they want to try to have sex with me. (where are you, you are pretty, and the very fact that they were trolling the pool of people online at 2 in the afternoon on a Monday.) Not that it has actually told me this but these are the most logical assumptions from the data that I have. It could be a space alien that wants to know where to land to drop of the cure for cancer and chose me because I look like its dear old birth-being and it is homesick, but that seems less likely to me. Mistress of Manners: can you think of a reason for me to talk to you? Is there anything about which we would talk? ( I give it a chance to come up with some reason for me to amuse it. I thought this was generous of me. ) bored and desperate kid on break : well, married life? ( What a strange choice this is! Its either going to ask me if I get enough sex in my marriage or its going to tell me about its lack of sex in its marriage. Or if it is a space alien, its going to ask me about the human convention of marriage as practiced in the United States.) bored and desperate kid on break : how long have you been married? Mistress of Manners: this sounds rude, but i havent time to reword it. why would i care about some total stranger's married life? bored and desperate kid on break : how long have you been married? (So more personal information being elicited with no reciprocation. Again, this is interrogation not conversation. This doesn’t seem like the best way to find out about marriage habits in the United States or to get me to go to bed with it. And no, this doesn’t count as taking an interest in my life. I didn’t ask it to be interested in me.) bored and desperate kid on break : dont you like to meet new friends? (what does this have to do with my question? Nothing right?) This is a form of social black mail. The "logic" being something like this: good people have lots of friends. This proves they are good people. I am offering to be your friend theyby letting you be a good person. If you say no then you are a bad person with no friends and you don’t want that do you? This is a power game and while I am all for power exchange games, I believe they can only happen consensually. Otherwise, it’s a form of attempted rape. I'm not fond of rapists of any sort. Mistress of Manners: you arent actually being friendly. you are being nosy and intrusive and evasive (It is fun to tell the truth! Also this way it knows how I am perceiving its communication and has a chance to change its method, apologize, ignore me, or continue to bore me if it isn’t smart enough to understand small sentences with easy words. Guess what….) bored and desperate kid on break : ok (I guess this counts as an apology? Does it just believe everything that it reads? Now I am leaning back to the space alien theory again) bored and desperate kid on break : waht would YOU like to discuss (this may seem like the right answer, but strangely, it is not. This is making it my problem to amuse it again. I have not implied that I want to "discuss" anything or that I even want to talk to it. The emphasis on the word "you" makes the connotation negative and like it is giving in and "letting" me have my way. The fact is that I am being nice and letting it talk to a pretty girl while it is bothering me while I work. I am the one capitulating, not it.) Mistress of Manners: bye now. (I am done being nice to the poor bored tyke. ) bored and desperate kid on break : what a bitch (it is making one more play for my attention by attacking me. This is something that very abused toddlers do to since they know they can get attention, even if it is negative attention, by hitting someone else.) Mistress of Manners: that is what i thought. go play with someone your own age that is also bored on spring break (Other teenagers might put up with this kind of emotional abuse from strangers and might even be able to see some redeeming quality in it, like the fact that it will give them attention. See toddler example above.) Mistress of Manners: i wonder if you have bothered to ignore me yet? in future when messaging someone you might try asking them if they have time to talk, if they have ever read/seen/hear of some band/book/movie, or say something about their profile. you can also try to refrain from asking things that are just yes no questions so as to develop conversation. (I was in a nice mood and was still pitying the poor bored space alien or teenager or whatever it was.) If you want to start a conversation with someone that you have never met and with whom you have nothing concrete in common (belonging to the same club, office, class, bands, books, movies, some political group, a formal introduction from a friend, or even a religion) then try saying hello first. Try asking them if they are busy. Try to remember that you are calling them the same way that the long distance companies call them, with no warning and asking something of them. Try to give them some reason to talk to you. For example: "I saw on your profile that you like that shmeng site too." Or "I'm on spring break, how about you?". Do you see that they both offer some information about yourself? That you are taking the same risk that you are asking them to take? Think before you chat. Or I will give this space alien YOUR ID. This article comes from Shmeng http://www.shmeng.com/ The URL for this story is: http://www.shmeng.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=514