Technology has entitlement issues
I’m twenty-seven, but I’m about to sound fifty.
Technology these days is starting to piss me off.
OK, now I shall explain.
I love email – email’s great. You can communicate with someone, and it’s not unreasonable that if you don’t feel like doing it, you don’t have to answer someone. It’s email. I got your message. Thanks. I didn’t have anything to say to it, so I didn’t. That works. Awesome. I don’t even really have an issue with instant messages, though people tend to be pushy about getting responses from you on them. I can just let that go – if nothing else, there are blocking settings on almost every client, so if you don’t feel like talking to someone, you can just appear offline to them. Works out great.
You know, like how you just DON’T answer the PHONE. Yeah, I screen. I screened when you had to have a little machine with a cassette tape in it, too. You wanna make something of it?
Here’s where I get pissed – someone texts me. I do not have the time or interest to reply to them. I’m not in the headspace to answer their question, and I actually don’t have an answer anyway. I close the text and go back to work, because…yeah. I work. It’s that funny thing you do most of your day so you can pay for stuff.
And now, you see, we come to the problem: I. Do not. Have time. To stop every time you text me to answer you. Nor, by the way, do you have the right to demand it of me. If you do, you are one of two people – my mother or my fiance. And hey, guess what? If you’re one of those people, you won’t demand it!
So when you text me during the day and don’t get a reply right away, and your answer to that is to just keep texting? You have now guaranteed that I will never answer you…because now, instead of just texting and realizing that I will get to you when I have time and feel like it, you’re making serious demands of me. You have decided that I have time for you whenever you feel the urge to pick up your phone and type, and if I don’t, then I’m just a bitch.
OH! And when you call, to ask a sibling if I’m mad at you, because I haven’t texted you back in a week? What the HELL is that? I have never, ever, not once, given any indication to you that I am at your beck and call, and that I will answer any message you send me the very damn instant you send it. You have your schedule and I have mine – and I hate to tell you this, but mine does NOT revolve around YOURS. Not only that, but I am not required to answer you at all! No, that doesn’t mean I’m mad at you, it means I didn’t feel like answering. I do not want to have a conversation with you in texts. That’s not an insult…it’s just a fact.
But there’s pressure – society assumes you will text. It assumes you will answer texts when you get them. And therefore, I am rude because YOU made an assumption on MY time that I did not fulfill.
Remember letters? You know, back when you’d sit down, pen and paper in hand, and write something out to someone. You’d then put it in an envelope, stamp and address said envelope, and mail your message.
The other person would get the letter. And if they didn’t reply? OK, it’s annoying. But they had WEEKS to make that decision, and because most people set aside time to ‘catch up on correspondence’, you probably got an answer eventually. You didn’t expect it THAT SECOND, you didn’t assume they had nothing better to do than talk to you about whatever you feel like talking about, or help you with whatever problem you had, whether or not it was relevant to their life. Mail was polite.
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, you still don’t have that right, and neither do I. Texting is not an excuse to assume someone else is at your beck and call. And I am not going to treat it that way. I have a life. It does not revolve around random people who happen to have my cell number. You cannot demand that I stop everything I’m doing to text with you, just because you feel like it.
And don’t call my family demanding that I bend to your whim. Because now, I will probably never answer your texts again.
/rant
