Ill Communication

When I worked in data management, there were terms such as "dynamic" and "static" to explain data sets.  We can almost use the terms to discuss friendships or any sort of relationship.  Heck, even personality types!

But let me ask a question: would you rather be a "dynamic" person?  Or a "static" person?  Meaning, would you like to adapt and change to the times...or would you just rather stay the same?

I guess on some levels, we can keep some of key qualities but adapt to the times.  Or constantly rethink a position.  However you want to look at things, we can look at things as being "active" or "passive."

Do you take an "active" approach or a "passive" approach to life?

Which leads me to my ultimate point.  I've noticed that since the "good ol' days" (which basically our only forms of media were of the mass approach like television, radio and movies...not the "social" media layer), people have been convenienced out of being personal.

Remember when you could go to the supermarket and ask your check out girl/guy or courtesy desk professional how their families were?  Even then, there were "lifers" in that industry, so you could build relationships and trust.  Nowadays, how many of us even chat with the people at the registers of a supermarket...let alone GO to one, since many stores are outfitted with "self" checkouts.  Even my coblogger and I were talking about how she uses a "gun" to scan her items, then just needs to bag her items and pay when she's all set (think of it as killing two birds with one stone).

Yet I think these conveniences for our busy lifestyles have infiltrated our personal lives.  We have seemingly dozens of ways to communicate.  Besides Ma Bell, there are even seemingly antiquated methods like "chat" or "messenger," but if you own a smartphone, there's texting, Kik'ing, Tweeting, and even emailing.

And there's Facebook. 

I've been on a Facebook cleanse since February.  There was no "over the edge" kind of moment.  In fact, I had just responded to someone in a message.  There wasn't an event or any major argument that set me off.  It just...felt like I needed to do it.

But I also had a revelation as I went off, and people started to ask me when I would return.

I'm not sure if I need to.  I feel as though I have a clear idea of what's going on with the people I care about.  I have kept my Twitter feed active, and there's some overlap there.  I am even Instagramming photos. 

But there's something else.  I felt as though I was being a passive friend.  And I think our culture of being convenienced out of being personal has allowed this to be "okay."

It's easy to drop a note on someone's wall to say "Hey, thinkin' boutcha" or "Happy birthday!"  Our culture has made it easy to never pick up a phone.  Even writing a letter or a written notes of thanks is foreign.

My friend has written a book on Table Manners, and how to integrate this into raising the next generation who will be pointing, clicking, gaming and no doubt texting at a very young age.  My fear for the next generation is that there will be NO ONE who chats or communicates by talking anymore.  In fact, think of how many families eat dinner at night and are attached to their smartphones.  I'm just as guilty.  I'll be at lunch and have my phone at the ready while talking to a guest.  Shouldn't my attention be focused on ONE person, the one I'm eating lunch with?

 Lastly, we live in a culture where calling someone to say hello is almost unheard of.  Just this past week, I decided to reach out the old fashioned way to talk to people.  I reached out to three friends, and even called someone who had a birthday.  Ironically, I wouldn't have known it was his birthday four years ago, when we reconnected on Twitter.

The sound on his voice was surprised...yet he was laughing because he said, "Man, I was just telling a story that I think you would appreciate!"  And he proceeded to tell me.  Now, maybe if I had reached out on Facebook, he might have told that story.  But the phone call was straight, sweet, to the point.

Shortly after my Facebook hiatus, I visited some friends down by where I grew up.  It forced me out of my comfort zone. I was able to make plans in person.  This is what I mean by being a less passive friend.  It's something that the technology driven environment has allowed us to do.

Think about how many people you know "online" whom you'll never ever meet in person.  Think about those you have meaningful relationships with in person, but you feel like you're enough in contact with them that you don't need to check in to see how things are.

Being off Facebook makes me wonder - hey, what's going on with these people?  It makes me be more available, and what I feel to be more of an active friend.

I'd rather be that dynamic person but wants to appreciate some of the simpler things in life.  I can adapt, but I don't want to be in a false sense of security in my relationships.

I want to be an active participant.

Kik: The Habit

It's become the latest and greatest addiction among smartphone users.  Kik Messenger has taken the virtual world by storm, and I am no exception to that.

It's like instant messaging and text messaging all in one.  Actually it's better than any instant messaging or text messaging application I've ever used on a mobile device.  Let me tell you why ...

You can see when your message has been sent, received and read by the recipient (text features), as well as see when the other person is typing a response (IM feature).  No messaging application that I know of does ALL that.  And not only does Kik,  give you all those great features, but it is super fast (another IM feature)!

But what's the real beauty of Kik, you ask?  You better sit down for this one ...

Unlike BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) that can only be used on a BlackBerry device, Kik Messenger can be used across multi-platform smartphones.  For example, someone using an Android powered phone can "kik" someone using an iPhone, as long as they've both downloaded the app from their respective market/store and accepted each other as contacts within the app.

Speaking of Blackberry, the maker of the smartphone and its operating system -- Research In Motion (RIM) -- has now sued Kik Interactive -- claiming that they stole their idea -- and have pulled Kik from their app world.  And who is suffering for it?  Only the Blackberry users.  They are now once again limited to chatting only with other Blackberry owners.

Kik was re-launched on October 19, 2010, and in two weeks, had over 1 millions users.  It now has over two and a half million "kiksters" and could reach over 3 million users by the New Year.

This morning, Kik updated their already outstanding application to include the ability for users to add profile pictures, as well as new ways to find friends with their enhanced search/suggestion features.  I'm hoping they will eventually add a feature that will allow users to set their status to "away", "available", etc.  Looking forward to see what else they have in store!

I Want Your Sext

"There's things that you guess and things that you know/There's boys you can trust and girls that you don't/There's little things you hide and little things that you show/Sometimes you think you're gonna get it/But you don't and that's just the way it goes" - George Michael, "I Want Your Sex"

You can reside in a Twitterverse, get a virus that's not airborne but in a video form, and Kik a friend who is not sitting right next to you. It's no wonder that as advanced as we are getting in technology, that some smart phones should come with a disclaimer about use by "Mature Audiences Only." Not that it would help, but the thought certainly counts.

Why do I suggest that? Well, there is a new phenomenon on phones that goes along with texting, chatting, even talking on phones (does anyone even really call each other anymore?). Once the cell phone designing geniuses decided that every phone needed to be fitted with a camera, instant gratification was brought to a whole new level.

Of course with this fun, instant gratification was usually in the form of being daring. And when I say "daring," I mean kids who have cell phones take dares to a new level and sending parts of their respective bodies they probably should not have sent. There's a story on CNN and ABC every day about this phenomenon: that what starts off as a girl sending her boyfriend an "innocent" picture of herself to be seen by their eyes only. Yet we all know, it's quite "provocative," and suddenly he's sharing it with the Varsity basketball team. Next thing you know, her girlfriends find out about it and post it on the Internet.

It happens more than you think. When you click that "Send" button, who exactly is seeing this stuff? It's like the theory of a cockroach: if one person has seen it, chances are, a million are lurking to see it too.

It's not clear-cut black-and-white, as either gender takes their own liberties in sending provocative photos of themselves to blast to whomever. Since this is relatively new, there is no "etiquette" on this spectacle. I mean, I'm sure Miss Manners wasn't exactly thinking of writing a "How-to" book on dealing with the incidence of "sexting."

CNN's Paging Dr. Gupta blog had a piece today about "Sex Ed in the age of Snooki." I can freely admit that I have never watched an episode of "Jersey Shore" nor do I want to. Yet you see and hear about the exploits about these reality stars all over. I don't actively seek it out, but chances are if you have a Twitter account or follow any gossip columns, you're going to hear about it. The article went on to discuss how women have irresponsible and daring role models (let's not even go there with the men on those shows either -- Gym, Tan, Laundry I believe the operative term is).

When I was growing up, Madonna was the "It" Girl. She did bold things like roll around on stage in a wedding dress singing "Like A Virgin" or present herself in a provocative manner in books like "Sex." Looking back, she got a bad rap, but I looked up to her. She was (and is) a successful business woman who is in charge of her sexual destiny. If anything, she made us question our morals and beliefs and think maybe we might be too rigid and Puritan even in our belief system.

However, it might be a generational shift in that I simply just don't get this whole "Sexting" phenomenon, photographic one's intimate areas and blasting it off to your boyfriend, girlfriend, best friend. As revelers at my birthday party saw last week, I am pretty exhibitionist, but seeing how quickly pictures (especially those that are not flattering) can go viral in a short amount of time, I like to do things there are no cameras and just deny deny deny (And no, I'm not going there right now).

It's not just teenagers, as the CNN blog suggests, I know plenty of adults who engage in risky behavior. And it is. As adults, we sometimes can get swept up into a moment. Believe me, I know the power of "the moment" and emotions that belong to it. I know several successful and good hard-working people who have, ahem, certain identifying characteristics on other people's phones.

When I worked at an investment bank for eight years, reputation was the rigeur du jour. It was always implied and always at the forefront of how we conducted business. One question we would be asked in our ethics roundups would be the Wall Street Journal test, meaning: if we conducted ourselves in a certain way, would we want that blasted on the front page of the WSJ? Think about it: if your girlfriend decided to exact revenge on you for breaking up, and she had a picture of your hoo-ha, she could easily send a photo of it to Dealbreaker.com, and they can say -- hey, do you recognize this lawyer?

I'm not sayin', I'm just sayin'. A few months ago, a story broke about a future Hall of Fame football player, Brett Favre, sending questionable images over text to an NFL reporter, Jenn Sterger. Now, I can't say that I know the exact details since I was not in the room, but I can say this: Sterger is an attractive female who has a target audience, beer drinking and pizza eating middle-working-class men who think with...well you know. They have a good looking babe giving them football stories. Then in comes a football player, who decides to take liberties with said lady, and gets a little raunchy to say the least.

Favre is a married man, and there are tons of implications about what's "professional," and what's "sexual harassment." There is a fine line. Yet, it's a perfect example of how quickly things can get out of hand, when one believes they are in a safe and trusting environment, and how quickly things can go from flirtation to "What the hell was he thinking?"

In the late 1980s, George Michael, best known for his popularity with the pop group "Wham!", broke off from the norm and released a thought-provoking album called "Faith." The top tune that received the most airplay was a song that had in and of itself a provocative title: "I Want Your Sex."

In an incredibly uptight society where the word "Sex" is even considered dirty, but perfectly natural, this video had to be played at hours when children were not readily exposed to it (yet, there wasn't anything horrible to watch about it) and the song had to be bleeped out on certain radio stations due to complaints from concerned parents.

The video and message of the song was very simple: monogamy and making love can be sexy. In an age where AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases were creating news by themselves, the fact was Michael's message was revolutionary at the time since casual sex was the norm but NO ONE talked about it.

And we have tons of people talking about this whole sexting phenomenon...and no one is questioning the moral values of those who partake in it, namely reality television stars who get paid to make a spectacle of themselves or future Hall of Famer football players when they promote their own perversion?

I think it raises an interesting question about all this repression we've had over generations about the very notion about sex. All it's going to do is create new generations of daring and more risky behavior.

Relationship Status: In A Textlationship

That's what they're calling it -- 'textlationships".  Translation?  Relationships via text message.  And we all have them.  And not just romantic ones; we have the strictly friendly ones as well. 

Coop and I have spoken about the lack of human interaction in today's society, and this is just another bit of evidence to support that.

I am a texting whore.  And when I say "text", I mean all forms of conversing with another individual via my mobile device -- text messaging, instant messaging and the new "kik" messaging (similar to BBM, but it works across all wireless platforms simultaneously).

Always on vibrate, my phone rarely leaves my arm's length.  I can't miss that important text from you-know-who.  And I can't miss that important "kik" from Coop about our next blog post! 

But are these types of relationships healthy?  Are they even real?

Well, they're real in the sense that they do exist and we are communicating with others, although I'm not sure how healthy they are for us.  If you already know the person pre-texting era, it's not so imperative.  However, this type of communication can be both beneficial and harmful when meeting and interacting with new people. 

You can get learn a lot about a person through a text conversation, both good and bad.  For example, some people have this unprecedented sense of confidence behind the 4.3 inch touch screen of their smart phone.  They say things they normally would not have the courage to say to someone's face.  Whether it be a naughty, flirtacious comment or a mean and sarcastic one, they become someone they might not be if not for the security blanket of the text message. 

During a "textlationship" you are basically writing your own little screenplay between yourself and the other person.  You have time to sit and think before responding and can stear an entire scenario exactly the way you want it to go.  So not only can getting to know someone this way be extremely misleading, but it can be very disappointing as well.  You sort of create an image of someone in your mind based on your interaction with them over text.  But exactly how close to reality is that image?  You can't read their body language or look into their eyes to see how sincere they are.

So if the person ends up being fake, is so too the relationship?

No wonder it's so hard to date these days!