Chat features. Just the word chat is a good indicator that I won’t be on board. I don’t really chat. I talk, I discuss, I rant (duh), I rail on incessantly and have occasionally broken into a full-blown monologue.
Chat, to me, is smaller. Now don’t go thinking I’m all self-important and lofty. I’m not. Chatting is just the day-to-day conversation we have that keeps us up to date on the goings on of others, aware of the weather and in tune with our general cultural song.
It’s important.
I’m just not good at it. I can’t carry that tune.
A perfect example is the other day when I went to a bar with my friend, Steph. She invited another friend up as well — someone I had never met. When Steph stepped away to the restroom and got sucked into a small-world encounter that had her chatting with someone else for nearly a half hour, I was sunk.
I held my own with the stranger for the first 10 minutes. I killed another 5 by taking Steph’s phone apart and putting it back together again backwards. Then I was done.
For lack of anything better to do, I introduced myself to her friend a second time. I tapped my fingers a few times on the table. Might have drunk the rest of my whiskey a bit too quickly.
Then the wrong started coming out. There may have been some talk about bone saws. Definitely some about transvestites. A teensy bit of paranoia over Social Media checkins. It kind of turned into a train wreck.
So if we acknowledge out of the gate that I am no good with chatting in general, it’s easy to see why chat features freak me out a bit.
We use a chat feature for work. Since my department is scattered across the country, it’s kind of necessary. But that little blip of a new message makes me anxious. They all know I’m online - if I don’t answer, will someone get their nose out of joint? I can’t stand typos, yet the short amount of time I have to answer means there will be some. So my OCD kicks in.
Then there’s text chatting. I blame texting for the destruction of the English language. I will never h8 anything, or brb. I may hate it, but I will type out be right back.
Every now and then Facebook magically flips my chat feature on. And because I never use it, I don’t notice until someone sends me a chat message.
Then I freeze. I can’t respond, because then I’d have to continue the dialogue, or be all rude and say flat out, “Don’t want to talk to you right now, my friend.”
But I can’t close out the chat feature either. That’s like snubbing someone who just greeted you while you were walking down the street.
Better to ignore it…maybe they’ll think I walked away from the computer?
The problem is, I can’t do anything else on Facebook, either. (This is where the weirdo kicks in). I can’t comment anywhere, I can’t like anything…I’m too afraid the chatter will notice and know that I am slighting them.
So I move on to other things. Research, Twitter, email.
And I forget to go back and turn off the chat feature later.
So the next time I hop on Facebook, the chat is still on. And of course, I don’t notice it until someone hits me up.
And of course I’m writing this as a diversion…I was hit up for FB chat this morning so I had t find something else to do.
Anyone want to do me a favor and hit Like, or comment, just so that I will get the notification and be reminded to turn that stupid feature off?
kthnxbai
