Gradually we are heading towards such an era, where people will entirely be depended on internet for their social life and communication. Hectic work, busy schedule, high goals, pressure for social status and money, all these factor will make a human to have less time to interact directly with friends and family, and so he will tend to use indirect electronic methods more for the purpose of communication.
We are almost there. Look closely around yourself. Family, friends and your loved ones are all living thousands miles apart. You are using e-mails, messengers and social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, Hi5, Myspace and many like that, to be in touch with your family and friends. Now you even don't find time to 'chat' online, instead you prefer to leave offlines, scrap, or just write a short e-mail.
Problem arises, when you confuse these electronic mode of communications with real face to face interactions. Human face can express millions of emotions precisely, while an offline message can hardly evince any. We are gradually accepting a method of communication, where we are giving less acknowledgment to emotions. Unfortunately human ego couldn't adjust rapidly with the pace of growing technology, and hence sometimes it gets confused.
I am giving some examples. I have a good friend of mine, who of course lives thousands mile apart from the place where I live. Mostly I communicate with her by offline messages on messenger. I sent her few offlines. There was no reply. After few days, I left another batch of offlines, again no reply. Now the third time I sent few more offlines (expressing my resentment for this ignorance) and to my surprise, again no reply. Now my ego came into play. How dare she could ignore and insult me like this? As if I am very free, and she is busy like a president? Now onwards, I am not going to ask about her well being, until she first sends me mail or message. That's it!.......After few days, I was online on a messenger, and she too came online. I saw her, and purposefully ignored her, and didn't send any message first. She messaged me asking my well being, and also complaining why didn't I respond to her previous offlines?......What?? This was the question what I was supposed to ask, instead she is shooting it on me?? So we talked on the issue, and later we both figured out that somehow the offlines didn't deliver because of some internet problem. So the moral of this anecdote is, we should not rely too much on these electronic mediums. At least don't let your ego to generate on the soil of these electronic misunderstandings. I was at the verge of losing a good friend for nothing, so could any one.
But again, we can't avoid these technologies. It's kind of essential evil. What we can do is to avoid our emotions to take over the situation. Here are some suggestions:-
1. Messenger offlines are not perfect: From my experience, I can assert that messengers are not perfect. You certainly might miss offlines. What you can do is to increase your tolerance limit a bit higher. Where you feel that you should be mad after 3 incidents of ignorance, raise it to 10. Even after 10 ignorance, if someone doesn't respond to you, might be he/she is not able to check offlines. Give him a call instead.
2. Onlines are not always online: Sometimes we see that our friends are online, we send messages, and no response. It hurts a bit. We should remember that sometimes people are in such a situation, where they can't message. Probably they are in office or in some other work place. Sometimes we think that we have logged off, while actually we forget to do so. Again our friends can see us as online, while we are enjoying dinner with girlfriend. :)
3. Look carefully before deleting junk mails: Yes, it's true that sometimes your friend's mail can be shrunk amongst those 50 other Viagra selling, lottery winning, and perfect match finding e-mails. So before deleting them, please have a gander on heading, to check if any one of your friend's name is there. If you are deleting them blindly, then probably you are ending up having a friend who thinks that you are ignoring him.
4. Forwarding a mail doesn't cost you a penny: Sometimes there is one of your old school pal, who somehow doesn't mail you anymore. It's OK, he could be too busy in his life. Probably he wants to ignore you as well, but sending him a forwarded mail, with 25 other recipients doesn't hurt you much, right? So go ahead, and let him remember that there is one obstinate person in this world, who doesn't forget him under any circumstances. If he hates you, then these forwarded mails are perfect revenge too. ;)
Remember, technology can never replace human emotions. An 'emoticon' can show that you are smiling, but it can never show if your smile is about love, pain, sarcasm, bliss, satisfaction, pride, gratitude or million other reasons. Life is a beautiful journey, and friends are excellent companions.......Don't let them lose because of filthy ego. :)
