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Saturday, April 3, 2010

Electronic Communication Kills Social Skills and Interaction

I've had several conversations with Andy and several others over how... in the coming years and decades, we're going to witness not only a complete lack of spelling skills and social skills but also in letter writing. With texting, there is no focus on proper grammar. With e-mail, there is a void of that immediate person-to-person interaction. People are forgetting HOW to interact with one another. How sad.

However, aren't there times when you can choose with whom you interact? Point in case-I've had a love/hate relationship with my half-sister most of my life. Seriously, it's love her or hate her. I finally (several years ago) washed my hands of the drama she spewed and forgave her for everything but also realized that by choosing to continue a relationship with her, I was just asking to be part of the constant drama and negativity she seemed to enjoy. Thus, our relationship became virtually non-existent.

Then, once I moved past the "yuck" we tried to be friends again. And we were. She was living in California and we spoke on the phone at least twice a day. She was the whole reason I had an inclusive long distance plan on my home phone... because we were constantly on the phone with one another. Then, she moved to Hawaii... this was around Drew's 2nd birthday (3 years ago)... and since then, we just don't speak.

So, today, I log into Facebook and see an entry on her wall from April 1 which read, "Guess who's pregnant?" Then everyone starts posting "congratulations" and such (realizing that it's April Fool's Day) some others post to that effect. Then a little further down she posts:

Ok, I know this posting was a little confusing...but NO body tried to guess....assuming it was an April Fool's joke. SO, the answer to this was.....MY SISTER.....only, she isn't pregnant anymore. She had her baby....so my question today is....when we join the military (as a spouse or otherwise), do we also sign documents that remove us from our original families?

... So I start thinking.... if I already have zero relationship with my sister, what would it matter to her? I haven't spoken to her in a couple of years other than an e-mail to say that I was mailing Christmas gifts to her family, etc. But... we share .. NOTHING.. with one another.

So why would I feel it necessary or why should I feel obligated to call her to tell her that I was pregnant? I wouldn't.

It'd be like...

ring... ring...

Hello?

Hi. It's April.

Oh, hey. What's up?

Nothing. Just wanted to tell you I was pregnant.

Oh, congratulations.

Anyway, that's it.

Ok, bye.

Bye.

Do you see a point in that conversation at all? Yeah, me either. And the thing is that she's acting like she didn't know but she actually did know because my mom had a conversation with my brother in law and he knew I was expecting so someone apparently told them anyway (I'm sure it was my dad). I don't care that they know... I wasn't keeping it from her but I had no reason to share it with her either.

But wouldn't you find that it'd be easier to just pick up the phone once she heard about it and call me... but instead, she chooses Facebook to post something about it. Oh well. Just bizarre to me.

1 comment:

Joey Lynn Resciniti said...

Facebook needs some kind of etiquette training manual. A lot of people are getting riled up about finding news and having arguments via social networking. It is weird!