
Is group chat making you sweat? - kareemm
https://m.signalvnoise.com/is-group-chat-making-you-sweat-744659addf7d#.difr0tw28
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voidz
What amazes me is how serious people take things like chatting and social
media stuff. Twenty years ago, when I was just entering my teenage years, most
people just talked over the phone and met up. Maybe did a little bit of ICQ.

Oh my, how this evolved.

Nowadays our entire lives revolve around the internet and at the same time we
keep being amazed that social really is antisocial. And we get lists and lists
of bullet points telling us how to mold ourselves into people who can cope and
act like others. It's really depressing to me; people don't seem to want to
acknowledge the elephant in the room at all, perhaps because we're all stuck
in the same mess.

On the other hand it's maybe not that amazing at all - I for one did
acknowledge said elephant really early, around the time of MSN Messenger which
was really popular in my country. The de facto messenger. I barely joined in,
and by the time MySpace and Facebook came, I didn't stick around.

But over the years I did find it too hard to keep friendships, or better said,
people found it too hard to keep me as a friend. Because I was that guy who
requested special treatment because I wasn't on Facebook.

Skip some years and admittedly take my private character into account a bit,
and nowadays I don't have friends left, practically no one takes an interest
even though I used to try to keep the people I cared about. Tried very hard
actually. It just didn't work like this and to me it felt, it feels, like it's
my own fault because I wanted to stay in the world I grew up in and used to
know. A world where social meant something else. Where social problems were
ours, together. Rather than pointing at one individual and making bullet lists
to explain where they fail, socially.

I guess I feel kind of betrayed by how the world changed from how it used to
be, all because of our inclination to jump on tech bandwagons like how flies
are attracted to those blue buzzlight zappers.

Maybe I'm just getting old. Is being in your early 30s being old?

The unwritten rule today is "move along or suffer the consequences. Your
choice."

Really no choice at all. I just wanted things to stay how they were. Things
used to be stable like that. Sadly not anymore. And this all came about during
my vulnerable years.

Can others relate?

Despite sounding like I am sobbing, I don't miss this aspect of life too much
anymore. Or actually I guess I got used to it and became ambivalent about the
entire thing, and just got used to this depressing side of not wanting to
modernise along with the popular demands.

But I am happy with my wife and kids, and as the unemployed father of the
house there is hardly ever a dull moment.

I jush really wish people weren't sucked into the whole social media thing. I
loved having those hour long phone calls with friends, and that level of
intimacy just doesn't appear to exist anymore.

