I LOLed on this story probably a bit too much. Also I am wondering if we are so much entangled in modern vision how we should work that we actually can make scripts for all people that we encounter in our lives. Suddenly people aren't anymore challenge but scripts! :)
I think we could script a lot of human interactions. Every now and then I actually try :). It's surprising how good sending randomly picked strings works if the other side doesn't suspect it, though being in script author's shoes, I'd add some variation - i.e. I'd repeat every reason in the array several times with different punctuation, or even do something like: "$RANDOM_ILL_BE_LATE, $RANDOM_REASON $RANDOM_SMILE $RANDOM_ENDING_PHRASE $RANDOM_EMOTICON." You get a combinatorial explosion of possible message strings, making it less likely the recipient will figure out it's scripted.
A different thing I actually semi-scripted once was starting random small-talk with people over IM (back when I was younger). I just never could get myself to write "hey, what's up?" to someone and many people thus thought I'm cold to them, or something. So in order to keep my relations with people from college friendly, I basically listed everyone I had contact with, assigned them some calendar reminder periods of time depending on how much I cared about the relationship, and obliged myself to chat up a person if their "date" came up in my morning reminders. The periods of time were picked up to be not divisible by 7, 29, 30 and 31, so that over time they'd land on different days of the month and the week. The messages I wrote myself; only the reminders were the "scripted" part.
I used this system for some time. End results:
a) it helped me maintain some relationships
b) it did not help me develop a chit-chatting habit, but it did lower my inhibition to initiating conversations
c) eventually me and most of my friends graduated and now no-one is chatting up anyone just to ask how they are...
I'm wondering if that many combinations would actually make it more realistic. It seems to me that non scripting people, who have to send the same message regularly, wouldn't include a lot of variation. Except perhaps the accidental punctuation as you write.
Accidental punctuation and slight variations are the key IMO. You don't go too poetic, you just set up thinks like $GOODBYE = ["bye", "cu", "goodbye"], $ENDING_SMILE = [":)", ";)", ";]"] and $ENDING_PUNCTUATION = [".", "!", ""], and suddenly you have 333 = 27 slightly different messages. Append to two main parts with two variations each, and you're over 100 messages to pick from. If the recipient then sees your texts side by side, they won't notice it's automated.
“You know what happened last month, without anybody noticing? Webster’s Dictionary expanded the definition of the word ‘literally’ to include the way it is commonly misused. So the thing is, we no longer have a word in the English language that means literally, I mean literally doesn’t have a synonym. So we’re going to have to find a Latin word for it and use it, but I don’t know any Latin. So when I say I am literally going to set fire to this building with you in it before I hand over the keys to it, you don’t know if I’m speaking figuratively or literally.”
— The Newsroom, “Run” by Aaron Sorkin
