The era of overcommunication and short attention spans is wearing me out

[Ricky]

I remember in the early 90's when i got a high test score and got accepted to MIT, my mom called my dad at work. She said it was one of only 2 or 3 times she ever contacted him at work. She wanted to tell him the good news. Back then it just wasn't a thing to field personal calls at work.

Nowadays some random person you met could start blowing up your phone and expecting responses while you are at work.

The frequency and quality of communication seems to be diminishing. I'm an ambivert and its started to exhaust the introverted part of me to the point where i am thinking of doing a digital detox.

I understand a lot of the desire for communication can depend on various factors with a woman, like her attachment styles. It is nice to communicate with a woman frequently when things are going well. There is always a danger though that the wrong thing can be said or something sent in text can be misconstrued.

We tend toward the shallows with text based communication.I've gotten myself into more trouble than i should with it. Prompting tiring exchanges with women and phone call, etc.

Less is more nowadays. I'm almost tempted to start writing emails again but with the short attention spans not sure who will read them.

 

[Hal9000]

I'd use any woman that doesn't understand basic phone etiquette as a screening opportunity. If they are behaving that way right out of the gate you know the rest of your life will be pretty miserable as it's only gonna get worse. Consider women like this a blessing because they are low key revealing how toxic they likely would be to have a relationship with.

 

[Agamemnon43]

Male friends having no attention spam bothers me more. We probably spend more time talking to friends than women anyway. I've only got like 3-4 friends who don't have some sort of completely destroyed attention span and who can stay on one topic for longer than 3 sentences and who can formulate complex and individual thoughts.
It's sickening and tiresome.
Women I don't want to even mention.

 

[CornbreadFed]

I remember in the early 90's when i got a high test score and got accepted to MIT, my mom called my dad at work. She said it was one of only 2 or 3 times she ever contacted him at work. She wanted to tell him the good news. Back then it just wasn't a thing to field personal calls at work.

This is could potentially be a top 5 life event in your mom’s life so I do not see this as a good example.

 

[CornbreadFed]

Nowadays some random person you met could start blowing up your phone and expecting responses while you are at work.

Sounds like you are attracting/shooting your shot at a particular type of women. It could be your approach method that filters out most types of women. Would you consider yourself patient, quiet, and shy?

 

[Ricky]

I need to take responsibility for my fault in it all. I can be over communicative for sure. I think it’s in my efforts to keep up with all the incoming texts from friends, family and romantic interests that i grow increasingly scattered and fragmented.

I am a former introvert who turned extroverted in many ways. I believe over time i get drained. I love reading because it almost feels like a meditative recovery activity after being around people all day.

i think it’s also being part of a big department where we received hundreds of emails and microsoft teams messages as well as have in person communication. It is hard to do deep work of any sort under these circumstances

 

[AmsterdamAssassin]

I'm a novelist and I often get people commenting on how nowadays nobody has the attention span to actually read books. Many people who aren't readers cannot handle pages filled with text. We call it the 'MTV attention span'. And while that is a pity, these people will just become ignorant and able to only digest soundbites.



On the other hand, I see more and more young people getting interested in typewriters (one of my teenage daughter's girlfriends is interested in writing, so I'm helping her find a cheap functional typewriter) and my daughter goes to a gymnasium where phones are not allowed on school grounds and most kids read books or study when they have a break. My daughter is currently reading Milan Kundera's The Unbearable Lightness of Being, so I think there's still hope that culture will prevail and reading will become fashionable again.

 

[AmsterdamAssassin]

I need to take responsibility for my fault in it all. I can be over communicative for sure. I think it’s in my efforts to keep up with all the incoming texts from friends, family and romantic interests that i grow increasingly scattered and fragmented.

I find that I'm turning towards reading books on my Kindle over checking my phone messages.

I am a former introvert who turned extroverted in many ways. I believe over time i get drained. I love reading because it almost feels like a meditative recovery activity after being around people all day.

Yes, indeed. For me it's both reading and writing (on my typewriters) that gives a meditative quality to my life.

i think it’s also being part of a big department where we received hundreds of emails and microsoft teams messages as well as have in person communication. It is hard to do deep work of any sort under these circumstances

What helps with that is to have 'quiet time' where you 'switch off' the barrage of messages and do some work. I don't work anymore, but when I did I had an automatic email response with 'I only read emails/messages between 9-11 and 13-15' so people would know that outside of those times they'd have to wait for a response, but in some hectic business cultures that is impossible.

 

[CornbreadFed]

I need to take responsibility for my fault in it all. I can be over communicative for sure. I think it’s in my efforts to keep up with all the incoming texts from friends, family and romantic interests that i grow increasingly scattered and fragmented.

I am a former introvert who turned extroverted in many ways. I believe over time i get drained. I love reading because it almost feels like a meditative recovery activity after being around people all day.

i think it’s also being part of a big department where we received hundreds of emails and microsoft teams messages as well as have in person communication. It is hard to do deep work of any sort under these circumstances

Idk if this applies to you, but my friend always attracts a particular type of girl that he is emotionally incompatible with because he is scared to make any move and lets the woman do 90% of the initial work. The type of women that he would mesh better with are simply not going to do this and he ends up only dating loud mentally damaged extroverted women with the case of "What Ifs". However, it just sounds like a classic you do not like the hand you were dealt with, so you are trying to play it as something else. Wrong, accept that you are an introvert and that you have preferences and start making strides towards what you want.

 

[SW15]

Text messaging has changed how we communicate. I think it has changed it for the worse. This is true in dating, with platonic relationships with friends, and in a workplace settings.

A lot of text messages that I receive aren't that important. They can wait.

Email and instant messages are overused in white collar working settings.

Phone calls have been reduced. I wish there were more voice conversations. Most of the early stages of dating now are conducted over text message. It causes more problems than it solves.

People are getting worse at using the phone for voice communication.

 

[Solomon]

I need to take responsibility for my fault in it all. I can be over communicative for sure. I think it’s in my efforts to keep up with all the incoming texts from friends, family and romantic interests that i grow increasingly scattered and fragmented.

I am a former introvert who turned extroverted in many ways. I believe over time i get drained. I love reading because it almost feels like a meditative recovery activity after being around people all day.

i think it’s also being part of a big department where we received hundreds of emails and microsoft teams messages as well as have in person communication. It is hard to do deep work of any sort under these circumstances

I'm the same way, I can be very over communicative however I've noticed that over communication doesn't make a difference unless you dating the chick already. If you first meet a chick whether in person or OLD the goal is to meet her in person again. wasted to many times texting girls for a week or two just to meet and the situation goes kaput.

On the flipside my favorite youtuber (Visionpulsed) call this "Brainrot" the fact people can't pay attention past 15 seconds etc. The younger the women are the more they suffer when it comes to this, hard to talk to chicks who spend 90% of their time watching Tik TOks but alas men do it too

 

[Ricky]

Yeah its interesting, at work we have meetings that run an hour time slot and people ramble on. Then the rest of the day we are trying to get all the work we need done that the meetings cut into the time for.

I think messaging and communication has gotten so quick and fast food like because everyone is so busy. However we lose on the deep communication. I love the typewriter idea that Amsterdam has (reminds me of Tom Hanks who loves typewriters). The fact that he writes and get into deep thought and also loves to read is so important. I'm hoping to impart that same love of reading to my daughter.

I'm thinking of starting to write more long emails to people. Maybe in the form of letters. I saw that there is a book of Oliver Sacks letters, he was a big fan of writing them. I think it was definitely a more interesting time in the past with communication and letters and deep thoughts. I am quite certain our brains have changed.

The brain rot thing is interesting. My daughter first told me about it. I think kids in school realizes its a thing now too. I love to see her do art or craft work that requires a deeper level of focus.

I agree also about people not using the phone as much for calls. I think i do much better on calls now. I really worked on my listening skills. I don't do as well on text messages, and have even been known to come off as rude and offend people. On the phone i can at least do a bit of verbal judo.

 

[Clockwerk50]

Yeah its interesting, at work we have meetings that run an hour time slot and people ramble on. Then the rest of the day we are trying to get all the work we need done that the meetings cut into the time for.

I think messaging and communication has gotten so quick and fast food like because everyone is so busy. However we lose on the deep communication. I love the typewriter idea that Amsterdam has (reminds me of Tom Hanks who loves typewriters). The fact that he writes and get into deep thought and also loves to read is so important. I'm hoping to impart that same love of reading to my daughter.

I'm thinking of starting to write more long emails to people. Maybe in the form of letters. I saw that there is a book of Oliver Sacks letters, he was a big fan of writing them. I think it was definitely a more interesting time in the past with communication and letters and deep thoughts. I am quite certain our brains have changed.

The brain rot thing is interesting. My daughter first told me about it. I think kids in school realizes its a thing now too. I love to see her do art or craft work that requires a deeper level of focus.

I agree also about people not using the phone as much for calls. I think i do much better on calls now. I really worked on my listening skills. I don't do as well on text messages, and have even been known to come off as rude and offend people. On the phone i can at least do a bit of verbal judo.

I’m not opposed to the idea, but when writing, just make sure to avoid overly complex language and long-winded sentences, as they can annoy others and come across as pretentious. When we use more words than necessary it often suggests a disregard for the reader's focus and time, as well as a lack of discipline. In communication, sometimes saying less allows for deeper understanding; a suggestion can offer more meaning than a sentence that overstates its point with excessive words.

 

[AmsterdamAssassin]

I love the typewriter idea that Amsterdam has (reminds me of Tom Hanks who loves typewriters). The fact that he writes and get into deep thought and also loves to read is so important. I'm hoping to impart that same love of reading to my daughter.

There's a meditative quality about typewriters that so many people are missing.

I'm thinking of starting to write more long emails to people. Maybe in the form of letters. I saw that there is a book of Oliver Sacks letters, he was a big fan of writing them. I think it was definitely a more interesting time in the past with communication and letters and deep thoughts. I am quite certain our brains have changed.

I think that Tom Hanks remarks on it in the documentary "California Typewriter", how someone had a framed letter he'd received and how that created the thought that people rarely frame an email. A paper letter, hand written or typed, shows a particular care to communicate in a more lasting way. People will not throw away a letter like they bin an email, they tend to keep the letters safe and/or display them. And since a mistake is printed directly on the paper, you're more careful with your words and how you compose your text.

Another thing is that digital writing is fleeting. You have an idea, you type it out and now it's in a file on your hard drive. Something goes wrong, you forgot to safe the file on a separate storage disk, and the file gets corrupted or the hard drive is wiped.
Writing on a typewriter has a sense of permanence and the machine you use to record your thoughts does only that, print letters on a paper. Nothing between your thoughts and the printed page but typewriter keys.



And, important for me as a writer: the mechanical typewriter doesn't need anything like electricity to go on. Several typewriters sit loaded on different places in my house. I can walk up to them and start writing immediately, no waiting while it's starting up or having your creative output thwarted because the computer insists you need to follow a back-up protocol before it can display a screen where you can type.



Malfunctioning is rare for well-maintained mechanical typewriters.
You can run out of paper, but paper doesn't deteriorate so you can store more sheets of paper than you can write pages. And you can see when you're running out and buy more.
Same with ink ribbons. The ribbon goes back and forth on the spools and you can see the print starting to fade at least another 10-20 times before the ribbon needs replacement.
Typewriters need maintenance, but it's something the owner can easily learn and apply, so you actually don't need to be a typewriter expert.