It's come to my attention that texting, as a form of communication, is not actually as great as I once thought. I am a part of the generation that does not enjoy talking on the phone. I don't like long, late night talks on the phone the way I did as a teen or the way this is portrayed in television and film as something anyone does. I'm learning that the miscommunications found in text messaging is creating more of hassle in my life than I ever could've guessed.
When using online dating, you're limited to messaging on the website or app, or texting which means those conversations can be limited to how communicative a person is in just a few words. Some people are very poor written communicators. Even I can't communicate in a few words.
Recently, I was talking to someone who didn't use emojis. Since those have become a massive part of communicating through text, I feel like that massively limits the kind of feeling a person can get from what you're saying. The conversations I had with this person were very short and ultimately went nowhere. Surprise.
I feel like the hardest part about texting is knowing how to read a message. This whole piece was inspired by a single text that was read two completely different ways. I read the text one way, a negative way and I was bummed out about it. I talked to some girl friends about the situation, asked their opinions and when they decided that the cause was probably lost, I went to someone who had more insight on a larger scale. He read the message totally opposite from how I had. But when I asked a question back in hopes of clarifying, I failed at being as communicative as possible. I'm not putting the blame on other people here—I'm blaming texting.
I was in the boat with the rest of millennials (and pretty much the world) that texting is a great way to talk to people quickly, and discreetly in some cases, until last weekend. Now I'm realizing that it's kind of awful. Deciphering emojis is more difficult for me than taking French classes. Do I use the see no evil monkey emoji to pretend to be bashful or do I just use a blushing emoji? Do I use the conditional tense in this sentence or something I don't even know? It's the same thing except I can Google what the conditional tense is.
I think the biggest factor in this mess is that I am really struggling with feeling like I'm a burden on other people right now. So I sent a text to this person last night but it was good night. It's been sixteen hours, can I text you hey now and that not be overbearing or should I weight another sixteen hours? These are my actual thoughts.
Small form written communication and how it's a massive intersection of online dating don't mix well for me. I'm too worried that I'm the fifth person a guy or girl is texting and I'm the annoying one in the mix. Or if I am the only person that person is texting, they're always with other people, laughing about the stupid things I have to say, even if all I'm saying is hi.
Long story short, texting is cool when I want to ask my friend when she wants to be picked up or what shampoo I should buy for my hair type. Texting is not so great when you have a crush on someone or you're trying to build some sort of relationship with someone—even if that relationship turns into one date and nothing else.
Stay tuned for what I have to say about being bisexual on a dating website. It's... entertaining to say the least.
