OK, so I don
’t understand the world any more. There, I’ve said it, it’s
right out in the open. I’ve been passed by, left behind, abandoned
beside the road – I am no longer au courant and I’ll never catch up
because as the scene races on at an ever-faster pace I continue to
get slower.
OK, so I don’t understand the world any more. There, I’ve said it, it’s right out in the open. I’ve been passed by, left behind, abandoned beside the road – I am no longer au courant and I’ll never catch up because as the scene races on at an ever-faster pace I continue to get slower. The real bummer is that I’m losing the desire to catch up; even being old-fashioned and out of date takes most of my time and energy. Let it go.
Whatever is Mitchell bemoaning this time? Well, it’s this: away messaging. I don’t understand it, I don’t believe it, I can’t get into it, and I don’t even want to. Surely you’ve heard of away messaging; it is apparently all the rage among those so much younger and more computer-savvy than I that it’s quite embarrassing. I mean, I’m beginning to wonder how it is that I am sharing the same planet with the concept of away messaging. One of us doesn’t fit and I know which one.
All right, just to review for those of you who don’t know what away messaging is but you’re too proud to admit it so we’ll pretend we’re reviewing instead of telling you for the first time: away messaging consists of leaving a message on your computer’s “instant message” function (if you don’t know what “instant message” is, I already like you and am prepared to say good things about you) to let anyone who checks in with you know that you are away from your computer.
OK, so far so good; like an answering machine announcement, right? We’re not here, leave a message, beep. We should be so lucky.
According to a newspaper report away messaging “has become something of an obsession on college campuses, providing communication, entertainment, procrastination and social life all rolled into one.” Students have transformed the away message “into a kind of personal bulletin board … they post a little of everything: news, quotes, schedules, song lyrics, greetings, party invitations, jokes, veiled insults, confessions, exclamation, complaints.”
“Students go online just to read their friends’ away messages. It’s a whole new dynamic that’s really remarkable,” says an anthropology professor who has – get this – taught courses examining away messages. “There’s a psychological component of being in touch: ‘I wonder what my friend is up to.’ So you look at the away message.”
Are you with me here? This is a cultural phenomenon of such apparently substantial proportions that professors are teaching courses about it and newspapers are printing large articles about it based entirely on people not being there. Can this be? Have we actually gotten to the point where contacting a person who isn’t there a way of “being in touch”? Hello?
I am so missing something. A student was quoted saying, “I look through everyone’s away messages once or twice a day, and I look at my best friends’ more frequently. I could spend forever doing it.”
Somebody tell me this is really OK, that people spending their time concocting clever ways of announcing their freaking absence, and other people spending even more time enjoying the many ways of learning that the person they’re trying to reach isn’t there is not a sign that the Apocalypse is not only near, it’s overdue.
The warmth of human contact in the 21st Century: “Hi. Glad I missed you – awesome away message. It was great not talking with you; write back – with luck I won’t be around. Let’s not get together real soon and not do lunch so we can not catch up on things. I’m almost always gone so any time is fine.”
See why I don’t mind falling behind the times?
Robert Mitchell is a Morgan Hill attorney.
