Question: What’s more dangerous these days then the lack of inflection in a text?
Anwer: A friend reading that text out of context without the inflection and being asked to “interpret” it.
This has been going on way before texting existed but before you could scroll back up through a conversation you had with someone else, you had to remember the experience and then explain it in your words. Most of the time this one factor “in your words” needing you to explain how you interpreted the situation would give a friend the ability to go, “Ok this is your crazy showing” or go “Nope that shit is fucked and you need to get a restraining order”.
But not today. Today we get judged based off our ability to drop a stand up routine straight out of the gate. “Make me laugh and love sarcasm!” Do I look like Eddie Murphy? I mean he is one sexy bitch, but let me at least get your name first before I entertain you for free. What happened to “be yourself” you may ask? Well no one wants “yourself” because that may include having a shitty day and wanting to talk about it. Not to say everyone hates it, some people understand interaction and compassion and don’t feel like you are bringing them down by being in the moment. But for the majority that want an adventure and sarcasm, good luck saying anything other than George Carlin’s greatest hits as an intro.
Also don’t share. They don’t want you to have walls, they want you to be this open book, but the minute you share something with them, be it a piece of writing that is in context to the conversation, a photo, or a past story, they immediately go: “Well fuck, now he thinks I am that person, I am not that person, fuck, am I that person, why do I need to explain myself to this person I don’t know, fuck I need to show this to a friend!”
Now you are done. The minute it is in their head and they don’t bring it up right away to you to clarify it’s over before it even had a chance to start. The friend will obviously side with them over you the random creeper on an “online dating” platform. Because, it is never them who is the problem, it is always the other person. They have their shit together. They are open. They have a Myers briggs profile. They know their astrological sign. And so without you knowing, they are taking your text, the one line or two or ten that they selected and letting it fester in their brain, picking it apart to the point where logic is no longer even in the equation, mixed with a second or third opinion of someone else who has no idea who you are. Then they wait, they formulate, they speculate. This is where the game of telephone with their own psychi starts.
You basically now killed their first born with your charming Eddie Murphy stand up one liner. Somewhere in between the first text and the few hours you were excitedly waiting for them to be done with their evening so you could continue talking and (the key part) “GETTING TO KNOW ONE ANOTHER”, they have started their textual breakup for a relationship that never got started. A textual spew that is created for one reason and one reason alone, to make them feel less insecure about themselves. To give them the upper hand in a situation where no one needed the upper hand. To lull themselves into false sense of approval. “OK, he is going to get defensive when I say the following, and when that happens, me and my friends will have been right”. What they are missing is the fact that we probably have known each other for less than a 24 hour period and when you throw a wall of text at me saying “You are X Y AND Z” of course I am going to try to defend myself. I mean honestly at this point I should just turn off texting, but alas I am not that strong. So, I, as calmly as I can via text, try to figure out what is happening, why it is happening, when I said all these things I am being accused of saying, even though I am 99% sure I didn’t, and where they got expounded so out of proportion. Problem is it is impossible, I cannot make out where it is derived from anymore. But I already know the outcome here regardless of even if I was to deliver a speech that rivaled that of Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men definitively proving my “innocence”.
So in under 24 hours we are about to have our first fight. We have skipped the line, did not pass go, and when directly to jail. Guilty unable to prove innocence just waiting until someone hits the block button.
And it is always the same shit:
“I have to prove myself”(talked about this with stop caring)
“I feel judged”(you feeling judged is not on me, that is something you are holding onto)
“You are so defensive, why would you be like that”(cause you are yelling at me for shit I don’t even understand at this point)
“You said people do this horrible stuff, I AM NOT THAT PERSON” (yes people, not you… I was giving you the benefit of the oh fuck it, you just kinda proved my point)
“You need a therapist”(ok.. After these interactions I don’t disagree.)
“I am just the innocent bystander here”(who literally just made up an entire fake scenario you needed to spew at me instead of just moving on, so you felt vindicated from a story you made up)
“See you are still being defensive.” (you are still texting me bullshit, having counterpoints is not being defensive, back in my day this was called debate, conversation, or interaction. But we did it with voices and face to face, try it sometime, you may be surprised at how the other person may not be yelling at you and may actually be calm, collected, and a bit surprised.)
“You are judging me for things I haven’t done” (nope, I am talking about my past openly, you are applying it to yourself out of context for some reason, actually the reason is probably you holding onto something from YOUR past, the same thing you said: you wish I would not apply my own past to you.)
“My friends were right” (hahahaha)
The problem is I could continue this. It only goes on and on. But it is based in a baseless world of inflection-less words. Words people don’t seem to understand can be changed or clarified these days if more context is needed. But nope, let’s form the worst case scenarios and just go bat shit crazy on someone else.
I run across this enough and I wonder, hmm, perhaps I am the crazy one. But then I take a step back and realize, nope I just avoided a seriously fucked up scenario with a person who will fester ideas and not tell me until they are sure they have a winning Trump card. Problem is, there was never a contest or argument to be won. So, maybe I share too soon, but if it allows me to weed out these types of people who can only see one dimensionally in a very 3 dimensional world, I guess I can endure the frustration and angst a little bit more.
This is one of those cases by the way where I suggest the usage of the block button. And we all know how I feel about that.
