People Suck, Part 1 of 2

hey, i'm back home in dallas for the weekend. haven't been home for a good 2 months so it's only appropriate that i make an appearance now and then.

today's rant opens the long-awaited can of worms entitled, "people suck." i say "people suck" because some people get a little touchy when you just come right out and say "college-aged women suck." but, that's sorta who i'm referring to here, to be honest.

i guess some background info might be apropos here, right? i'd say from freshmen year to senior year in some ways i've changed a lot as a person. i mean yes, everybody can sorta say that when they reach 21 and they can look back on how they were when they entered college as opposed to how they were when they left college, but for me mostly my social tendencies and such are completely different than what they used to be. as a freshmen at a&m, i was admittely one of most overall unwilling people you'd have ever met. it was a new environment for me, i didn't really know anybody at all, and i immediately felt that i didn't fit in with everyone else that chose to go to a&m. of course, you have some people that were used to it or were more quickly willing to forget all that and go out and have a good time, and these people would ask me to go do things or to just hang around together in general. in those days i was much more likely to say no and just do my own thing based mostly on my lack of desire to do things i wasn't used to or try anything new at all. it made for a lot of lonely scenarios and a general sense of unhappiness, as well as bashing the ego a little bit and dropping my confidence.

as time went on and semesters flew by, of course i met more and more people or found people that i could mesh with more easily and most of the loneliness went away. throughout the middle years, as a sophomore and junior, i never really had a huge burning desire to be the starter of social situations or the guy that always calls to set things up. i was typically just happy hanging with my roommate or girlfriend at the time, and basically no one else. but now, in a more defined, stable relationship of over a year and no longer having a roommate i can really connect to at all, add on a slight urgency to see people before i graduate, you now have me as more of a willing person that genuinely wants to make time for other people and to not turn down seemingly trivial social situations so that i don't look back on my college years with disappointment.

so, i started to take more action. action i had never really bothered with from 18-20 as a struggling, "why did i pick this major?" type guy doing my own thing at a college that thrives on doing its own thing itself. you meet people in different ways, you have different ways of contacting people. you have people's phone numbers, their email addresses, their AIM s/n's, a common contact between the two of you, etc. so my rationale was that, "why shouldn't i go out on a limb a bit and make an active effort to see the people that i've made friends with but have lost a little contact with, or people that i generally haven't tried to have a relationship with outside of class or work before?" obviously, you call, email, IM, etc, initially just making sure they're conscious and at least somewhat available. okay, well in my experience it seems like unless they're currently being hit by a bus, they will almost always get back to you in some form or fashion based on your initial contact. it's typically along the lines of "hey, how's your semester going? what are you doing after college? blah blah blah" and then once each has answered these questions, a next step will either be made or nothing else will come from it at all. from the "research" i've done, i apparently know more people that would rather have the latter situation occur than actually following up with something.

think about communication standards today, and what our "IM generation" has become used to. for a lot of people, including me, instant messenger is by far the easiest way to get ahold of them. i'm the kinda guy that you can always reach me through IM, and if i'm not around, i have up a semi-meaningful away message that typically gives you at least an idea of where i may be. in this sense, i consider myself embarrassingly easy to get ahold of. other people are different, they get on AIM maybe once or twice a week, probably from an open-access lab or something. you can't rely on contacting these people online most of the time, because they're way less likely to be available at any given moment. anybody remember ICQ, before AIM? i know hoang does. ICQ (who, oddly enough, was purchased by AOL years ago) actually had a much better system than AIM, for 2 reasons in my opinion: 1) you could send each other messages even when offline, and those messages would just queue up on the server and be delivered to you when you logged on later; and 2) you had several options for exactly "how away" you really were, meaning you could differentiate between not wanting to be disturbed as you study for your big midterm and just a simple away message for when you decided to nap. of course you also have the people that are most likely on some IM service, it's just that you're not aware of their s/n, maybe because you've simply never discussed it. with these people you're obviously going to have to go another route for contacting them.

okay, so in my opinion the next best thing to an easy quick IM is a slightly longer but equally simple email. alright, but here's the problem, email isn't what it used to be. an email address used to be sort of a novel idea, kind of an indication that you were hip and cool and well-aware of the new trendy technology, but now, it's a phone number. worse, it's a phone number that only ever lets you leave a message on their answering machine, because it's not a real-time style of communication. email in 1997 was "e-mail," and it was a very different beast. you typically got much fewer mail back then, with a less internet-dependent society, so each email really meant more to you. there was no spam or excessive mass emails, so each one was almost guaranteed to be a little more personal to you. now, email is a commodity. it's the way the rest of us get in touch with you when we aren't close enough to you have your phone number. the problem is, you get 20 emails a day. 10 of 'em advertise adding 3 inches to your dick (whether you have one or not is irrelevant), 5 of 'em inform you of upcoming university events that you don't really care about, 3 of 'em are from your professors giving you info about your class, and 2 are from your friends or boyfriend. you see all those emails and think, "okay, time to delete all the crap i got today." do you see my point? email in a sense today is shit. it really is. i don't think anyone that had a hand in designing the ARPANET of the 60's and those that pushed corporate email in the 70's and 80's ever thought, "y'know, one day i bet email will be considered a relatively stupid idea." at this point, i do consider it a stupid idea. at work, i think it's something i simply could not do without. at school, i think IM should be used to handle all textual communication, even for university related stuff. i think everyone through a&m should use a standard IM client (AIM-based or not) with semi-tolerant naming conventions and obviously not firewalled to the outside world. university announcements could be sent to all students through standard IM-bots (much like those that send out porn links), and could even be encoded with some type of priority level, indicating that they wouldn't be delivered until 5am when they're less likely to interrupt your current chats.

regarding email, everyone has one thing in common and one thing completely different. in common, we all see the message header in our inbox and say "i'm interested in what this person is sending me, i'm eager to open this." the difference lay in what we do about it. some people respond right away, eager to hear back from the person. others, wait a couple days to make sure they don't look "too desperate." maybe they wait a week. but d'ya know what i've run into now? an entirely new breed, a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut of a category. a category of people that do not respond. y'know i didn't even think this was an option? but i've been proven wrong. i don't know who started it or if there was some kind of meeting i missed about it, but apparently it's become socially accepted that a valid response to an email is to simply read it and throw it away. everyone sees the internet and our newfound sense of connectivity and global awareness and all this other utopian-esque bullshit as being what will drive us into a better society. i disagree. in 4 years of college and during a time of great technological achievement and prosperity, we are moving backwards. as soon as the option for not responding to somewhat at all was added, the entire concept of email when to shit. what was once seen as a way to open new doors of communication between everybody has now become a high-tech way of throwing a well-thought email and figuratively throwing it at a brick wall.

should all emails be sent with read receipts? should i get an autoresponse from your IMAP server telling me you took time out of your day to read my email, and promptly throw it away. should we hack sendmail and IMAP scripts so that i can be notified how long you actually kept my email? should i feel victorious when you did actually read my email, or that maybe you even kept it for a day or 2? the simple answer is no. the more elaborate answer is no, and fuck you if you think any of that's feasible. to get an email from me and not respond within a week is an absolute insult, and you should be ashamed your account is even still active after you ignore me. sound a little pompous of me? nope, it isn't. it's common human courtesy. i write long emails, don't i? blog posts, emails, anything with text, i write a lot, don't i? guess what? you don't have to send the same thing back. do you know how much better it is getting an email that says "I understand" instead of getting nothing at all. what makes you think i even know you ever even read my damn email, much less that you understand it? do people think i thrive on some kind of one way communication with other people? with the exception of posting this block for the public to see and possibly getting no feedback from it, why would i ever want to do that?

here's the most common scenario: i email you. okay, y'know what? here's the first fuckin problem: a lot of the time, i shouldn't have to email you.. i should be getting as many emails as i'm sending out at all times. but let's say i suck it up and email you anyway. the usual reaction, they're happy to hear from you. i won't bullshit you or complain about that part, they are typically happy that you bothered to send them an email. so, they respond. typically, within 3 days, although we both have to pretend they didn't get it 20 minutes after i sent it cuz they check their email every 5 minutes. how many sentences is the average response email? the correct answer is 3. do you want to hear how that email goes? i'll tell you, i've got it memorized. check it out:


hey justin,
good to hear from you. my semester's been so busy, but i'm doing pretty good! hope your semester's going well.
[standard goodbye]


okay, so they responded, so that's better than nothing, right? my question is, where do i go from here? let's pick out each sentence and see what i can do with it.

"good to hear from you."
what should i say to this? "awww, good to hear from you too! thanks SOOO much for responding back to me after you refused to email me first for the last 3 months! must have been a lot of work! lol" nope, not gonna happen.

"my semester's been so busy, but i'm doing pretty good!"
what? your semester's busy? man, what the fuck major are you in? what's all this busy shit? guess what? we're all fuckin busy. i promise you, even the general studies majors with 12 hours are at least sometimes a little busy. do i really have to prod you to tell me what the fuck you're actually busy with? have you ever thought if you didn't have to try so hard to avoid nice guys like me, you prolly wouldn't be so goddamn busy? something to consider...

"hope your semester's going well!"
y'know what? chances are, in the original email, i told you how my semester's going. half the time, i prolly already admitted i'm pretty busy and the semester's really tough. is my semester magically gonna get much better after you tell me you hope it's going well? most of the time i feel like saying "my semester would go a lot better if you were just a little bit nicer."

okay, despite all that, i still find some way to manufacture a response email. what do i take the risk of in this response email? that's right, folks, i really man up on this one. i actually suggest we should see each other in person! i know, i know, i'm one bold motherfucker, but it's just this crazy notion i had, i know it's wild, just figured i'd go balls out and throw it out there. but how does a girl typically read this suggestion? they don't like to admit it, but they're terrified. they're terrified because they know you just pulled off something they're not prepared for. they think, "will he hit on me if i say yes?" "what will my boyfriend think?" "what would i even wear?" "is he gonna pay for my meal?" etc. and so when they panic, what's the easiest way to deal with it? i would have thought to just polite suggest you're too busy and admit that you're sorry you can't get together. nope, there's something even easier. it's so obvious i never even thought to try it. here's the trick:

read the incoming scary email.
delete it.
pretend you never read it.

oh my god, that's genius isn't it? the hardest part is not having a conscience though, which is the part that screws me over ever time i've never done it.

y'know what's even more fun? cell phones. cell phones are email addresses. that didn't really make sense, did it? i'll say it again. cell phones are email addresses. they're email addresses that light up and make funny noises and immediately let you know there's somebody else in the world that actually wants to talk to your unimportant, dumbfuck ass. it's the same fuckin thing with email though, kids. your cell rings, and you look at the caller ID, and it says justin. you're not immediately disgusted, but you think "eh i can't really talk right now." but that's alright. you can call me later. y'know what the trick with calling me later is? here's the trick:

get my call.
decide you're too busy to answer it.
tell yourself you'll call me back later.
make decision later that it'd be more fun to make me call you again.
don't do anything further.
then wait for the next time i call, only to repeat when i do.

i don't make this shit up, guys. this is the most common thing that happens to me, and i'm fuckin sick of it. guys don't really do this much, but girls know they can get away with it. to girls, it's just fun when you're forced to call back later. i've known girls that just come right out and say, "y'know, it's okay if you have to call me twice in a row." yeah, for you it's okay. meanwhile i'm the one that feels like a fuckin moron and you feel pretty damn important.

we'll talk more about this some more tomorrow. stay tuned for further commentary on the effects this has on a person after prolonged exposure to it, and also a new experimental policy regarding how to pick your friends right from the start.

keep it right here for ranting,
justin