alright, two major topics for tonight: the transition from college to the real world and long-term relationships between the ages of 18 and 22.
i'll tackle the long-term relationships debacle first, cuz i can prolly explain that one a little quicker. i'll come right out and say it (since the recent common observation amongst everyone is that i am in fact blunt), i am mostly opposed to lengthy long-term relationships in college. i guess i'm sorta loosely defining that -- i'd say a long-term relationship in this case counts as at least 2 and a half or 3 years, and typically either starts freshmen year of college or even back in high school. the funny thing is, i'm against these kinds of relationships mostly for my own benefit, since the people in these kinds of long-term commitments are traditionally harder to get along with.
this is only based on my own experience, i can't guarantee any of this as fact or the case for everyone. it's simply harder to get somebody in one of those to bend just a little to break out of their usual mold that they've gotten so used to. when somebody's been in a real long relationship, you can basically just look at them and realize that they haven't been out and met anybody of the opposite sex and really been able to connect with them, because if they did their sig other would most likely not be able to handle it. unfortunately they typically make for less well-adjusted type people and make it harder for you to get close to them, because they've already proven they don't put a lot of emphasis on meeting new people in general.
there's a big part of me that actually wonders how they were able to even pull off such a lengthy relationship in the first place. i mean if you told me i had to keep the same gf i had in HS and remain faithful in college and make things last, i don't think i'd have been able to do it. does that make me an overly shifty person cuz i couldn't do that? no i don't think so, i think it makes me about average. i think if you came here with a gf or bf and you never got to play the field here or just ogle people in classes or something then you're not really understanding what a lot of this is all about. sure you're here to get your education and whatnot to be successful in life, but look at all the opportunities around you. how can you pass all that up? are you that convinced that you met the right person back in high school or early on here when you were only 18 years old? how? how did you do that? i think you gotta go out with several people before you even understand what you even want in another person. i guess it shows there are still plenty of old-fashioned people out there that think they've got it all planned out before they can even buy a drink. guess i'm not one of those people, heh.
relationships are great -- when you're the one in 'em. have you ever noticed that? how many times have you had one of your friends be in a great mood all the time cuz they've got a new boy/girlfriend, yet all of a sudden you can never spend time with them or you just find them obnoxious? sometimes that shit seems to happen like that. when you try to transition between classmates/co-workers with somebody into real friends and such, all of a sudden you have to clear all this shit with everybody's gf/bf's and it's just a whole huge deal most of the time. that's where it sucks to try to be tight with somebody who's had a really serious bf/gf forever. i've been on both sides, where i'm trying to pry the girl away from her bf of 2 decades or whatever, and where a guy's trying to pry my girl away from me for a night. either way, it sure is a bitch.
i'm trying my best to be open-minded about it (c'mon, gimme a break, i've been burned really bad by these kinds of situations) but i have to say statistically you're gonna be happier if you don't try to be real tight with these kinds of people. i refuse to say that you shouldn't become friends with somebody you meet that's been in a long-distance relationship. it isn't that black & white. i've seen examples of people that have been dating the same person forever but they're still able to make enough time to have fun with other people. i'm just saying, give me 2 girls, 1 who's single or in a new relationship and 1 who's had the same bf since sophomore algebra in high school, and i'm gonna pick the first one to try to have a meal with. it's just... i've been burned too many times by girls just cuz they have boyfriends. you get sick of that happening to you. you think, "y'know, find me a girl that's not hitched so she'll be available now and then to just go do something, for christ's sake." it's hard enough to work around academic and personal schedules, working around a jealous boyfriend or girlfriend is just an unnecessary obstacle.
eh, that's prolly enough about that, you kinda get my point. i think i had a point. i'll buy you a 6-pack or something if you text msg my cell explaining to me what my point was on that.
alright, the college to real world transition... why do i phrase it like that though? as if college isn't part of the real world? yeah, that's cuz it isn't. here's why:
-- at least for me, look at my post below on sleeping patterns. you can't pull that shit off anywhere except at college, man. you can't go work for a company and sleep from 5-9am one day, then 8am-3pm another day, etc. that isn't anything close to reality.
-- at least at texas a&m, people try to pull off this 3 day weekend shit. that doesn't happen after college. you can't just go crazy on thursday nights when you've got work the next day and expect things to just work out.
-- our priorities are all kinds of fucked up. if you're any kind of good student (why am i putting myself in this category?) then grades matter so much to you. everything you do is to ensure your stupid good grade. life isn't about good grades. life is about being happy and doing things so that you make others around you happy.
-- students don't operate on any kind of reality. there's gotta be like at least 10,000 students that go to church here and they're a lot holier than me when they're anything but. that's a whole other blogpost though. so many people on campus are just completely fake and you meet so many people in so many places that you can't remember anybody's name, but you pretend you do.
the way i see it, everybody in college is sorta scared in a way. as a freshman and sophomore, you're still a little uneasy about a lot of shit that comes along. when you hit junior and senior, you've been here long enough to feel comfortable and you're prepared for everything that comes along, but you're so damn worried about getting a job afterwards.
i've met so many people at the senior level that are scared shitless about what's about to come after college. whether it's regarding living scenario, relationship or job, everybody's worried about something. the easiest example i see of that stuff is so many people i know trying to get jobs. i admit i'm fortunate to have something real good lined up after school and i don't really have to worry, but it sucks that so many people i know have to go through all this shit just to score job opportunities. the most apparent example of that is in my INFO courses. a lot (not all) of INFO majors, their biggest skill is simply asskissing. they want to sell shit and be businessmen or whatever in their career, and that's fine, but they're gonna have to kiss ass in order to do that. seems like being in wehner is all about just watching people in suits and nice clothes kiss other peoples' asses. these poor bastards spend all their damn time going to informationals and shit like that just to get some crappy chance at a job with a decent company. they kinda bug me, but i feel for them. it just sucks that majors like IT and computer science have students that graduate with a degree and don't even have a job afterwards.
i guess that's about my 2 cents on a couple more topics for today. let me know if you feel what i'm saying or if you think i'm completely off here.
much love,
justin
Friday, October 31, 2003
Wednesday, October 29, 2003
well it's been a while since i posted so i figured i better come up with something, right?
alright i finally got a topic to bitch about tonight... this time we're gonna harp on the sleeping habits of people.
let's start this off in my usual blunt way: if you're a current student, i lack respect for you if you fall in any of the following categories:
-- you have a certain number of hours you have to sleep every night
-- you prefer to wake up early all the time to get things done instead of doing them at night
-- you go out of your way to bitch to me about how tired you are when you got more hours of sleep than i did the previous night
-- you've never pulled an all-nighter and you've been in school for more than 2 semesters
i've arrived at these conclusions by thinking of who i've gotten along with well and who i haven't over the last 4 years here at a&m. it seems only those that can stay up and put sleep off for a while seem to get along with me on any kind of consistent basis.
maybe i should clarify a little better what i'm talking about. i think if you have a few early classes a week, you should be able to go to bed earlier for those circumstances. what i don't like, is when your classes basically start at 10 and 11 and you're in bed while it's still in the PM hours or you think you're insane when you're going to bed at 1am. if you've got an important job and you can't afford to ever be tired, by all means, get proper sleep. but the majority of you, you're a college kid like me. the focus of your life is getting good grades.
that being said, let's look at a couple of "case studies" if you will.
alayna (past best friend and current girlfriend)
obviously i love her, but she's a perfect example of the type of person i have so much trouble getting along with. for the first year i knew her, almost all arguments we had were based on her going to bed so early. i think she's the classic scenario of a good student and intelligent person, but a complete pussy when it comes to sucking it up, putting everything else on hold, and just shutting the fuck up about being tired. of course, i respect my own girlfriend, but i still have problems with the fact that she's never pulled an all-nighter. she and i have argued playfully several times about it. an all-nighter is actually a double edged sword in some respects. on one hand, it means that you weren't prepared enough for your test/project to be done with it and get sleep the night before, but on the other, it shows that you care enough about it to completely postpone sleeping and get what you have to do done. she gets things done with the best of 'em, unfortunately her lack of willingness to just suck it up and stay up all night to be better prepared almost always makes me feel in some weird backwards way that i'm actually the more driven student.
what's funny is over the course of our relationship, she's proven she can stay up, despite what she thought previously. i feel like i actually love her more when she stays up till 2am talking to me and doesn't go on and on about needing sleep. she doesn't go out of her way to bother me that she's tired, and i respect that about her. she doesn't have so many early classes anymore, and i think her staying up later helps us get along better in some way.
dustin (former roommate of 2 and a half years and friend)
heheh, the thing about dustin is that in my book he'll always be #2 to me as far as having the best sleep "abilities." i never thought it'd be the case but he was my favorite person to live with in college based on the way he viewed sleep. he basically saw sleep as the best thing in the world, even going as far as to say if he could, he'd sleep over half the day. the thing was, dustin would put off sleep as long as he'd have to when he had shit on the line. to an extent some of my all-nighter and sleep deprivation "abilities" were fine-tuned due to being around him. in my book he's been able to pull off one thing i haven't, and that's the double all-nighter. i've tried prolly 2-3 times, and each time i've had to throw in the towel for at least an hour of sleep. if i'm not mistaken he was able to pull off 48 hours straight with no sleep, which is golden in my opinion.
i think in my on-campus days i almost completely learned how to nap from dustin. i sort of learned that you can get away with sleeping 4 hours at night and then a 1 or 2 hour nap during the day and not feel tired all the time. the only difference dustin and i had was our viewpoints on sleep itself. he viewed sleep as the best thing in the world and loved doing it. i view sleep as the worst thing in the world and i hate doing it. i won't lie, when i get tired and feel like sleeping, i do, and it feels good. it's just that the whole time i'm asleep i feel like i could be doing something better. not so much something productive, just something else that would make me happy or whatever. i guess i just wish in general we didn't sleep at all and could just stay up 24 hours a day, didn't need any kind of bed at all.
rick (fellow computer science major and friend)
the thing i like about rick is the guy just stays up even when he doesn't have to, cuz that's how i am. he admits sometimes he should be in bed but knows he can get away with staying up, and i love that mentality. i think in some weird way it gives me more respect for him, in that it at least gives you somebody to talk to in the later hours and somebody who understands that there are often better things to do than sleep.
general case -- strict sleepers (several people over the years)
i've met plenty of people that feel they're committing a sin if they're up past midnight, regard sleep as way more important than anybody or anything else, and that it's simply impossible to exist without 7/8/9 hours of sleep a night. y'know why i can't get along with these people? for one, they never have time to talk to you. these people are substituting a couple hours of sleep for a good block of time that they could prolly be interfacing with other people and thus growing as a person in some way. that's why i don't respect 'em... as soon as you admit to me it's more important for you to get 9 hours of sleep before your 9am class than it is to talk to me for 30 minutes on IM, i've lost all interest in ya.
i'm the first to admit i have weird sleeping patterns. typically, i put off sleep as long as i can until i feel i'm too sluggish to stay up or need to go to bed to get enough sleep so that i can properly function the next day. i don't expect everyone to follow that pattern, i just think you're wasting your 4 years of college by grandma'ing it up all the time. i may procrastinate and get sidetracked and whatnot, but if you slept 9 hours last night and i slept 4, guess what? i accomplished much more than you and prolly had a good ol' fuckin time doing it. so while you're sleeping it up and thinking how great it is that you never fall asleep in your horribly boring lecture the next day, remember me, the guy that's staying up late having a blast and living a life you don't have the balls to even try.
still representin' the dark side,
justin
alright i finally got a topic to bitch about tonight... this time we're gonna harp on the sleeping habits of people.
let's start this off in my usual blunt way: if you're a current student, i lack respect for you if you fall in any of the following categories:
-- you have a certain number of hours you have to sleep every night
-- you prefer to wake up early all the time to get things done instead of doing them at night
-- you go out of your way to bitch to me about how tired you are when you got more hours of sleep than i did the previous night
-- you've never pulled an all-nighter and you've been in school for more than 2 semesters
i've arrived at these conclusions by thinking of who i've gotten along with well and who i haven't over the last 4 years here at a&m. it seems only those that can stay up and put sleep off for a while seem to get along with me on any kind of consistent basis.
maybe i should clarify a little better what i'm talking about. i think if you have a few early classes a week, you should be able to go to bed earlier for those circumstances. what i don't like, is when your classes basically start at 10 and 11 and you're in bed while it's still in the PM hours or you think you're insane when you're going to bed at 1am. if you've got an important job and you can't afford to ever be tired, by all means, get proper sleep. but the majority of you, you're a college kid like me. the focus of your life is getting good grades.
that being said, let's look at a couple of "case studies" if you will.
alayna (past best friend and current girlfriend)
obviously i love her, but she's a perfect example of the type of person i have so much trouble getting along with. for the first year i knew her, almost all arguments we had were based on her going to bed so early. i think she's the classic scenario of a good student and intelligent person, but a complete pussy when it comes to sucking it up, putting everything else on hold, and just shutting the fuck up about being tired. of course, i respect my own girlfriend, but i still have problems with the fact that she's never pulled an all-nighter. she and i have argued playfully several times about it. an all-nighter is actually a double edged sword in some respects. on one hand, it means that you weren't prepared enough for your test/project to be done with it and get sleep the night before, but on the other, it shows that you care enough about it to completely postpone sleeping and get what you have to do done. she gets things done with the best of 'em, unfortunately her lack of willingness to just suck it up and stay up all night to be better prepared almost always makes me feel in some weird backwards way that i'm actually the more driven student.
what's funny is over the course of our relationship, she's proven she can stay up, despite what she thought previously. i feel like i actually love her more when she stays up till 2am talking to me and doesn't go on and on about needing sleep. she doesn't go out of her way to bother me that she's tired, and i respect that about her. she doesn't have so many early classes anymore, and i think her staying up later helps us get along better in some way.
dustin (former roommate of 2 and a half years and friend)
heheh, the thing about dustin is that in my book he'll always be #2 to me as far as having the best sleep "abilities." i never thought it'd be the case but he was my favorite person to live with in college based on the way he viewed sleep. he basically saw sleep as the best thing in the world, even going as far as to say if he could, he'd sleep over half the day. the thing was, dustin would put off sleep as long as he'd have to when he had shit on the line. to an extent some of my all-nighter and sleep deprivation "abilities" were fine-tuned due to being around him. in my book he's been able to pull off one thing i haven't, and that's the double all-nighter. i've tried prolly 2-3 times, and each time i've had to throw in the towel for at least an hour of sleep. if i'm not mistaken he was able to pull off 48 hours straight with no sleep, which is golden in my opinion.
i think in my on-campus days i almost completely learned how to nap from dustin. i sort of learned that you can get away with sleeping 4 hours at night and then a 1 or 2 hour nap during the day and not feel tired all the time. the only difference dustin and i had was our viewpoints on sleep itself. he viewed sleep as the best thing in the world and loved doing it. i view sleep as the worst thing in the world and i hate doing it. i won't lie, when i get tired and feel like sleeping, i do, and it feels good. it's just that the whole time i'm asleep i feel like i could be doing something better. not so much something productive, just something else that would make me happy or whatever. i guess i just wish in general we didn't sleep at all and could just stay up 24 hours a day, didn't need any kind of bed at all.
rick (fellow computer science major and friend)
the thing i like about rick is the guy just stays up even when he doesn't have to, cuz that's how i am. he admits sometimes he should be in bed but knows he can get away with staying up, and i love that mentality. i think in some weird way it gives me more respect for him, in that it at least gives you somebody to talk to in the later hours and somebody who understands that there are often better things to do than sleep.
general case -- strict sleepers (several people over the years)
i've met plenty of people that feel they're committing a sin if they're up past midnight, regard sleep as way more important than anybody or anything else, and that it's simply impossible to exist without 7/8/9 hours of sleep a night. y'know why i can't get along with these people? for one, they never have time to talk to you. these people are substituting a couple hours of sleep for a good block of time that they could prolly be interfacing with other people and thus growing as a person in some way. that's why i don't respect 'em... as soon as you admit to me it's more important for you to get 9 hours of sleep before your 9am class than it is to talk to me for 30 minutes on IM, i've lost all interest in ya.
i'm the first to admit i have weird sleeping patterns. typically, i put off sleep as long as i can until i feel i'm too sluggish to stay up or need to go to bed to get enough sleep so that i can properly function the next day. i don't expect everyone to follow that pattern, i just think you're wasting your 4 years of college by grandma'ing it up all the time. i may procrastinate and get sidetracked and whatnot, but if you slept 9 hours last night and i slept 4, guess what? i accomplished much more than you and prolly had a good ol' fuckin time doing it. so while you're sleeping it up and thinking how great it is that you never fall asleep in your horribly boring lecture the next day, remember me, the guy that's staying up late having a blast and living a life you don't have the balls to even try.
still representin' the dark side,
justin
Sunday, October 19, 2003
People Suck, Part 2 of 2
hey you silly shits! who's ready for part 2? there's got to be plenty more to add to this rant, right?
let's talk about the difference between an isolated incident and the emergence of a social trend after having several incidents happen in a row...
when one person fucks you over, you try your best to just blow it off. it's a completely different beast though when it happens to you over and over and you realize you can't just simply blow it off every time. that's when you have to try to narrow down what kind of people actually keep letting you down. often times i'll simply get frustrated and claim that people suck, much like i have in the title of this post. but it's not people that are doing this to me, it's the particular people that i've chose to grow closer to and become friends with.
i don't know exactly what age it happened at, but i would guess around something like 17 i started to prefer making friends with girls instead of guys. before that, i basically never had female friends, all my best friends growing up were guys no more than 9 months apart from my age. i had formed crushes on girls at an early age, even in kindergarten i would have some sort of warped romantic feeling for the prettier girls in class. but once the end of high school started to come around i seemed to have a bit more confidence in myself and didn't have too much trouble becoming friends with girls in classes and through jobs. i think when i entered college, this became even more apparent. even now at 21, i can't really explain why this happens.
i guess when i walk into an environment such as work or class for the first time, i employ just a real quick flash of knowledge to decide where i'd like to sit, because we all know where you sit the first time could easily be where you sit/claim for the rest of the semester. for some reason i seem to have less tolerance for sitting next to other guys, not too sure why. i think i'm more unhappy in a situation overall when i'm near a guy that i find somewhat pompous or just talks too much or something. so i typically try to sit closer to girls than guys. but then, for obvious human-aesthetic-fetish purposes, i'd prefer to sit closer to attractive girls than unattractive ones. so putting this all together, i'm typically exposed to or sitting near attractive girls, and if you have enough confidence and are a likable enough person, you shouldn't have trouble becoming friends with at least some of them. the thing is, throughout college most of the time i've had a girlfriend, so in a sense i shouldn't really be talking that much with girls i'm attracted to, right? it's typically just an easy way to piss off your girlfriend. but i never seem to let this stop me. i think there's a part of me that still wants to be crushed upon, or to excite a girl by flirting her up a bit. i think that's prolly what drives me the most to form friendships with pretty girls. if they're nice enough and at some point admit they think you're cute, you feel pretty fulfilled launching into a friendship with them.
my problem isn't "oh i can't find people in classes/environments that i have any connection with" or "i'm too lonely in my classes." it's that when you become friends in whatever you have together, whether it's your impossible calculus class or your internship, it's too difficult to carry the friendship outside of that application. i've found that talking to that person outside of your familiar common area is exceedingly difficult, mostly based on their discomfort. i think that's where i differ from a lot of people regarding who you actually consider your friends. in my opinion, just because you have a class with somebody and you sit next to each other everyday, you aren't really friends. look in the dictionary, a friend is somebody that you like and trust. just sitting next to somebody in class and occasionally talking to them about your subject isn't really a bonding friendship to me. you have to talk outside of that common area, you have to email, talk on the phone, get together for drinks, a meal, a movie, etc. friends will show up at my funeral, the guy that i sat next to in data structures freshmen year won't. why is it really all that difficult to get with people outside of your common area? and if it really is all that difficult, how did they ever end up hanging out with people in the first place?
unfortunately, in a male-female friendship, it's always gonna be tricky to keep things completely platonic and make sure things don't slip into the romantic realm, given that you're both already hitched or for some reason unable to date. so it's a little different than just being friends with another guy, you have to put extra effort into it just to make sure the girl doesn't get uncomfortable. the thing is, there are so many girls that can't get away from the traditional male-female relationship. the traditional male-female relationship is not friends, it's lovers. so there are so many girls that think the man always has to initiate contact, dictate the direction things head, etc. it seems to be next to impossible to get a girl out of this mode. the problem is, when they prove to be this way, they unknowingly make the entire friendship seem so much more like a date than just a meeting of 2 friends. and most of the time, if the girl already has a guy, she won't allow herself get into a one-on-one situation with you, for fear of something happening, or pissing off her boyfriend.
this is what really gets in the way. at about the ages of roughly 20-25, most people already have a boy/girlfriend, myself included. but we're all guilty of the same thing: we love our significant other enough so that we don't want to jeopardize what we have and keep things as happy as possible. well, that's great for the relationship and all, but it sort of destroys the rest of your social life, doesn't it? think about it, with that in mind, you start filtering all your friendships to disclude anybody you'd ever "accidentally" sleep with. girls have no problems becoming friends with girls, because they know their boyfriend's never gonna have to wonder whether they're being faithful or not when with them. apparently, very few people our age actually have any trust anymore. i think girls love to give themselves that kind of self-confidence: they love to make their boyfriend worry just a little bit, but then make him happy by fucking over the guy that was making them nervous. girls love to assume if the two of you (friends and only friends) go out and you have any second together alone at all, she's gonna end up being groped in the corner. often times, girls can't handle the fact that maybe, just maybe, you might just wanna have their company for a little bit, not that you're horny and you'd really sorta like to get laid tonight.
having attractive girls as friends is a complete double-edged sword. the pros: you can be seen in public with a variety of pretty girls that will make other guys jealous and make you look cooler, you know other girls that you'd happily date if something happened to your own relationship, and you have to worry less about her complaining about confidence and other issues because she's more confident in general due to her appearance. the cons: they frequently assume everyone wants to sleep with them and nothing else, they think they're doing you a favor just by spending any time with you, and they get away with a million things (such as excuses and rude remarks) that if a guy ever said to you, you'd have to be restrained from breaking his jaw.
the moral is: pretty girls will always be the best at duping you. i admit, i'm constantly duped by a pretty girl, and it will continue to happen. i'm powerless against it. girls give you hope and then they take it away. since they make anything seem like a date situation, if you get turned down, you feel like you're being rejected for a date. when a guy tells you he can't do something, you don't really care all that much.
so when promises go unfulfilled and calls and emails don't get returned, what's happens to you? you lose trust. you don't just lose trust in people you thought were your friends, you lose trust in everyone in general. you come to accept that even if you're getting together later or something will happen, you shouldn't get excited over it. nowadays when someone tries to set something up with me, i accept and all, but in the back of my mind, i'm telling myself "this probably won't happen." people wonder why i don't show that much emotion. do you think this could have something to do with it? i can't afford to build up my hopes for everything and then just to be rejected almost every single time. so after all this, you have me, a guy who doesn't trust people, is unwilling to meet new people that will just be like the rest that have disappointed him so far, and who generally feels he shouldn't tolerate anyone's bullshit because he's tolerated far too much already.
most people would disagree with me, but i put up with too much bullshit already. i really do. i think the automatic policy should be if you never contact me first, if you make me call you twice a week apart with no response, if you make up horrible excuses instead of actually just going out and having a good time, you should be crossed off my list. i think society in general should give up on that portion of society that's even capable of such acts. i say we all put our foot down and say fuck all those people and let them be friends amongst each other.
so how do you avoid people that will let you down? that's the problem, it's next to impossible. i wish i could have seen ahead and seen how so many of these "friends" would have treated me further down the line. at least in that case, i could have steered clear of them in the first place and just been friends with somebody else that wouldn't have let me down so much. i think from now on, when shaking someone's hand for the first time, i should say "hey, i'm justin... oh i'm sorry to bother you, but if i call you or send you an email will you be getting back to me within 2 days?" if they answer "uh prolly not" you find some polite way of telling them that you're terribly sorry but you can't waste your time dealing with their bullshit for now. if they answer "of course" you give 'em a nice big smile and pass 'em your contact info.
honestly, i hope in 5 years i'll never remember feeling this way. people in general make me sick. society lets me down everyday, and i can't continue to hide it.
sorry for the last couple days of extremely long posts, you'll just have to bear with me. this isn't the type of stuff i can explain in a few sentences.
best of luck,
justin
hey you silly shits! who's ready for part 2? there's got to be plenty more to add to this rant, right?
let's talk about the difference between an isolated incident and the emergence of a social trend after having several incidents happen in a row...
when one person fucks you over, you try your best to just blow it off. it's a completely different beast though when it happens to you over and over and you realize you can't just simply blow it off every time. that's when you have to try to narrow down what kind of people actually keep letting you down. often times i'll simply get frustrated and claim that people suck, much like i have in the title of this post. but it's not people that are doing this to me, it's the particular people that i've chose to grow closer to and become friends with.
i don't know exactly what age it happened at, but i would guess around something like 17 i started to prefer making friends with girls instead of guys. before that, i basically never had female friends, all my best friends growing up were guys no more than 9 months apart from my age. i had formed crushes on girls at an early age, even in kindergarten i would have some sort of warped romantic feeling for the prettier girls in class. but once the end of high school started to come around i seemed to have a bit more confidence in myself and didn't have too much trouble becoming friends with girls in classes and through jobs. i think when i entered college, this became even more apparent. even now at 21, i can't really explain why this happens.
i guess when i walk into an environment such as work or class for the first time, i employ just a real quick flash of knowledge to decide where i'd like to sit, because we all know where you sit the first time could easily be where you sit/claim for the rest of the semester. for some reason i seem to have less tolerance for sitting next to other guys, not too sure why. i think i'm more unhappy in a situation overall when i'm near a guy that i find somewhat pompous or just talks too much or something. so i typically try to sit closer to girls than guys. but then, for obvious human-aesthetic-fetish purposes, i'd prefer to sit closer to attractive girls than unattractive ones. so putting this all together, i'm typically exposed to or sitting near attractive girls, and if you have enough confidence and are a likable enough person, you shouldn't have trouble becoming friends with at least some of them. the thing is, throughout college most of the time i've had a girlfriend, so in a sense i shouldn't really be talking that much with girls i'm attracted to, right? it's typically just an easy way to piss off your girlfriend. but i never seem to let this stop me. i think there's a part of me that still wants to be crushed upon, or to excite a girl by flirting her up a bit. i think that's prolly what drives me the most to form friendships with pretty girls. if they're nice enough and at some point admit they think you're cute, you feel pretty fulfilled launching into a friendship with them.
my problem isn't "oh i can't find people in classes/environments that i have any connection with" or "i'm too lonely in my classes." it's that when you become friends in whatever you have together, whether it's your impossible calculus class or your internship, it's too difficult to carry the friendship outside of that application. i've found that talking to that person outside of your familiar common area is exceedingly difficult, mostly based on their discomfort. i think that's where i differ from a lot of people regarding who you actually consider your friends. in my opinion, just because you have a class with somebody and you sit next to each other everyday, you aren't really friends. look in the dictionary, a friend is somebody that you like and trust. just sitting next to somebody in class and occasionally talking to them about your subject isn't really a bonding friendship to me. you have to talk outside of that common area, you have to email, talk on the phone, get together for drinks, a meal, a movie, etc. friends will show up at my funeral, the guy that i sat next to in data structures freshmen year won't. why is it really all that difficult to get with people outside of your common area? and if it really is all that difficult, how did they ever end up hanging out with people in the first place?
unfortunately, in a male-female friendship, it's always gonna be tricky to keep things completely platonic and make sure things don't slip into the romantic realm, given that you're both already hitched or for some reason unable to date. so it's a little different than just being friends with another guy, you have to put extra effort into it just to make sure the girl doesn't get uncomfortable. the thing is, there are so many girls that can't get away from the traditional male-female relationship. the traditional male-female relationship is not friends, it's lovers. so there are so many girls that think the man always has to initiate contact, dictate the direction things head, etc. it seems to be next to impossible to get a girl out of this mode. the problem is, when they prove to be this way, they unknowingly make the entire friendship seem so much more like a date than just a meeting of 2 friends. and most of the time, if the girl already has a guy, she won't allow herself get into a one-on-one situation with you, for fear of something happening, or pissing off her boyfriend.
this is what really gets in the way. at about the ages of roughly 20-25, most people already have a boy/girlfriend, myself included. but we're all guilty of the same thing: we love our significant other enough so that we don't want to jeopardize what we have and keep things as happy as possible. well, that's great for the relationship and all, but it sort of destroys the rest of your social life, doesn't it? think about it, with that in mind, you start filtering all your friendships to disclude anybody you'd ever "accidentally" sleep with. girls have no problems becoming friends with girls, because they know their boyfriend's never gonna have to wonder whether they're being faithful or not when with them. apparently, very few people our age actually have any trust anymore. i think girls love to give themselves that kind of self-confidence: they love to make their boyfriend worry just a little bit, but then make him happy by fucking over the guy that was making them nervous. girls love to assume if the two of you (friends and only friends) go out and you have any second together alone at all, she's gonna end up being groped in the corner. often times, girls can't handle the fact that maybe, just maybe, you might just wanna have their company for a little bit, not that you're horny and you'd really sorta like to get laid tonight.
having attractive girls as friends is a complete double-edged sword. the pros: you can be seen in public with a variety of pretty girls that will make other guys jealous and make you look cooler, you know other girls that you'd happily date if something happened to your own relationship, and you have to worry less about her complaining about confidence and other issues because she's more confident in general due to her appearance. the cons: they frequently assume everyone wants to sleep with them and nothing else, they think they're doing you a favor just by spending any time with you, and they get away with a million things (such as excuses and rude remarks) that if a guy ever said to you, you'd have to be restrained from breaking his jaw.
the moral is: pretty girls will always be the best at duping you. i admit, i'm constantly duped by a pretty girl, and it will continue to happen. i'm powerless against it. girls give you hope and then they take it away. since they make anything seem like a date situation, if you get turned down, you feel like you're being rejected for a date. when a guy tells you he can't do something, you don't really care all that much.
so when promises go unfulfilled and calls and emails don't get returned, what's happens to you? you lose trust. you don't just lose trust in people you thought were your friends, you lose trust in everyone in general. you come to accept that even if you're getting together later or something will happen, you shouldn't get excited over it. nowadays when someone tries to set something up with me, i accept and all, but in the back of my mind, i'm telling myself "this probably won't happen." people wonder why i don't show that much emotion. do you think this could have something to do with it? i can't afford to build up my hopes for everything and then just to be rejected almost every single time. so after all this, you have me, a guy who doesn't trust people, is unwilling to meet new people that will just be like the rest that have disappointed him so far, and who generally feels he shouldn't tolerate anyone's bullshit because he's tolerated far too much already.
most people would disagree with me, but i put up with too much bullshit already. i really do. i think the automatic policy should be if you never contact me first, if you make me call you twice a week apart with no response, if you make up horrible excuses instead of actually just going out and having a good time, you should be crossed off my list. i think society in general should give up on that portion of society that's even capable of such acts. i say we all put our foot down and say fuck all those people and let them be friends amongst each other.
so how do you avoid people that will let you down? that's the problem, it's next to impossible. i wish i could have seen ahead and seen how so many of these "friends" would have treated me further down the line. at least in that case, i could have steered clear of them in the first place and just been friends with somebody else that wouldn't have let me down so much. i think from now on, when shaking someone's hand for the first time, i should say "hey, i'm justin... oh i'm sorry to bother you, but if i call you or send you an email will you be getting back to me within 2 days?" if they answer "uh prolly not" you find some polite way of telling them that you're terribly sorry but you can't waste your time dealing with their bullshit for now. if they answer "of course" you give 'em a nice big smile and pass 'em your contact info.
honestly, i hope in 5 years i'll never remember feeling this way. people in general make me sick. society lets me down everyday, and i can't continue to hide it.
sorry for the last couple days of extremely long posts, you'll just have to bear with me. this isn't the type of stuff i can explain in a few sentences.
best of luck,
justin
Saturday, October 18, 2003
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
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
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