Communication these days!!!

Has anybody else ever found the urge to scream in frustration at your computer when you realize how ineffective they can actually be? (Probably not!)

Think about emails. You send someone an email with a certain tone, mood and message that you're trying to convey. But when they read it (unless they actually 'read' into the present situation) its all just words. How do they know what you're trying to communicate? You know what I mean?

So you wanna send a nice friendly message to a friend who you just fought with. You're write that you're sorry and that next time you wont do it (whatever you did) again. Your friend (who is still angry at you) assumes that you are angry at her, and when she reads your email she reads it with hostility. Her tone (in reading it) is hostile, and so she assumes that your tone (of the email) is hostile too. She takes your apology for sarcasm and anger towards her. Even though you really were sorry- she just didn't pick up on that!!!

Its really strange that despite the progress of communications technology, relationships and interpersonal skills have gotten so much worse! So you can chat for hours to a person- discussing anything at all, but if you see them tomorrow, you wont know how to talk to them... crazy right???
And what about all our virtual friends that we make. We don't even really know them do we? If we had to meet them tomorrow, would we have any idea what to say? (Though I suppose if it wasn't for virtual communication- then we wouldn't even know that person to begin with! I guess that in the absence of real relationships, virtual ones are the next best thing!)

Just discussing this reminds me of something my friend said the other day. She was feeling really bad for not realizing earlier that a guy liked her. See, he was emailing and chatting with her and was obviously throwing around hints that he liked her but she never even noticed. It was only a while after everything, when she was re-reading her old chats (for some strange reason) that she actually really 'read' all that was written and realized all he 'said'. That same guy now avoids her (I guess now she finally understands why!)
It makes you wonder doesn't it, how many things, feelings, moods, frustrations and problems are we missing out on with all of our virtual communication?
The world may be getting smaller, but I sometimes think that the distances between people are only getting bigger.

Oh, and I've come up with a crazy way of expressing my feelings when emailing. If I'm saying something important with a tone that's open to interpretation, i think I should include the following tag line: mood, tone, expression and outlook.
So my tag line for this post would look something like this:

Mood: happy yet reeling at the irony of communication today.

Tone: incredulous yet peppy.

Expression: slight smile.

Outlook: for communications in conjunctions with relationships- awfully bleak!!!

Have a great day folks!!!