Societal Commentaries

Over the last few years, I have noticed that common courtesies have been disappearing. I am not just talking about opening doors for folks or saying hello and goodbye. Although, those things seem to be going the way of the Dodo Bird as well. What concerns me the most is the way we are treating our fellow human beings. With all of the technological advances in communication, you think that we would be communicating more, and better. However, that doesn't seem to be the case at all. Instead of improving communication, technology seems to have ruined it, at least in my opinion. Email was supposed to give us a faster, more secure method of communication, that would increase the amount of communicating because of its speed, no more waiting for the Postie, no more fighting the dog for the mail, etc... However, the technological side of email caused and is still causing road bumps along the way; differing standards, lack of standards, compatibility issues between programs and servers and so on. A lot of older folks never adapted to email as they considered it too cold, and impersonal. Emoticons and emojis were introduced to alleviate that issue and to make emails more fun to use overall. That in itself caused a whole other issue, that I will get into in detail later. Email was finally beginning to catch on in public, and not just in the workplace, or corporate world.

And then along came Twitter, and its one hundred- and forty-character Tweets. That, in my opinion, was when the world went to hell in a handbasket. However, that wasn't the only reason. However, it may just have been the straw that broke the camel's back. And yes, as you will see later the use/overuse of clichés was also one of the issues as well. From what I understand the character limit was so that tweets would be quick to write, and quick to read as well. Also, some mobile carriers imposed that limit on their SMS (Short Message Service) messages. More about TLA's (Three Letter Acronyms) later as well. Tweets were supposed to be a time-saver, however, like email in the corporate world, it soon developed into a huge timewaster instead of a time saver. A timewaster, because the character limit, made getting your message or point across very hard, so you ended sending several tweets instead of one email. However, Tweets were nearly instantaneous a big step up over emails. To get around the character limit folks began to resort to those dreaded TLA's, abbreviations and emojis to get their point across in the limited space. That, however, had its own problems as people had to stop and decipher the TLA's, abbreviations and emojis.

If that wasn't bad enough, this same pattern of 'writing' has carried over to email and even letters. Unfortunately, this technological shorthand has also turned up in stories posted on the net

Twitter and email aren't the only venues for these issues, the same things are showing up in Chat and Workflow Programs like Skype®, Discord, Slack and others. Slack and other programs of the same nature were designed to make up for the fact that some emails lack of continuity and instantaneous communication in a way that Twitter and its ilk couldn't supply. One of the issues with the chat programs such as AOL Messenger, Yahoo Chat, ICQ and others was the lack of compatibility as well as security. The problem was that unless all the people that you wanted to chat with were on the same program you were out of luck unless you wanted to run multiple chat programs. Programs like Trillium came along and tried to solve the problem by letting you log in to multiple programs from a single user interface. Unfortunately, compatibility and security issues along with proprietary software led to the demise of most of those applications. While Slack others like it have a greatly simplified workflow for a lot of companies that have divisions or workgroups located elsewhere than the main corporate campus, they have also become in a lot of cases just as big a time-waster as email. Workers are now so busy using their collaborative software making sure that everyone in their group is on the same page that no individual work is getting done. In a lot of cases, innovation and creativity have been stifled. I believe one of the main reasons for this is a lack of training or teaching on communication. In the case of collaborative corporate software, people were trained on how to use the software, however, in most cases, no guidelines on when and how it is supposed to be used were never given or developed.

By now you are probably asking yourselves; what in the heck does all of this have to do with Common Courtesy? I am glad you asked, and for those of you that have figured it out congratulations. I think it all goes back to the fact that very few folks outside of my generation are actually taught how to write a letter and the courtesies that go along with writing a letter. A lot of folks that I know have taken the letter writing skills they were taught and applied them to emails. Unfortunately, that isn't true for everyone, while I may not start every email with Dear John, I always use the person's name, and in most cases, I try to at least use Hello, you did notice I said try? I can't tell you how many emails that I receive that simply jump into whatever issue is on the person's mind. If that wasn't bad enough, they don't even close the email with their name or thank you, or anything similar. How much time does it take to type a salutation or closing? Another thing that I have noticed is most people only read the first paragraph of an email and sometimes only the first sentence. So now for those folks, I only write very short emails, regarding a single subject. Due to a lot of folks not knowing about the Reply All button in their email I am going to have to start adding: Please Hit, The Reply All Button To Reply To This Email. It is really confusing and time-wasting when you have to stop and forward replies to several different people because some folks didn't use the Reply All. Not only does not using the Reply All waste time it also makes for a confusing email conversation, when some people only see some of the replies. So, if you see an email is being sent to multiple people please us the Reply All Button, it will make life easier for a lot of folks.

Clichés, TLA's and Acronyms:

Now onto the problem with Clichés and Abbreviations and Acronyms; they don't mean the same thing to everyone. Not all countries and age groups have the same clichés which make them hard to understand for a lot of folks. I have to admit that I use a lot of them, however, I will be cutting way back on my usage of them. (At Least I am trying to.) The issue is the same only worse with the dreaded TLA's and memes. A lot of the acronyms and memes in use today, especially on Social Media and Platforms like Discord, Skype, and Teamspeak, only make sense to a small group of folks. One of the reasons for that is a lot of the memes and acronyms are based on Video Games, Movies, and TV Shows that not everyone plays or watches. Additionally, some of the acronyms, memes, and even clichés are age-related. Folks outside that age group will have no idea what you are saying or trying to say. Yes, a lot of us Computer Experts/Geeks/Nerds use a lot of computer jargon at times, and that isn't courteous either, so I am trying to stop. We will just have to see how that goes. A couple of simple examples of how Three Letter Acronyms can go bad, are ATM, and HEA, ATM in the general usage is Automatic Transfer Machine, to those of us that working in Networking it also means Asynchronous Transfer Module. HEA to a lot of people means Heavenly Ever After. I had to look that one up. Of course, some long acronym/abbreviations are just as bad. Anyone that has been anyway connected with the military will know that SNAFU means Situation Normal All 'Fouled' Up, NFG means No F'ing Good, and FUBAR used to mean 'Fouled' Up Beyond Recognition, that is until it became a clothing line. I learned about SNAFU from my Dad who served in the Navy, I had to learn about NFG from my Uncle when it was on my license plate. The point that I am trying to make is that you need to make sure that the group/people that you are using Acronyms, and Abbreviations for actually understands them. This is especially important in Chat Rooms with participants of all ages. I have to admit that I stay out of some Chat Rooms/Groups as I have no idea what most of the participants are talking about. This really sucks when it is a story discussion group, and yes, my age probably has a lot to do with that.

One of the issues that I am seeing a lot of is the lack of overall courtesy in Chat Rooms/Conversations on Skype and Discord. I do have to admit that I am occasionally guilty of breaking courtesy myself. Two biggest issues to me are; Joining a conversation without saying hello, and second leaving in the middle of a conversation without saying goodbye or anything else. I am personally guilty of the first one sometimes and for that, I apologize. The second one is the one that drives me nuts the most, and that is because it is extremely annoying to be talking to someone for several minutes, and suddenly they stop replying without a word and they never pick up the conversation again. I understand that emails and private Messages may draw people away, however, they should at least say something, that is the polite thing to do. Again, I believe that this has to do with the lack of training, and guidelines, and the fact that technology seems to have outpaced common sense. Or it could be that these things aren't needed anymore, and I am just an old fuddy-duddy. (A fuddy-duddy is a person who is fussy while old-fashioned, traditionalist, conformist, or conservative, sometimes almost to the point of eccentricity or geekiness. It is a slang term, mildly derogatory but sometimes affectionate too and can be used to describe someone with a zealous focus on order.)

I hope in all of those words above you were able to pick out the important parts, and hopefully a few 'kernels of truth' as well. I will leave you with these words to mull over while you are looking for something else to read; Meh, BRB, BFF, Gnarly, Sick, Baad, well I hope that you get my point.

The End Finally

Author's Note:

As always, I enjoy receiving comments positive or negative on all the things that I write. It is especially when I write things of this nature. So, please send your emails to The Story Lover.