Mixed messages
texting, games, etiquette
Hi, thanks for being here. To receive all the benefits of this newsletter, take 25% a yearly or monthly subscription for yourself or as a gift until 12/31.
The following essay is inspired in part by my friend Charlotte’s recent post made up of texts she’s received lately. Check it out here:
+
I’m writing an essay about texting, I tell Gaby over the phone. Shortly after I ask her if a text I recently sent was bad. All these rules make me sick to my stomach, she says.
I’ve been texting since I was thirteen. Half my life spent writing messages. My first smart phone had both a touch screen and physical keyboard. I still remember the message sending pop-up, a little envelope arcing across the screen. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older that I have accepted that texting is a net good in my life. The ease of access to someone at any time of the day is one less difficulty in already tangled communications. Still I think I’m doing something wrong when a message I send kills the conversation. Then I remember Gaby saying there are no rules. No law in the arena. Still I’m unsure about etiquette. The acceptability of double texting. Screenshots freely shared between threads—this is just textual analysis. The emphasis buttons a perfectly adequate response. Days go by before I send a reply I thought I’d already sent. No one keeps track.
+
I know someone who sends me voice notes of them singing songs we’ve sung together. Sometimes they will send me a quick narration of a recent happening–they got groceries, they ran into someone we know, what they want to say is too long to type out. Otherwise, we spend a whole day going back and forth on several channels. How are you feeling, what are you thinking, why did this person do this, what are you doing later.
+
Charlotte and I exchange our worst habits while I’m taking the L from Broadway Junction. Mine: 1) typos; 2) not using the reply feature; 3) distractedness; 4) sixteen texts when there could be one. We both agree one of our worst impulses is to respond immediately.
The long blue bar pauses as the message sends. The train has just gone underground. Delivered. Oooh, fun game, she responds. I like texting Charlotte because her texts sound so much like the way she talks. She also keeps her read receipts on. A little thrill. The next message I try to send is an SMS because we’ve lost service between stations. Usually this annoys me, watching the message change from blue to green. I read through our earlier messages until a new message arrives. Instead of my diary Oscar Wilde style, I read my texts on the train. Maybe the subway is the best place to text because of the interruptions. To sit with what’s been said. Patience practiced between stops and service. When I can’t send a text to a friend, I assume they’re underground, too.
+
Gaby and I went back and forth a few weeks ago about whether it was ok to have a serious conversation over text. We were having our own very serious conversation over text. I suggested that we now recognize texting as a natural extension of speech. Whatever the case, it’s no longer necessary to call someone for a hard conversation. A text is the clearest cut path to answers. A way to say exactly what you want so there are no more misunderstandings. It’s not cowardice as much as it is common sense. Who wants to receive a text saying “we need to talk” followed by a phone call you’ll only dread?
The dread is partly from the messy complexity of live conversations. It’s so easy to say what you don’t mean when having a verbal conversation. Composure is more easily maintained when sending text messages. Of course, there’s beauty in the mess of language, how the subconscious betrays itself through what is said accidentally. I can be exhausted by that beauty. It’s more that I don’t trust myself enough to say what I mean, even when I’ve written and erased a sentence ten times.
+
I know someone who checks in on me every few weeks via text. Just because, no expectations. Even when I don’t hear from them, and especially when I’m bad at responding, I know they aren’t mad. I take comfort in knowing in a few days time I’ll get a text that says, how are things going dude.
+
I showed Kate the new iOS message features on my phone. How you can edit a typo, unsend a message altogether. These features only work when the recipient has updated their iOS. The unsend feature feels almost like cheating. It acknowledges trespass, a way to retract what shouldn’t have been said, a preventative against the inevitable ways technology makes idiots out of us all. The feature reminds me of the way some people angle their phone away from view when texting a lover or shit talking.
Actually I don’t know what good unsending a message might do. It may save some embarrassment, but it’s fully dependent on the other person not opening the message in time. And if most people are like me, and I suspect they are, it’s already going to be too late most of the time.
+
I know someone who weaves in and out of my life–a single message comes just when I think we’re going to slip out of each other’s lives as quickly as we slipped in. I’ve started to adapt. Rules that probably exist only in my mind. Just be normal. I’ve learned there are ways to ask the other person what they’re doing without explicitly asking because you want to see them. This is what happens in our texts. Or this is what I think is happening. I don’t know how to play this game, but I still do.
+
Gaby says she’s pro-sending the text, whatever the case. How can saying what you need to be a bad idea? It’s a clarification. Women restrain themselves too much, she says. I’m never going to tell you not to send the text. So I send the text.
+
I know someone who sends paragraph after paragraph. Sometimes the paragraphs become truncated because they are so long. iMessage is forced to abridge them. I click the arrow and am transported into their mind. Genius articulations from three AM onwards. They call texting their preferred art form. At times I respond with my own paragraphs, or more non sequiturs when I am scrambling and spinning my wheels. Most of the time I am not awake when they are, so I miss a window of conversation less possible in waking hours. By the time I do respond, different threads get started, spindling until I give up and try again later.
+
Someone hands me his camcorder at a party. I ask him if there’s something he wants to film specifically. No, whatever footage he gets, he will be happy. I love the look of the film on the viewfinder. I kind of don’t want to give it back. I film people on the dance floor, zooming in and out on their faces as they close their eyes and sway to Four Tet. It’s a funny contrast to the weekend before at Nowadays where phones are prohibited on the dance floor. I watched a woman get escorted from the floor for checking her phone. Rules are rules, but here without them, no one really looks at their phones. We follow our own rules.
I go guest to guest asking people their New Year’s resolutions or what they would change about 2022. Most people are earnest. Someone says it’s too early to ask. One very drunk man–who made intense eye contact with me while he did whippits–tells me he is grateful for women, which isn’t the question. A woman says she wants to call her friends more often. I end up filming her and her friend’s feet for the remainder of our conversation. They start to complain about the men in their lives. A phone call takes me away from the conversation, and the man takes the camcorder from my hands, but not before whatever snippets of my phone call have been captured forever on film.
+
I know someone who doesn’t always respond to my texts. Even the question, “how are you feeling?” can go unanswered for days. Then just when I think the expiration date for responding has passed, they will say, sorry for going MIA. Usually my line. I will then bombard them with more texts until they solidify plans with me. Now that I have your attention. They tell me I am more successful at catching them than most people are.
+
A few weeks ago, I sat next to a woman on the train whose text font size had been blown up to extra large. I couldn’t help but glance at her messages as she texted. She wrote, Why does Kanye get canceled and not all the fascist republicans? I text two people about the message. She caught me looking at her open thread, then locked her screen.
+
I know someone who I’ve never met in person, but we send each other our outfits every once in a while. We gas each other up for long days in our respective offices. We repeat outfits, then note the return of a favorite item into the rotation. It’s a game of its own. Playing dress up from different coasts.
+
Someone I meet tells me about replacing his phone, and how he hadn’t backed up his data to iCloud. The Verizon employee asked him if he was sure he was ok with losing all of his messages. The thought scared him. His whole archive would be gone as soon as he switched to a newer device. I say to him, our texts are the only archive most of us have. We’re all writing for many hours every day. He doesn’t finish the story.
I switch the setting on my phone to keep messages forever. I like that this was the copy chosen: forever. A gesture to the archive. A library that doesn’t burn unless the motherboard breaks and you haven’t done your due diligence of backing everything up. Then I remember how last night I started to talk about something only for Ben to remind me we had the conversation before. He searched for a single word with my name and showed me the results. Keep messages forever.
+
I know someone who texts me “I love you” whenever they feel compelled to say it. They have an uncanny ability to send this text when I have almost given up on the idea of love altogether.
+
What I am trying to say is I can’t get back to you right now. When I do I’m going to overwhelm you. There are going to be moments of panic, then extended periods of silence. I won’t know how to take it back. I won’t know how to interpret your silences or when you come rushing back faster than I can stanch the overflow. I won’t know what to say other than a one to two word response. You may think I’m mad at you, but it’s just the way the message looks on the screen. A lack of capitalization. I want you to know how often words fail me. There’s nothing to say right now because I know I can exist in this silence with you.
I can’t always answer how I’m doing because I won’t really know. When I say things are good, they probably aren’t. When they’re at their worst, I won’t say anything at all. If you know I’m not well, I want you to find out through some telepathy between us. Or probably you’ll just have heard it from someone else. What matters is if you tell me you know. I won’t set my phone to erase messages after thirty days anymore. Nothing is too painful to keep. I need the reminder, to not misread what I so desperately want to misinterpret.
I want to remind you of me in some way, even if it’s through an image that you will see and forget immediately. It’s temporary like everything. If you laugh, it’s enough. Whether or not I will hear it. I won’t delete this message that made me sad or angry or just plain missing you, it will stay with me until I remember, too. That someone is somewhere in the world waiting for you to reach back.
