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Lamentable

Last May, when I got my new phone, I opted to get unlimited text messaging. This was a strange move for me, as prior to then I was pretty philosophically opposed to texting. Texting is done by "piggy-backing" information in the control signals that pass between your phone and the cell towers at regular intervals. This data is transmitted regardless of whether you have texting enabled on your phone, and so the "cost" that is incurred to cell phone companies and that is passed on to you is non-existent. Also, beyond the towers, all texting traffic between cell phone companies is performed using SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol), the exact same protocol that delivers emails across the world billions if not trillions of times in a day. That cell phone companies make us pay for texting service at all is ridiculous. It by far less bandwidth than a telephone conversation through their network, and even better, it is preemptable, meaning that any given text message has no requirements on time of delivery, only that it preferably make it to its destination.

Ok, maybe I'm not over it. But at least I get a discount now, and it's useful to me because now I can get notifications from work whenever things are going horribly wrong. Also, I have a fun configuration where whenever somebody leaves me a voicemail, it gets transcribed by Google and texted to me. Pretty awesome.

The reason I'm bringing any of this up is because I'm angry at my culture again. Since I've had texting, I've received a number of "wrong texts," that is, texts either intended for the previous owner of my number, or, mis-typed numbers altogether. The contents leave me with a feeling of disgust, and only add further to the noise of information I'm surrounded with constantly. Here's two I've had on my phone. (Yes, I save all of my text messages. You must understand why by now).

"If you look at the sky 2nite & notice that the most beautiful & precious star is missing... I swear I have no clue how the fuck I fell......Im okay!"

Pretentious, in a word. I hate this type of humor, and this type of personality. It's being gregarious and narcissistic. It's the reason why I vomited a little in my mouth when I saw advertisements for "That's so Raven!" many years ago. It's saying that a person's identity is inherently funny, not what the person does or says. I don't subscribe to that kind of entitlement.

Also, "2nite." You bothered to spell out everything else, even put in six periods for a pretty extreme ellipsis, but "to-" was too much.

"Take a moment of silence for my jakey today. He passed away one year ago today at noon."

I can take this in one of two ways. First, somebody's mourning their deceased pet, gone now a year. I can maybe understand that a little. I've loved pets, and mourned their loss. But for a living creature, I don't understand how it does your dear goldfish any honor in remembrance by compacting your sentiment into ~200 characters, no less mass-texting it to your friends, of which most could care less. If you cared that much, and you feel that bad, why not call somebody to talk about it? Why not engage in your emotions, rather than just force false sympathy by causing people's pockets to vibrate?

My outrage only deepens when I consider that "jakey" may be referencing a person. The text becomes a mockery of the person's life. It becomes the ever-so-taxing chore of remembering someone, and then reminding everyone that they should do the same. Degrading, I feel.

Yeah. I now realize I've written on this before, and that at this point I probably just sound preachy. "Everything you say is important!" screams Josh at the heavens. "Really?" answer back the passing clouds. I realize that we are not all poets. I realize that nobody really likes to read anymore. But if I sat atop the great Internet, watching all the texts and emails and Facebook messages and whatever flying by, what would I see? Well structure, informative sentences, with clear subjects and context? Or would I see noise, insipid notes without purpose or necessary response?

I guess I have to ask, before you say something, before you send something, before you say or write your first word, before you press the last button, ask yourself, "What am I saying? Why am I saying it? To whom am I saying it? And why?" It is an unreasonable request, I know, and I won't come close to claiming that I do the same for myself. But consider: what is important to you, truly important? And what do you have to say about it? And how do you distinguish between what is important in what you say from everything else?