Alex Vaughn

There is no question communication has improved our lives. I am typing this from the W hotel on wifi provided by my cell phone. However have we overkilled? Do we rely on communication tools to avoid face to face communication? Would we rather tweet or post than actually have a real life conversation?

Think about it, last time you were in an awkward situation or were slightly bored on a date or in a bar did you not reach immediately for your phone?What did you do? Tweet? Facebook? Update a profile, check your messages on a dating site, send a Whatsapp or a BBM? The options are endless. We have no need to talk in person. We have no need to think about pages of words, just one sentence will do. Even email communication has been honed to one line. Sure its more efficient but it can lead to misunderstanding and in my opinion shows a lack of commitment to engaging in a conversation.

The negative side of this is that more and more people in the community are relying so heavily on communication. The other night I was in a bar with a friend who pointed out to me that the guy next to him was on Grindr checking guys out in the bar. He proceeded to message a guy who was 2ft away. The guy looked up and we watched them exchange messages from across the bar. At no point did either of them see the ridiculousness of this exchange, or the fact that due to communication they had forgotten how to exchange a conversation with each other!

One would think that due to so many dating sites like craigslist, adam4adam, manhunt and the like would serve to bring the community together, it does the opposite. If those who stay home and hook up online for all manner of things are the only ones then fine. You could then be sure the person you talk to in the bar is out to converse, to meet and to get and to get involved out of the cyber universe. However, thanks to apps on our cell phones that is not the case. You can have the best of both worlds but at what cost? Well if like the guys in the bar, you realise you can’t be as confident or as strong as you are online, there is a huge self-confidence issue to be addressed. Surely above it all, an intelligent and engaging conversation with eye contact and a smile is going to serve you better than 3 lines of a typed a la carte menu of what you want to do. Of course a hook up is one thing, many argue that that is easier to arrange online, however if you want a date, don’t rely on technology to get one, or worse to hide from the fear of actually going up to someone in a bar and saying hi.

I once had a friend go through a really messy break up, and he would go to the bars and try and forget the ex, but the ex was a bit of a master of communication and would burn up his phone with text messages and Facebook attacks. He perpetuated the issue by firing back a reply to every message. Tone and feeling don’t come through on a text, all you get is words. Those words tend to be as hurtful as possible. Why? Simply because it is so much easier to be cruel and unkind when you don’t have to see the damage you cause. In addition with new phones that you can type so easily on, you can rapid fire insults without a second thought. As we are so reliant on communication we rush through a message and form our own opinion. Picking and choosing which words to get irate about. In the case of my friend he was wasting so much time and heartache attached to his Blackberry that I told him to leave his phone in the car, he did and it changed his life. He enjoyed the bars again, he spoke with people, because he didn’t have the scorpion laden web of his exe’s messages to distract him from speaking with people in person.

It doesn’t stop there, emails are so easy to fire off and you don’t have to take the time to think about what you are saying, like you did when writing a letter. The recent spat between the Mayor Jack Seiler and Pridefest organiser Marc Hansen shows how easy it is to email first think second. In addition one is much more cutting in text and email then you would dare to be face to face.

In preparation for this piece I went out on Saturday night and left both my phones in the car. I won’t lie to you it was near on torture, every time I saw something funny I wanted to message one of my friends around the world, on one manner or other of the wealth of communication tools I have on my phone. I couldn’t. I wanted to take pictures, again not an option. What was I to do? I had no choice but to talk to people who were there. So I did. I can tell you now, it was truly liberating. I got to network, to laugh and to really understand people that I spoke to because I wasn’t constantly distracted with my phone buzzing in my pocket.

So what to do to get out of the communication trap? Give my little social experiment a go, leave your phone in your car when you go out to meet people or turn it on silent. The first time will be horrendous I promise, but after that, you will see you have to go the extra mile to engage someone and that is worth it. Communication is the key to any relationship, face to face, eye to eye, no matter what you say… a text can’t beat that!