hehe...haha

Hehe ... haha

by Bob on July 2, 2007

Communication on the internet can be mentally strenuous. It can be trite, deep, interesting, or a terrible crashing bore.

One of the more obstreperous things about these conversations is the shorthand language and radio-operator-like abbreviations used, for no particular reason as operators do on radio conversations. It's oddly impertinent. Someone writes something to another e-friend, using an "instant messenger", that he lost his shoe on the train and had to walk with one barefoot to the office. The highly probable typical response would be: "hehe" or "haha" or ":(" ... now that's really unimpressive from the responder. It shows how little is thought out on these e-parlances. I could say Louis XIV was the third base player for the Boston Red Sox and someone would like answer "hehe" or "haha" or ":)". Now, in this absurd case it might actually be okay for a terse response to an absurdity like Louis XIV being a baseball player for Boston. But I don't think it would matter what I said as the initiator. The receiver just isn't paying very much attention at all to what one is really writing. And not caring too very much conversationally.

It's like TV and the remote control clicker. The attention span for a typical program is very short and then, even before commercials come, after a very short while, the viewer will "click away" to another station. It's called "channel surfing". And it's driven TV producers and writers and stations crazy. They are being given a twenty second window of time until the viewer just automatically and behaviorally (like B.F. Skinnner or Ivan Pavlov would have thought) tunes away regardless of the material. It's like a nervous ingrained habit.

Another is the attention span on the internet with messaging. Some people are talking with twenty people at once on an instant messenger, which is really a bit much and overwhelming, except the person doesn't really get it. They just adjust their conversations to say very little to each person and use these internet slang abbreviations.

As Jim Morrison of The Doors said in their song "Horse Latitudes": "True sailing is dead". So, seemingly, is true and meaningful conversation.

The same is true for text messaging, cell phone conversations (who really cares whether we just passed 86th Street on the bus?), etc.

We have lost it. It, being, of course, the art of meaningful conversation.

Might as well be between two robots.

I'm remembering two songs in my head which seem relevant. "Comfortably Numb", a 1979 song by Pink Floyd, wherein the question is asked "Hello, is there anybody in there?". One wonders. Inside the head or in the world. And the album the song was from, was, ironically and appropriately enough, "The Wall". Yes, we have hit a brick wall in interpersonal communication, it seems.

The Scissor Sisters did an unusual and interesting cover of "Comortably Numb" in 2004. It was very camp and yet dripping with sarcasm. But an up-tune.

The other song was "Radar Love" by Golden Earring in 1973. It sings abour rather quite the opposite: a cosmic connection with no need for telephones. From the song:

"When she's lonely and the longing gets too much / She sends a cable comin' in from above / We don't need no phone at all / We've got a thing that's called radar love / We've got a wave in the air, radar love".

And we are not to forget that when we exclaim "hehe" as a subconsciously wicked giggle, the Hehe are actually an ethnic and linguistic group of people in South Central Tanzania who likely don't fancy the internet much for wisdom.

And let's not forget our William Blake. In his "Marriage of Heaven and Hell" written around 1790, he wrote that "If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro' narow chinks of his cavern.". Blake knew way about our time way in advnace of our time.

Dolphins have better conversations than we do these days. Maybe they always did. Okay, let's do it -- altogether now -- hehe. haha.