From The Age M-Magazine:
My tweet surrender
February 6, 2011
Is it possible to communicate effectively for a day without actually speaking? We asked three Melburnians to try it out.
We've all heard people bemoaning the decline of communication (and civility, for that matter) because of social media - "Don't people talk to each other any more?" is a common refrain. So M decided to take the idea to the extreme: we set three people the task of communicating only via texting and social media for an entire day, to see how feasible it is to conduct daily life without speaking to another person. And although the results were amusing, those who fear the End of Civilisation As We Know It might be heartened by them, too.
SAMMY J, Comedian
Hi, you've called Sammy J. I'm not allowed to talk today, but please send me a text message and we'll take it from there.
It's 8.15am and I've just sealed my fate, staring down the barrel of a day without speech. The observant reader will note that by recording this message I've already failed my own challenge, but let's not start out on a negative.
I'm feeling pretty good about the day ahead. My penchant for yabbering is matched only by my history of commitment to ridiculous experiments, like when I gave up chocolate in year 9, or when I stared unnervingly at a colleague on a plane for more than an hour. Both events lost me friends, but today I'm determined to escape unscathed.
My wife bids me farewell as she leaves for work and I offer a cheery silent wave from the sofa. For a second I glimpse in her eyes the deep, mournful mix of pity and regret that comes from marrying a self-employed comedian - then the door closes behind her, and it's time to put some undies on.
The morning continues in a frighteningly normal fashion. By 10am I've cleared my inbox, updated my Facebook status and sent/received 13 texts. Four of these are from my father who's spotted a federal MP at a local restaurant, giving him an early lead in our annual Pollie Watch contest. The remaining messages cover topics as diverse as the surprising quality of Disney's Tangled, and whether James can lend me his 1987 keytar to use in a show.
Then, at 10.38am, the phone rings. I watch it vibrate on my desk, battling the urge to answer. Not to worry, I tell myself. It's just Richard. He'll hear the message and text me if it's urgent. The phone stops ringing. Long pause. He's calling me again. Oh dear. I only have myself to blame. My previous voice greeting announced that I had Hillary Clinton on the other line and would the caller please keep it snappy, so it's no wonder he doesn't believe the message. Still, I'm in this for the long haul, so I text him and explain that I can't talk today but that he could contact me on Facebook. No response. I am dead to Richard.
At 11am, Heath McIvor arrives at my place. He is better known as Randy the purple puppet, with whom I've had the privilege of working these past few years, and we're in the guts of production for our new show, Bin Night. I've worded him up about today's experiment, so we've agreed to set up our laptops and discuss the budget via instant messaging. This is a bad idea. Within seconds we are each sneaking ridiculous items into the budget and waiting to see how long it takes the other to notice. Heath inserts $450 to cover anal bleaching of the puppets; I budget $2000 for Guy Sebastian to nibble on our toes between scenes. An unproductive meeting.
Having a PO box gets me out of the house and makes me feel like it's the 1940s; best 70 bucks I ever spent.
At 2pm there is a notice to collect a parcel. I line up, smile and point to the notice. I have a good rapport with this lady and she seems bemused by my silence. I'm attempting to look shy and friendly, but instead appear rude and dismissive. There will be no friendly banter today. I'll explain myself next visit.
By late afternoon I've missed a few more calls, and most people have willingly followed up with a text message. My responses are becoming incoherent as I apologise for not answering, explain this experiment and attend to the reason for their call all within the space of 160 characters. This is not enough for Derek - who is recording the music for our show and needs to know what we mean by "ship-to-shore style nautical vibe" - so the conversation spills online where I try to source examples from YouTube. By now I'm quite relieved we're not talking on the phone; if we were, I suspect he would politely inform me that he's a very busy man who doesn't have time for this shit.
My wife arrives home. She is much enjoying the ability to say whatever she likes without fear of rebuttal, and proposes we make it a permanent arrangement. I assure her via text that this will not be the case.
The verdict? What started as a curiosity in the morning became a complication by lunchtime, a nuisance by the afternoon and a shackle by the time I went to bed. I may not have much to say, but I'll be damned if the digital age stops me from saying it any time soon.
CAL WILSON, Comedian
I can still remember, back in the mists of time, when the first of my friends got a (gasp) mobile. How we mocked her. Whenever she'd take a call, we'd all fall silent and watch her with judgy eyes as she said things like, "I'm walking up the stairs, isn't that amazing?" and "I know, I'm totally outside on the street". Then we all bought toy mobiles, and every time she got a call we'd whip them out and pretend we had calls too. A month later, I got a real one and I've had one glued to my ear ever since.
It was the same with texting. I remember using this exact phrase: "Text? Why would you text someone
when you can just speak to them?" Now I have giant overdeveloped thumbs and can SMS 400 words a minute.
Facebook is another new addiction, but my true love is Twitter. I mocked it early on, high-fiving my friend Dave who said, "Facebook is a conversation, Twitter is an idiot standing on a chair shouting", but, like any good romance, the one you start out hating is the one you end up loving. At this point, Twitter is crushing me to its manly chest, covering me in burning kisses and I'm having its baby. Now, while I think I've made the
point that I love Twitter, I was dubious about the practicality of interacting solely through social media for a whole day.
My 20-month-old son was exempt from this, which was lucky, because he refuses to tweet and he hates Facebook. As most of our conversations involve lots of enthusiastic repetition on both our parts (Him: "Door! Door!" Me: "Yes, it's a door!" Him "Dooooor!" Me: "That's right! A door!") it wouldn't be like cheating anyway.
But when to do it? I kept putting it off (rather ironically, as my Melbourne Comedy Festival Show is called The Great Intender and is about procrastination). Not Wednesday; we were flying back from New Zealand - what if a customs officer wanted to question me and all I did was Facebook him? Status update: Cal Wilson now knows what an internal examination feels like. Lol.
Then, Thursday, my husband had laser eye surgery (@CalsHusband: CAN YOU READ THIS OK, SQUINTY?) Friday, I had an audition. Again, actually speaking seemed prudent. Saturday looked like it was going to work. Husband and son had stayed with the grandparents overnight while I was auditioning in Sydney, so it was ideal just to text to say I'd pick them up. Then I got petrol: as I live in Sunshine (Melbourne's premier "Punchline Suburb"), our petrol station is totally pre-pay. I couldn't just fill the tank, then mutely wave money at the nice lady behind the counter. I contemplated texting my husband to tell him to ring me so I could hand the phone over and he could tell the nice lady that I wanted 50 bucks of unleaded, but frankly it was 8.39am, and I don't think any of us were ready for that. I bailed and used my actual voice to ask for petrol, feeling cheap and ashamed.
Picking up the boys, I addressed all comments to my son, and his father just eavesdropped. I then texted the husband while next to him in the car, suggesting brunch, then once at the cafe, successfully Facebooked him my order.
And then we tried to have a conversation on Twitter, which was tedious and impractical. Not to mention obsolete: at one point husband tweeted "watch out he's spilling his milk" followed by "too late". It must have looked pretty bad, both of us sitting there texting furiously while seemingly ignoring each other, with the child left to his own devices, eating scrambled eggs with his hands and putting his eggy fork into someone else's coffee.
Afterwards, while putting my son to bed, I Facebooked his dad to get WoofWoof and Duckie, and a friend immediately commented, "Can you two keep your sexy foreplay talk to yourselves please?" Then came the trickiest part of the day - the phone interview I was doing with the boys from Talking Poofy (Adam Richard, Scott Brennan and Toby Sullivan) for their podcast. I'd texted beforehand to say that while they could speak to me, I would be tweeting my answers, and that to make it easier, I also had a pig noise for "yes" and a sheep noise for "no" (thank you, son's cuddly toys).
The phone rang. "Oink-Oink. Oink-Oink," I answered. Was I really not going to talk? "Baaaaaaaaaaa." And so it went on. The guys would ask a question, oinking or bleating appropriately, I would type furiously, and a few seconds later, one of them would read out my answer. The delay between thought, tweet and reading out destroyed any sort of timing and transformed jokes into non-sequiturs, which became bizarrely funny.
And then after such triumph, I flubbed it: I was so chuffed at how the interview had gone that I went and told my husband all about it before I realised what I was doing.
Overall, the experiment left me feeling like a 15-year-old girl who won't get off her phone, and resulted in a swath of messages from Facebook friends and Twitter followers asking if I had been hacked, lightly concussed or taken ill.
Clearly, social networking is unsatisfactory for face-to-face encounters, but after the oddly successful interview, I would say you can conduct your life on Facebook and Twitter, provided you have animal noises for backup.
MIC LOOBY, Writer
At first glance I liked the look of this challenge. Finally, a legitimate excuse to ignore the real world. I pictured a day of lounging at home, tapping idly at a keyboard, ignoring ringing phones, absenting myself from domestic dramas and generally doing what everyone assumes freelance writers do for a living anyway.
If I got peckish, I had official permission to order in food from some cyber-savvy restaurant. If I got lonely, I'd trade witticisms with my online friends. But in the name of science and bravado, I thought I'd better get out of the house.
In retrospect, it was foolish to assume free Wi-Fi flows like tap water. The two places I knew of, a cafe and a bar, were both shut. Apparently, technophile hipsters in my area don't rise until at least midday. A search on my phone insisted a fast-food family restaurant was the only other nearby source. But even I have my standards.
Then I remembered the local library. Saved, by a building dedicated to old-world papery communication. Again I was tempted to stay put. I was in a public place, I had free internet at my fingertips and being unable to converse didn't seem to offend any of the crazy people sitting nearby.
But a meeting with my unsuspecting publisher beckoned. On my way, I texted him to say he was part of a social media experiment and that we wouldn't be able to talk in the old-fashioned way. I also asked him to order me a coffee, since I wouldn't be able to ask for one myself. The single word he chose to respond with was not very social.
Mercifully, a coffee was waiting for me when I arrived, along with one scowling publisher and a message on my phone telling me that if I'd been one second longer he would have left. I emailed my apologies. He fired back, correcting a wayward apostrophe in my previous message. We swapped silent sentences, prodding at our phones, which were almost touching across the table. As conversations go, it was hard work. Although I did learn that my publisher's two-year-old daughter had spoken her first full sentence that morning. Hyped on technology, I told him she probably should be Facebooking by now. My publisher responded by leaving. It was going to be a long day.
Without an intermediary, even a grumpy one, relying on social media in the real world can be awkward. Something as simple as paying for a coffee involves a degree of guilt. Unless, of course, you like being a tool. Banned from real-world niceties, I had to ignore the cheery greeting of the staff at the cafe register. I pretended to be checking my phone as I handed over my money. I think I got away with it. Which suggests that being an utter knob is socially acceptable as long as you're engrossed in your own little digital world.
For my next move, I consulted my people. Having asked my Twitter followers (all 439 of them, not that I'm counting) for thoughts on how I might spend the day, I expected a barrage of bright ideas. I got one response, from an old friend. I declined his suggestion that I Skype my own prostate check-up.
Another errand presented itself. My driver's licence needed renewing and online bureaucracy suddenly seemed appealing. But to update my photo ID, the VicRoads website insisted I front up in person. Couldn't I send in a jpeg straight from my phone? What sort of antiquated outfit was this?
Busy checking emails on my phone, I was almost run down by a courier van outside the licence renewal office. I wanted to yell but remembered my social network vows. The courier company's website address loomed on the side of the van, but instant access was a little tricky. I considered asking the driver if I might friend him on Facebook so I could post a message on his wall along the lines of YOU NEARLY KILLED ME, YOU IDIOT! But the moment had passed.
I still wanted to scream though. Combining real and virtual worlds was all very well on my own terms, but this mute, extremist version was getting to me. Besides, my phone needed charging and my laptop seemed to be getting heavier by the minute.
An urgent communique arrived as I skulked home. It was from my spouse, who'd been away battling a heatwave and our two small children. "Have lost the will to parent," she wrote. Funnily enough, kiddie bedtime was no more problematic than usual. Which made me realise just how often we get by without traditional verbal communication.
Our reward was Thai takeaway, ordered online. I found myself tipping generously to make up for not saying hello, thank you or goodbye to the delivery man. As the sun set I messaged my poor exhausted beloved, asking her to pass the remote. We'd survived another day. Too easy.
Source: http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/my-tweet-surrender-20110205-1ahpt.html
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