"Anything Yet?" :: Why We Don't Have to Give a Response (and aren't entitled to one, either)

Have you ever been on the street, in a grocery store, or in your house talking to someone? Yes, absolutely. And your dialogue goes back and forth, the conversation creating momentum and receiving its energy as it bounces off each other, correct? All the time! Have you ever been in that place with someone, having a great conversation, and then they walk on you while you’re still speaking? Or, the words have come out and you’re waiting for that return in vocabulary-candied breath and they just hop up and leave? When you looked that person in the face to say “Hi,” did they look at you and do nothing? 

No! That’s socially inappropriate, odd in most customs, and rude in all of them, regardless of the subscribed social etiquette. When we find words coming at us, we instantly look; even when we’re upset, someone addresses us and the smile pops up, masking our sadness and manipulating our emotions for a moment to forget we were. As humans, we’re even in tune to conversations we’re not even a part of, whether it’s listening while we’re idle or in the background of whatever we’re doing. 

But, we do look at people with static faces and try to get a reaction from a concrete face. Except these faces are made of pixels. All electronic communication today—texting, e-mail, social networking messages—gives the chance to take on a blank face and abstain from replying. When someone texts us, we have choices: reply right away, a minute later, two minutes later, hours later, days later, never, or any infinite variable in between. Sending a message other than verbal words doesn’t have the same immediacy that in-person talking always expects. Conversely, it’s what in person never allowed you to do: look in someone's face and not say anything.  Because the reality of in person is that you are forced to talk and confront them; you do owe someone a reaction, a response, an explanation.

In the advent of letter writing across courtships and friendships, I wonder if a girl experienced this same thing. Were marriages of ink and wood variables in vain? Was there no evidence that the correspondence she created ever existed? A lack of reply feels like an invalidation of your emotions, image, self, what you are to that person or what you want to be to them.  

My parents always joke about the 1980’s being “medieval” today when they only had the telephone and actually had to get together in person to talk. Even then, girls spilled crush news and guys broke up with girls through their friends (true story in my family tree). So, it’s seem like secondary messages are the real enemy across time. It’s how extensive and drastically technology today has changed our styles of communication and therefore, what we become conditioned to, think is acceptable and not, and overall, our lifestyles of living and carrying on relationships. 

I’m not here so much to condemn late replies (though I'm guilty of those and they become the bane of existence when it's with someone I like)—you actually reply. I'm talking about straight-up avoidance, silently leaving a conversation, or not acknowledging it in the first place.

How convenient have things become! To jump ship during difficult conversations, be absent for hearings of giving an explanation, to avoid people and their feelings by clicking a button and putting it out of sight. (Can I say how much I hate “Read Receipt?”)  

Growing up in this time, I’ve found that silence’s power isn’t benign—it hurts, too. I can sit and leave you wondering, running over hundreds of reasons why I won’t reply. I get to put my phone away, put up that barrier, and like unsuitable e-mails, it bounces back to you—except with companions of insecurity and confusion to confound you. I never have to know or see the questioning torrent I create in you. I don't have to hurt your feelings (directly); instead I can lead you on, because I don’t know what to do, I like having you, or I’m not sure if I want you. I leave my options open and keep my conscience clear. 

In 1961, Stanley Milgram, a psychologist at Yale University, began a series of experiments to see how far people would go to obey authority; this famously became known at the Milgram experiment. In this, subjects were ordered to inflict electrical shocks on people.  While his focus stemmed in questioning motives of accomplices in the Holocaust, his discoveries illuminated even more on the relationship between human beings. One thing he found was that the victim’s distance to the subject affected how willing they were to inflict pain; the percentage of those who compiled decreased as the subject giving the order came closer and closer to the “victim”: not seeing them, being in the same room, and having to do it themselves. I think of this in relation to our technology today as the secondary interface, whether texting or Facebook correspondence, because it’s impersonal, weakening our emotional attachment, sense of responsibility, and minimizing our capacity reconcile the words before us to a person like ourselves. When we’re farther away, we’re less in touch as we post, Tweet, and text because we don’t have the consequences to stand up and punch us in the face right there.  

In high school, I had a crush and while it never ended up panning out, thank goodness for his conduct: even if his messages weren’t what I wanted to hear, he always replied—and with the truth. Even saying it sounds so dated! But, I have always known where I stood with him; there was never any extraordinary need in discerning his texts, decoding the word count, reply time, and number of texts he sent to determine his emotions. His affection, availability, and eventual unavailability were clear. 

I hate when it's just a string of my blue bubbles or when it's me who text last. Until they reply (if they ever do), I’m standing out there like an idiot on a limb. Sometimes I wish “this” time was “that” one—where the only way to talk to someone was to get the guts and go talk to them. Going out there, willing to risk rejection in the most direct way…that is true bravery! Today, I find utter gratitude—and attraction—in guys who verbally make the first move. 

Truly, I’m so thankful for the communication that has kept me in contact with my girlfriends and gives me the allowance to meet new people! But, I can’t forget they are human beings—skin, bone, muscles, and nerves that type those typographic messages. These technologies have become a part of our lives, but, when we sit back, we are human and this is where we exist. And this is where I want someone to exist with me.