'Hmm-ing' Birds!

belongs to rightful creator

I have many chatting friends, thanks to social media, fanfiction and this blog, I have made friends who exchange emails with me on various topics we enjoy passions for. Few of them exchange skype id and some trust me with phone numbers and we end up chatting in the greatest invention of our century- WhatsAap. I as an individual have created a web of virtual relations, where I have met haters, fellow queers, crazy otakus, geeks, philosophers and gossipmongers too! I have created countless harmless bonds which are both productive and educating.

Among these unknown friends, I have been talking to certain someone for few weeks now. Talking to that person has made my mind tickle, a thought has sprouted in my head that though we have various means to communicate now, our communication has become short, to the point, precise and fragmented. They and I we often come to a screen zone where we are stuck at a ‘smileie’ or ‘hmm’.  A frozen space where our fingers move in slow motion and mind works in other time frame where this small hmm and emocation keeps the thread alive. That person calls it small talk I call it running out of words.

That person is not the only one who endures the small talk with me, but each of us, the children of virtual world have faced this silence where you can see the person is online, invisible eyes blinking for your reply and you have no words for them. Now days saying goodnight has become tough too, you are online but want to end talk with certain friend and chat with someone else, but a psychological war happens before we type the bye!  It’s frustrating!

Derek Haines in his blog complained about this form of virtual communication, a critical and satiric piece published in his blog three years back. His complain was the very same, that we are more connected but far apart. He brings example of his family, on how he talks to his eldest daughter through mails and chat. My mother complains about how my reply on WhatsAap are becoming shorter with every passing day. I used to reply yes to her long questions, now I have shifted to 'yo' and to her its horrifying! 

Instead of a call we type a message and send it like we dropping a letter in the letterbox without much attachment. Only here our messages are too short and broken. It’s a place where you has become u, though has become thou, D for thee and the best examples are emocations, before we used alphabets and numerical to illustrate our feelings, now we just select emojis and send stickers to show our feelings!

I who can rant in this blog for ages, debate on tweeter in 140 characters, writes fanfiction to marry her favourtie characters, I can type long status updates on Facebook. And that me who has been certified talkative since her first day at school has often run out of topics to chat upon, rather type on. From my perspective it’s a crisis! Its bloody crisis of the world!

We begin with a hello, oh no not even hello, that’s a greeting of an ancient time where our elder siblings belong, a ‘hi’ may be is what we type, after chatting for fifteen minutes we end up in an ‘hmm’.

We become hmming birds! in every five minutes! Again we start at a topic and again we stop, a cycle of typing, seeing and being online. Hope, frustration, irritation, anger and hope again! 

After that there is silence on the screen and darkness in our mind! And we keep wondering whether it should be an emocation in reply or a longer 'hmmmm' next. 

P.S- But what lies beyond the hmming?

thanking you to bear with me

paulOaries.