When it comes to texting, even the tiniest thing can put me off. That’s the basic thing about me. There are a number of things I can condone with regards to texting and there are things that I would never understand or accept. I feel that ethics should be applied to all conversations, whether they’re online or offline. As long as you’re talking to me, talk to me in the right manner.
That’s just the basics of it. There are some that while they’re mildly irritating and I might never call you out on them, but it would still put me off even though I’d still keep chatting with you. However, there are those that will be done and I’ll simply ignore you. Because I can’t be teaching a grownup how to have a conversation.
One of my first peeves when it comes to texts is usually for first time someone chats me up and sends a simple “Hi”. I usually reply, but then they’ll follow up with “How are you?” If it’s someone that I don’t know at all, it usually puts me off. Usually, you should introduce yourself in the first sentence, so that the person will have an idea why you’re in his DM. By beating about the bush, they’ll only look at you as someone who has a lot of time on their hands and too little things to do with it.
Another annoying trait is people who shorten or simply distort words unnecessarily. Like “Sup”, “woeva” or “neva”. The more annoying ones are those where the substitute words without even shortening them; words like “boys” will be changed to “boiz/boix”, or “phone” being changed to “fone”. It’s annoying when you see that nothing much has changed or shortened. People simply do it for the fun of it. And in this age of auto-correct, you don’t have to know how to spell every word correctly, you don’t even have to spell it all out first. You start it and the keyboard will do the rest for you.
I can roll with “Lol”, “Hmm”, “Smh”, These words actually shorten what they represent and they can also tell a story, letting the reader know what the individual is feeling. Thankfully, with the use of emojis and stickers, there are so many ways we can express our feelings. Texting gives us the freedom to be ourselves and say what’s on our minds. We can also do that without the stress of in-person conversations. I enjoy a good chat, but I won’t enjoy it one bit if I always have to be decoding your words, trying to decipher what you wrote.
One more pet peeve that I dislike when it comes to chatting are those who don’t respond with my energy. My data is always on, so I’m always active. However, my phone is perpetually on vibration because of anything else and the phone will always be ringing off the hook. So far I’m with my phone and I can do it at the moment, I try my best to reply to texts the minute I get them. This is because I know myself, with the number of messages that come every day, if I skip one and other messages push it down, it might be a while before I get back to that particular message. As a result, I reply to messages immediately. But once I see that it starts giving the other person ideas, I back off at once.
One final annoyance for me is those who chat as if they’re trying to economize data and space. They reply with one word and don’t really put much into the conversation. You’ll be asking questions like a mumu and they’ll be hitting you with “Yeah”, “fine”, “Okay”. It’s always easy to leave such chats on read. This can also be annoying when the person is a client that I’m working with, it really sets me off in more ways than one.
No one can teach anyone how to chat. We all have a set of rules that we follow, it’s unique for every one of us. But then, when it comes to me, there are some things I can’t accept. I am perfectly okay with you chatting in pidgin, or in your local language. I’m even down for some slangs because where I’m from, slangs are a part of our daily routine. I guess that’s why I usually include them in my posts. Hehe…
However, I would only have issues when you purposely choose not to spell words correctly, or twist them in a way that makes no sense. Life is already hard, I can’t be stressing myself to decode the hieroglyph that you’ve been writing. Thankfully, many people write the right way for me, so it’s all good. While I might never call you out on your texting ethics, these things will definitely determine the way you and I relate.
