Monday, April 9, 2012

The Email Generation Vs The Facebook Generation

There was a time when friendships and marriages broke up because someone read a letter meant for someone else. Many movies had plots where such letters land up in the wrong hands and much mischief or drama happens later. But those were the times when people communicated through letters (pieces of paper which we bought in a government office called Post Office and write on it complete with an address - to and from, which was hand delivered to the addressee). Those letters cost us money, sometimes even as high as 75 paise,  so we were all infinitely glad to know that someone called Sabeer Bhatia had invented a free mail service called hotmail.

Emails, and that too free emails, caught the fancy of all of us letter writers and we sent mails by the dozen, long and mushy to all and sundry, reveling in this free service. And then things started changing what with the advent of Skype and facebook and mobile phones and everyone was all the time connected to 500 people, all of whom who knew what was happening to all 500.

Anyway, recently I thought I'd communicate to a couple of friends and relatives by sending them some long, well meaning emails recently.. The response was cold. No reply. No answer. I shamelessly sent another mail asking them to reply. Again no response. No reply. It was as if they were ashamed of me and my backwardness. They did not even want to acknowledge my long well meaning mails. I thought that perhaps I could access them on facebook where they were showing up every day.

But it was meant to be a private message. I could send it through the facebook message service but even that is not much appreciated by my friends because few reply to those messages. The message to me (the perceived one) was that they chose deliberately not to respond to the email. It was almost as if they were saying - 'Hey you actually want me to respond to a private email? Where the hell are you from man? What about the people who would like to know what you said to me on facebook? No way am I getting into a private conversation with you - you weird creep.'

I am serious. There are at least five emails that are unanswered. It is as if I have committed a major goof up on this aspect of communicating. But whatever happens I not going to send that private message on facebook so many people will 'like' it. Maybe, you'd think, the need for nice, long communiques has gone now. Anyway I am going to try a few more mails before I give up on that.

2 comments:

Rajendra said...

I should give that a try and see what happens.

Harimohan said...

And Raja, let me know your findings too.