…And I don’t mean texting and driving, even though that’s like taking your hands off the wheel, having a staring contest with your crotch, and trying not to hit the nearest human being or Quizno’s. No, that’s you trying to kill yourself.
Beyond the literal sense, texts are using your own thumbs against you to attempt social homicide. Not in all instances, of course, but certainly in the most crucial ones. You’ve all been in this situation: you met someone last night and exchanged numbers. It’s the next day, and it’s a budding romance—the time post-first introduction but pre-first date, when your relationship is both unstable and exhilarating, its future uncertain, hanging in the balance. For many college students, the interactions during these moments may as well be a matter of life and death. Text and die.
Think this is dangerous? You can’t even imagine what’s happening off the road.
(Ladies, for the next several paragraphs, I am going into a locked room to address an all-male audience. Feel free to put an eye to the peephole and an ear to door.)
OK, gents: here’s the deal.
At a party an attractive girl is giving you good vibes and, despite the deafening synthesizer of “Party Rock Anthem,” the two of you maintain a short but enjoyable conversation. Lately, you’ve been “running through these hoes like Drano” (that LMFAO is so eloquent), but here’s a girl who catches your genuine interest. She gives you her number. A day or so later, what comes next? A text.
While the opportunity to proofread, devise a clever comment, and consult with your equally-clueless friends on how to strike the ever-elusive balance between seeming disinterested and desperate may seem like an advantage to texting, you’re actually pulling a Wizard of Oz: fabricating a manipulated, distorted version of yourself that exists only behind a screen, until some cute, innocent girl meets you in person and reveals you for the giant phony you are. Someone call a hot air balloon.
You can’t possibly get to know one another through texting, because your cyber self is not your real self: you don’t talk in emoticons (have you ever winked in real life?) or abbreviations (did her text really make you ROFL?) or intentionally juvenile punctuation (a comma? God forbid!). Even the smoothest of text dialogue doesn’t necessarily indicate chemistry or compatibility; all it proves is that you can regurgitate the 50-character quip you and your friends spent the last half hour devising and that your haywire autocorrect didn’t make you sound like a dyslexic creep.
Best-case scenario: you set up a date and meet her in person. After all that cautious, calculated texting, are you prepared to be thrust into the starring role of an improvisational play where you have to listen to her and, without a script, respond instantaneously with something interesting or funny or at least relevant? The good news is, despite your smartphone’s attempts to strip you of all human social skills, you’ve been rehearsing for this role your entire life. Picture the marquee: [Your Name Here] stars in Conversation.
I’m also convinced that texting is the masochist’s preferred means of communication. Imagine yourself as a five-year-old whose dated, browning Band-Aid needs removed. Like ripping the Band-Aid off your leg, a phone call is quick, decisive, and, in the moments waiting for her to answer, moderately painful for mere seconds. Or, if you’re feeling timorous and a bit irrational, you take the painful option and text. Over the course of hours you excruciatingly tear the Band-Aid off little by little, prolonging the self-imposed torture for what seems like an eternity. Of course, the relief of removing the Band-Aid (i.e., setting up a date) is the ultimate reward, but whether you attain it the easy way or hard way is your call (pun intended). Man up, boys.
You may describe texting as “convenient,” “efficient,” or “easy,” except here’s what generally happens when you a text a girl:
Text, wait, ask yourself if she received it, wait more, convince yourself she definitely received it, feel a vibration in your pocket, take out your phone and realize there wasn’t really a vibration in your pocket, wait more, ask yourself why she hasn’t responded, run through several dozen possibilities of why she hasn’t responded, convince yourself that she probably hasn’t received it, convince yourself she’s definitely received it and is purposely not responding, tell yourself that makes sense because she probably wasn’t that into you anyway, try to distract yourself by studying, give up immediately, wait more, feel a vibration in your pocket and ohmygod! because she texted back, read the text several times to interpret what she means, read the text aloud to a friend who also has no idea what she means, read the text to yourself in a variety of tones and inflections and with emphasis on different words, finally understand what she means, think of the perfect response, type your response but don’t send it because she took an hour to text you back, decide you have to wait at least twenty minutes before responding so you can pretend you haven’t just been sitting and waiting for her text, torture yourself for the next fifteen minutes waiting to text her back, second guess that she won’t find your seemingly perfect response funny, erase it, wait, third guess yourself, retype it, close your eyes (you can’t bear to watch!), press send. And, repeat.
Or, here’s what happens when you call:
Call. Answer. Talk.
(OK, ladies, I’ll leave the guys in there to mull it over. I’m back with you.)
I think the guys got the message, but who knows whether they’ll follow through—which is why I’m encouraging you to take the responsibility upon yourself.
In all likelihood, you are an intelligent, self-assured young woman who believes in gender equality and gender rights, right? And yet, so many young women accept the antiquated expectation that they’re not supposed to be proactive and assertive when it comes to guys. We’ve long since done away with so many social rituals and gender roles of the past—you can vote! you don’t have to be a secretary! your father won’t sell your hand in marriage in exchange for goats and barley!—and yet, so many college females feel it uncouth to take control of their romantic lives.
Challenge: if you are currently engaged in a texting conversation with someone of potential romantic interest, stop reading this article, pick up the phone, and call him.
If he has put himself through the aforementioned trials, tribulations, and trauma of texting, he’ll definitely be glad—relieved, even—to hear from you. Now, you’ve taken him off the emotional texting rollercoaster, roused him from sheepishness, and shown interest, which is bound to be reciprocated.
If he doesn’t answer, leave a message (very important), and ask him to call you back. If you call him, meet up, and find he’s not that great, then at least you know. If you call him, he pegs you as desperate and loses interest, then he wasn’t for you anyway. And, if you call him, meet up, and years later host an intimate destination wedding in the Poconos, you can thank me later. Just a text will do.
Source: http://tweakosx.com/index.php/2009/07/29/texting-dangerous-to-drivers-no-way/