Piousbox

Someone just sent me 10 messages, each 1 word in length, and I got pretty upset about it. Yet at the same time, I got pro-active and decided to explain to that person why I don't allow such empty messages in my communication. She thankfully understood my position, so I kept her as a friend.

It's the same reason I don't check instagram. If you send me 5 empty messages, subconsciously I may think it is 5 times more important than if you send one message. But all your messages were empty. So you created a sense of urgency without a reason. Now everyone else who talks to me, has to appear equally urgent, otherwise they will be drowned out by fake-urgent empty messages. It destroys culture. Robots do it even more: the majority of communication you receive is automated, it's not meant for you. Most messages you receive are broadcasts: to an audience of thousands. And most of those, are automated. I am against that, I need to live in a real world, not a fake tv commercial.

My phone does it too! I don't allow my phone to ring. It messages me when it's low battery? It messages me when it stopped charging?! I found someone's phone left in a bathroom, looked at their notifications, and *all* of them were automated: a dating site suggests who to message (but that person didn't initiate it), what stocks to look at, some game reminders... none of it was from humans, none of it was real. People marry their phones, people marry facebook, and quit reality. In usa its worse, noone cares about any human, only about automated messages from dumb robots. And I specifically hate it, and I struggle every day against it.

And then, people send each other nonsensical things like "?" and not only expect the counter party to read their minds, but to arrive at and *take* some specific expected action! And when that doesn't happen, instead of negotiating a compromise, they quit talking, maybe block the user, and further quit reality. You see, the computer never disagrees with you, it never argues. It's always amicable, unlike the real world. So no wonder people get addicted to this sugar and try to avoid reality with its real things were it's not always confetti falling from the sky at a press of a button.

In reality, you have to spend an effort. Maybe you'd have to match the effort someone else is spending - in a conversation, in a relationship, in a business deal. How much effort did you spend writing that single question mark "?" character as a particular message? What if I spend the same amount of effort on communicating back to you - where will that go?

Lately, I've been implementing the personal policy of generating content rather than consuming it. I have spent too much time - hours, days, months - watching youtube or reading news, and it seems that it's counter-productive: watching youtube is addictive, yet it brings me nothing. After consuming information for hours, I am left with only more addiction to the same. I think it makes me non-productive, to consume so much information. If you consume information, you do not produce it. You do not produce anything. And production, industriousness, is value. And value can be converted to money - but consumption, really can't, consumption is not useful or valuable. (And even if consumption may be useful to centralist economists, it is not useful to you.)

And that is why I don't allow empty chatter in messaging. Because it kill culture and destroys reality.