Points of Praxis

My Blog Reflects on Visual Rhetorical Theory and Disability Rhetoric and their Connections to Classical and Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

So, my Spring Break has been pretty crappy thus far. I cut, I suppose you could say, a close friend out of my life this week. Without getting into the "this is why she's wrong" discussion (and, yes, she's wrong), I am reflecting tonight on the role of text messaging, email, and myspace in our technological universe. An entire friendship ended via text messaging, email, and myspace. (Not my choice, fyi, I think such issues are best resolved via person-to-person contact--that would be the "mature" thing to do, imo. Seems immature to "break up" with someone in fewer than 160 characters. I would think 2 years of friendship earns someone a walk to their house or quick phone call. Not the "fuck you" text message and email. But, I guess I'm wrong...)

Still, I'm reminded of the Seinfeld episode with the speed dial relationship barometer. I knew my friendship was in the toilet when I was surgically removed from her myspace life. Ahh, the rhetoric of the myspace friends list. We create these online "lives," so to speak, where we post up our favorite songs, pictures of our family and friends, silly quizzes that determine whether we're Rachel, Monica, or Chandler from Friends, and we post a list of our friends, specially our Top 8 friends. How do you know when it's time to delete your friends? And, I suppose your myspace life is over, in a way, when your strategically deleted from the Top 3 position.

I've never cut someone out of my life before--this is a first. But, exorcising someone from your life seems much more difficult than it might've in years past. There's the cell phone number, email address in the Address Book, the picture ID in the cell phone, the myspace friend list. I think I actually spent more time deleting her electronically from my life than she did trying to resolve the issue electronically.

It's not just, "I'm never going to talk to you, again." And, I suppose ending a friendship via technology isn't that far off since the relationship existed so much online. Like I said, I've never once cut a friend out of my life. I have friends that I don't correspond with as much as I would like to or should. That I'll admit. But, I've never referred to someone as an "ex" friend. Hell, my only ex- was my ex-husband. And, to have an ex-friend because someone didn't want to pick up the telephone or walk down to my house before assuming (erroneously) the worst--that's probably the hardest part. (Well, the name calling via email didn't help her case any either. Or, the "while you've been a loyal friend, you're still an enormous disappointment.") I think the adage that technology adds a "cold" or "distant" element to our interactions is very true. Perhaps, that's what bothers me the most. When I refused to discuss the matter further via text message and email, my friendship didn't even warrant a telephone call or walk 6 houses down. Technology is a cold mistress. And, I'd probably be sad if I weren't so freakin' pissed right now.

When do you know that it's time to "delete" a friend?

Myspace was my relationship barometer. It was the 'post-it note" of breakups.

posted by: rgregory at 01:46 | link | comments |

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