Texting the Wrong Person

Friends,

When I was young, a popular question to throw around in a social group setting was, "What's your most embarrassing story?" I've heard some real doozies, ranging from vocal failures to walking failures to bladder failures. (If you want to know mine, just ask-- but I'll warn you now, it literally involves an Asian massage parlor.)

But technology has evolved, and thus so has embarrassment. 'Communication' used to mean face-to-face talk, landline phones, or even written letters. Now we have Facebook, texting, and tweets (which could, I guess, be viewed as 140-character typed 'letters' to the whole world).

In short, there are so many new and exciting ways to make yourself feel like an idiot.

Text at your own risk
Side effects include blushing, apologies, isolation, tears, and unfulfilled pledges to never again use technology

As communication becomes more public, instantaneous, and permanent, mistakes become more costly. And perhaps no mistake is funnier (depending, of course, on whether or not you're part of the story) than the phone contact mix-up.

Here are a few categories of 'mistexts' and some possible solutions. When possible, I've included real stories, though in almost all cases I changed the names.


1. You're so vain, you probably think this text is about you. Oh wait, it is.

Yeah, pretty long title for a category of text. This is when you write a text about someone and accidentally send it to that person instead of the intended recipient. This is probably due to the fact that you typed the text before entering the recipient. Thus, the person's name is on your mind when you absently enter the (wrong) recipient.

Examples:
Joe -> Sally
"Dude, I have no idea how to break up with Sally... she's not going to take it well!"

Jane -> Bill
"When will Bill get the picture that I'm NOT INTERESTED in him?!"

Solution:
Always, always establish the recipient of the text before you type its content. Then, if there's anything remotely sensitive in the text, double-check the name before clicking Send.


2. Same name, different person

This texting faux pas exists because we live, just to take the good old U.S. of A. as an example, in a country of over 300 million people with only about 5,000 commonly used first names. [Fun fact: by a generalization of the pigeonhole principle, there must be at least one first name shared by over 60,000 people.]

Irrelevant counting arguments aside, we all know a bunch of Jo(h)ns and Sara(h)s. This makes it all too easy to text the wrong person.

Examples:
My ex-girlfriend's sister texting me [instead of some 'Jon'] excitedly that my ex just got engaged.

My (different) ex-girlfriend's mom calling me while trying to reach her daughter's new boyfriend [also named 'Jon'].

Yeah. Ouch.

Solution:
Use last names in your cell phone. It's so obvious.


3. Texts of Vice

I have no experience with either drunk texting or 'sexting'. But just imagine what happens when you combine alcohol or sex with error #1 or #2 above. That just cranks the awkwardness amp up to 11.

Examples:
Um, I'm pretty much going to let you use your imagination. But think of this-- even if you send this stuff to the right person, it's still probably going to be embarrassing someday. And unlike a regrettable memory, which fades with time, texts are basically around forever.

Solution:
Stop it.



Leave a comment
but don't text it

Have you been on either end of an awkward texting error?

Do you have any good texting tales?

What's your most embarrassing story?

Jon

Don't text while driving or while making an important relational decision

Friends,

Before I start in on this topic, I have about a million disclaimers to make.  A few of them include the facts that:

- I love facebook
- I love my iPhone and its sundry features
- I check my email all the time (in fact, too many times)
- There's no actual recent example of texting (etc.) that is motivating this blog post, so no need to be paranoid or suspicious (unless you broke up with me in 8th grade via a note; you know who you are)
- I'm not writing this from some moral high ground.  I'm writing it from a cocoon of blogging, texting, and emailing from which I rarely emerge

So don't read this as an attack on technology or social media.  I'm not one of those oldfangled people griping about how smartphones and the internet have robbed us of face-to-face interactions with each other.  I'll never advocate a long-term abandonment of facebook in order to free up more time for, um... honestly, I'm not even sure what else there is in life. 

And yet, and yet...


The evils of written text
I was torn between "sundry" and "divers" in that last section, but I was worried you might think I meant "more than one diver"

There are just some things [apologies, confrontations, break-ups, rejections, and the like] that need to be communicated in person.  Or, if not that, over Skype.  In the absence of physical presence or video chatting, some form of telephone.  But don't write it down.  Don't ever write it down.

The problem is, written communication, in which you don't have to look a person in the eye, is just so much easier.  And that, of course, is why we do it.  In the face of something potentially scary or nerve-racking or unpleasant, we'd much rather communicate the words without actually saying them.

The problem with that problem is, people have dignity that demands personal, actual communication. When you need to make one of these communications, I think it's a pretty simple cost-benefit analysis:

the other person's need to be dignified as a human vs. my desire to be comfortable and/or save face

And honestly, I think it pretty much comes down to how selfish we are in that moment.

In sixth grade, it was easier to ask out girls in a note instead of in person or on the phone.  So we sometimes did it that way.  It must have been much, much easier for those girls to break up with us in a note, too.  Because they often did it that way.  In high school, when we were too old for notes but before texting had been invented, we sent our friends to tell people we were mad at them, or else did it over AIM.  In college, we left a note that said, "Dishes!" on the sink.

The only thing we didn't do was make meaningful noises with our mouths to the actual people involved.

And now, in the information age, we have many more weapons in our talk-dodging arsenal.  We've graduated from wide-ruled notebook paper and post-its to texts, emails, and Facebook messages.  But the dilemma is the same, and so is the solution.

Look the person in the eye.


Please comment (ironically in written text form)
But there's no dilemma, unless you're planning on breaking up with me via a blog comment

Do you struggle with this communication dilemma?

Have you been hurt by a text that should have been a meeting? 

Am I making all of this up?

Jon