Communication breakdown
It wasn't until well into my teenage years that I developed the ability to hold up a semi-decent conversation with my peers or societal elders. This was back in the 1990s, too - a decade of such economic and social renaissance that it left no corner of the world untouched. It was while I was mastering this thing called conversation, with all its behavioural and linguistic dynamics, that I came across something which, on the face of it, looked as though it might revolutionise conversation altogether. And no, although I'm Irish I don't mean alcohol. It was the internet, the WWW, but more specifically the internet chatroom, the bulletin board, the 'forum'.
To me, a struggling conversationalist, this seemed like a tête-à-tête nirvana, a place where I could have digital discussions with supermodels in Hollywood and literary critics in London. Anything was possible and I have to say that I was there waiting, on the crest of this coaxial contoured wave, to jump in and swim in the sea of the information superhighway. It wasn't until I jumped in, however, that I noticed that I didn't just have problems swimming here but also getting to the surface again. This online ocean wasn't just an alien place but one ill-suited to my real-life breathing lungs. I needed O2, but all I found was zeros and ones.
I first flirted with these chatrooms and bulletin boards back around 1995, when I made my maiden voyage to the teenage melting pot of college. I was a computer programming student back then so I saw nothing wrong in this experimentation. My first couple of forays onto these chatrooms yielded marginal successes. I 'met' people online, I 'spoke' to them, they 'spoke' back and so it went on. I couldn't help think that there was something missing from this dialogue, however.
I trawled the sticky fibres of the World Wide Web looking for new places to go, to meet people like me. This I did, pretty much for my entire first year at college, resulting in my overwhelming failure of the course 8 months later. I repeated, not just the course but also the same treks online, but this time I went about it differently.
The summer at home had given me time to think about what I had been doing online for the last 8 months. I talked it over with friends, one of whom was also a computer student. We spoke during kickabouts in the park, over pints in the pub, whilst engaging in bouts of Mario Kart on my Nintendo. And the answer was simple: this online discussion that takes place on the forums and bulletin boards of the web is vapid and insipid, a one-dimensional parody of communication in the real world.
It is covert and illusory; its protagonists hiding behind icons and keyboards, oft making themselves out to be far-flung imaginings of whom they really are. Real world dynamics such as appearance, vocalisation, body language and gesture are alien concepts. It is a languid means of communication, for those too indolent to make the effort of talking in the here-and-now. It was when I happened upon this revelation that I recoiled in horror from what I had been doing all along. I had been watering down my intellect, my personability, to reach the lowest common denominator of the average internet orator.
After this epiphany, and when I returned to college again, my incursions onto the internet went from being interactive and immersive to being experimental and distant. I wanted to divorce this surrogate online family and yet still be able to use the facilities it offered. It was from that point that I simply used the internet to get information, turning my back on the pseudo-conversations that were taking place all around me. It wasn't hard; there was no background hubbub of conversation to blank out, no peels of laughter or blusters of emotional outburst to ignore.
My weaning off from the internet didn't take as long as I'd predicted, what with having a somewhat addictive personality; it was more a matter of hours than days or weeks. When exposed to the cold light of day, or even the halogen illumination of a windowless computer lab, the internet as a means of communication falls flat on its Interface. How is it possible to compare talking to a beautiful girl on the internet to talking to her in a café – where is the smell of her perfume or the twinkle of her eyes? Where are the laughs (ROFL) or the smiles :-)?
But this lack of presence is the least of its inadequacies – the more sinister reality is that it can easily become a substitute for real conversation. Don't believe me? Then just take a look online and check out how many of these internet forums and bulletin boards there are in existence. Back in the mid-90s, when I began to explore this new frontier, there were only a few hundred of these places but now they have cropped up in their thousands. There are whole communities of like-minded (excuse the oxymoron) individuals choosing a 'handle' and sticking their oar into this river of regression.
I have heard some advocates for these forums say that they can facilitate communication between people with, perhaps, low self-esteem or high self-consciousness, but I think this is as farcical as it is patronising. I fail to see how this insipid, lacklustre excuse for communication can engender communication skills in people who might lack them for whatever reason. That is dangerous logic; trying to coerce people into using these sites and forums in the shoddy belief that they will somehow nurture a tangible personality that can be used in the real world. Want my opinion? Go to the pub or a café with your friends instead. A few coffees a month costs less than a broadband connection too.
Only time will tell whether such forums or bulletin boards will become even more engrained in the communication mishmash of the new millennium. I, for one, will not be availing of their services any time soon however. Take away the pollution and the smog, the yobs and the chavs, traffic congestion and incompetent governments and the world isn't such a bad place. Somehow I don't think a mass retreat to the world of the internet will solve any of the contemporary problems in the world today. If it makes you feel safe though, go, but just don't expect me to be there a mouse-click away. I'll be here breathing smog, drinking caffeine and crossing gridlocked roads, but at least I'll be living.
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