Conversation: Hamming it up

Don't ask why, but I recently watched a video interview of a professional screenwriter, giving tips for how to write good scripts. Shocking, I know.

Anyways, he made a great point about how the Internet and social networking in particular have really hurt the art of human conversation. Of the top-rated films of all time, most were shot prior to the Internet revolution. His idea is that a lot of the conversational nuances that make for interesting film dialog just aren't easily communicated online. When we don't exercise those speaking skills, they're lost, and microdevolution sets in (you heard it here first).

I don't know about you guys, but I find that I spend a large amount of time on Facebook, IM, e-mail, and other online social tools. When I started, I paid really close attention to punctuation, spelling, grammar, and all those other nit-picky items that have been pounded into our heads from antiquity. As time progressed, I found myself paying less and less attention to these niceties (hey, if few people use them on Facebook, why should I?). Add acronyms and emoticons to my pile of iniquity, and you end up with conversations like:

01:30 PM - Me: hey!

01:35 PM - Friend: wazzup? 

01:55 PM - Me: not much, sry about missing your IM

01:55 PM - friend signed off

01:56 PM - Me: oops, well, ttyl. :-P

Now that's what I call a productive conversation. I'd say the language is definitely a few notches above Neanderthal, though it probably falls a bit short of true English. It seems that, if it's really important we talk with someone, that more could be accomplished by talking in person, or taking the time to formulate our thoughts and write an e-mail. I enjoy social networking as much as the next person, but constant connectedness doesn't always seem to translate into deeper or more meaningful conversations.

I've always been one to say that fresh air is overrated, but considering where we've come from, and where we're headed as a culture, more fresh air might be the ticket to mental sanity. Also, building on yesterday's post, if we become more effective communicators, we might circumvent a lot of relational problems that turn us into withering globs of helpless human matter. Just a thought.