I Can See You’re Unsure of Your Thoughts
July 23rd, 2005
If a tree falls in the forest without anyone hearing it — does it actually make a sound?
The answer of course, over time, has never been answered — but instead I have a better question that we actually can answer. A question related to the ever burgeoning communication circus called IM’ing. And that question, as eloquently as I can pose it, is this:
If an Instant Message is typed, then erased before you ever press return, does the person who was supposed to get that message know that you changed your mind?
The answer is a resounding, YES.
WIth a variety of these IM programs these days (from AOL, ICQ, MSN, Adium, iChat, et al) they’ve added a unique little feature. A cool little tool that shows when your buddy that you’re talking to is typing. It’s the equivalent of someone, in a face to face conversation, opening their mouth then deciding otherwise. In the real world situation you’d probably say, “What? What were you going to say?” In the digital version of the same scenario, you probably type nothing.
But not me.
I am the King of determining what you were going to say by just watching the little typewriter icon go on and off as you type, delete, re-type, delete, re-think, re-type, erase, and then sit there quietly as if you were never going to type something at all. I watch the rhythm, I pay attention to the length of time you’ve typed, and I can usually figure out if it was a throwaway line like “Yeah, heh” or an actual pressing question that ends in a question mark.
If I tell you I’m going away on vacation and then I see your little icon type type type type, pause, then type type type type and then nothing — you were obviously going to ask me where, until you realized I mentioned above that I was going to Vegas. Not wanting to look stupid, you erased the whole damn thing. Then silence. Then, to cover yourself — a “Heh, cool” pops up.
You have just been caught again by the King of identifying the Once-Typed, Then Erased Silly Little IM message.
No matter who you are and no matter what you aren’t saying, I know what you’re not typing. I know what jokes you’ve erased, I know what possibly-insulting thoughts you’ve kept to yourself and I know what almost-embarassing come-ons you’ve left off the digital window after typing it, thinking about it, and then deciding otherwise.
I can see you’re unsure of your thoughts, and I know you’ve just deleted them.
Don’t let this scare you off, of course. Don’t let it cause you to feel like Big Brother is watching. Don’t let this affect your sense of humor or your over-usage of the smiley face. Don’t let this make you curl up into a ball in the corner of your 100 degree summer weather and cry uncontrollably while repeating the phrase “he knows, there’s no escape” over and over and over again.
Just know that I can see your thoughts, even as you’re typing them, and I know when you erase them.
That’s a little less scary than saying “I’m Watching You”, which if this was an IM conversation, I would have already typed…deleted…and replaced with a “Heh, yeah.”
Heh. I’ve encountered this before. Often someone I’m IM-ing will start typing, but will not press Enter, causing the bar to read “So-and-So has entered text.” If they take too long trying to decide whether or not to make what they have typed known, I usually say “spit it out.” Then there is some general confusion, but it is well worth it.
Comment by Will — July 23, 2005 @ 8:49 am
Awesome. So true. I wish there was a way to see all of the deleted attempts at comments on a weblog too!
Comment by shane — July 23, 2005 @ 9:05 am
What do you think that preview feature at the bottom of these comments does, Shane? I know everything anyone has ever started to type and deleted!!
Muhaha.
I wish. That would be cool.
Comment by Pauly D — July 23, 2005 @ 9:07 am
this reminds me of our last IM conversation…but I do hope you couldnt read my mind all those times I erased!
Comment by sarah — July 23, 2005 @ 9:57 am
don’t think we aren’t watching/reading/knowing your thoughts as well, PD.
Comment by kristine — July 23, 2005 @ 10:36 am
I’m definitely never setting up a webcam with you around.
Comment by Neil — July 23, 2005 @ 11:21 am
Oh, my God! You should read what I’m thinking!!
Comment by nic — July 23, 2005 @ 1:41 pm
“If a tree falls in the forest without anyone hearing it — does it actually make a sound?”
That old chestnut! The answer, of course, is “It depends what you mean by ’sound’.”
In any case, as Hume pointed out, we’re incapable of really believing that it doesn’t, so it’s not really worth worrying about anyway.
Comment by Ben Eastaugh — July 23, 2005 @ 4:25 pm
It goes the other way around too.
I use the same trick to make the other person uncomfortable. I did this once while IM’ing a college buddy of mine two days before his wedding. We were talking about how grateful he was to have me as a friend, but always wondered why we never dated.
I thought it would be cool to type type type type…then stop…then type type type type some more…then put out a simple smiley.
I wasn’t really typing my thoughts and just decided to delete and just give him a smiley. What I was really typing was: “the quick brown fox jumped over the fence…”
It would’ve been a lot more fun if he had a webcam.
Comment by leese — July 23, 2005 @ 5:07 pm
I do that as well. Sometimes you know that the person is a “hunt and peck” typer, like my fiance. It takes forever for him to type something. I thought I was the only one who did that. (Well, not really.)
Thanks for visiting my site, by the way.
Comment by ginger — July 23, 2005 @ 6:20 pm
good thing you can’t do that trick with comments, King.
Comment by anonymous city girl — July 23, 2005 @ 6:31 pm
i don’t know if anyone’s told you this, but you can actually fix that. i’m anal about this type of stuff so i’ve disabled the function that allows others to see when i’m typing. in aim, go to options, privacy and unclick the “allows users to see when i’m typing a response.” i have yet to figure out how to do this in msn…
Comment by ppprmntmonkey — July 24, 2005 @ 1:20 am
Oh crap, I DO THAT ALL THE TIME. Type stuff and then decide it’s not worth typing and delete it, that is. I do the same thing with emails, although sometimes I’ll actually write a load of crap and then later say “I just wrote a load of crap that I could delete but I’ll just leave it.”
I hate it when people just write “Heh, cool,” at least if they started chatting with me. How do I reply to that? “Uh, yeah.” “Yup.” “Uh huh.” “Mmhm.” I probably just end up deleting all that stuff anyway, making the other person wonder what I was going to say.
Comment by Robyn — July 24, 2005 @ 5:26 pm
I always thought the answer to the tree thing was “yes”. Of course it makes a sound - just because nobody’s there to hear it doesn’t mean that all of a sudden it became soundless.
And I know the typing preview at the messenger shows my every move. When I see that someone’s typing a message I often wait before I start typing something back. Then it disappears and I want to ask them what they were gonna say.
Comment by jafer — July 25, 2005 @ 7:39 am
I use Trillian to run all my IM programs and most times the settings I originally set up on AIM, Yahoo and MSN don’t react the same way in Trillian, so I ‘m sure I’m one of those folks you can see typing and deleting. lol My fave program to chat on is ICQ since you can see what the person is typing, typos and all. And yes I am an over-abuser of the smiley face I know. lol
Comment by groovebunny — July 25, 2005 @ 11:27 pm
Came by way of Prochein Amy and I couldn’t agree more. I like having that feature, if anything, to see if the person is even “there” or if they’ve spaced out.
Comment by Becky — July 26, 2005 @ 6:15 pm