Ping, Don’t Ring!

We all have that one friend who hates to pick up the phone and talk, right? That friend who will reply to whatsapp messages and fB messages instantly, but hates to talk on the phone. Ha, you won’t believe it, but that’s me these days! My friends who have stuck around for years would refuse to believe it, but the more mature ones seem to understand this new little behavior of mine, strangely because they too seem to have metamorphosed into this Hate to talk to anyone, at anytime, for any reason kind of person! And if you have already labelled me as an introvert, darling, please don’t assume just yet.

It looks like all this started when the world was introduced to WhatsApp. No, I am not playing the blame game here. Lets do a bit of flashback and take out the thinking cap. What really is the need to make a call? To talk! Wrong. To communicate! Now, ever since WhatsApp came into being and became the most widely used tool for messaging with Facebook and Snapchat following the lead, most users realized that there was a way to communicate with people without having to talk.  Tada! It did not take long for people to understand that this whole chat or ping mode was more efficient, less time consuming and quicker! Let’s just accept the fact that for the next generation that we are raising, phones will be how snail mail and newspapers are to us (no offense- snail mail is dying and so are newspapers).

Coming back to why I don’t use the phone to talk much and mind you during my childhood days, my dad was forced to pull out the detailed telephone bill to see why his bills were so high. Well, my brother was to be blamed then, but I had my share too. So, these days everything from family updates to birthday wishes, news to service requests

are in the form of messages. People talk lesser and lesser and the device which was invented to help people converse, is being used these days to do anything but that. Earlier, I would run next door and ask the aunty next door whatever information I wanted and run back home. These days, I have had chats on the phone with neighbors I have hardly ever seen face to face! When weddings were fixed way back in the pre-whatsapp era, couples would talk for hours together on the phone and these days most people type away into the night.  That said, I must spare a moment to acknowledge people who still like to hang from their phones for hours on end, talking, talking, talking, dissecting every little detail, discussing every issue with complete disregard about what is happening around them or whether the world stopped spinning on its axis. Thankfully, not everyone is afflicted with my strange illness.

Now, there is one more reason behind this trend, if you ask me. Look, when you talk on the phone or directly for that matter, there’s a chance that the person on the other end of the line may have an opinion regarding what you are saying and also the chances of conflicts and arguments are higher. Chats and pings too come with their own problems. People tend to read tones on messages depending on their take of the situation or conversation in hand. All said and done, the reason I do not like talking on the phone much is still a mystery. I can pick up and talk to random people. I mean, that is my job and I have to live with it. Now, if it is someone I know or used to know and all that, it is just weird. I find my insides screaming- don’t ring, just ping!

Well, no matter how technologically advanced we are, for every app that promises to save you a call, there’s a situation that requires one. So the psychologist in me knows  that I do not have social anxiety as I am an extrovert and otherwise perfectly fine with social interactions.  I just have a weird deep-seated fear of making or receiving a call with known people and that, I will someday, get to the bottom off.

Until then