Wednesday, January 28, 2009

Online Chating


As nerdy as it may sound, I love chatting online. This love started back when I was 15 and first became introduced to the internet. I quickly became engrossed in Instant Messenger (IM). Before IM I would spend 2-3 hours on the phone with friends till my ears were to hot to stand holding the phone anymore. Once IM came out my little 15 year old life changed. I could be talking to a friend on the phone and simultaneously talking to 3 or 4 friends on IM. It was brilliant. I loved coming home from school and logging on to hear that little bleep noise that means you have a message.

Pretty quickly I realized that I could type to more friends online if I lost the phone...So I stopped talking and began typing. Who knows what about. Random stuff. Sending each other smiley faces and hearts probably...Actually I don't know when the face icon came around so maybe I wasn't doing that from the begining... :)

When I was a sophmore in Highschool I wanted to take a typing class because I knew it would be an easy "A." IM gave me my keyboarding education. I would be talking to 10-15 people all at once telling them all stories and trying to keep up. Today I can type like 65 wpm consistently. Impressive I know.

Somewhere along the line IM died. I am not 100% sure but I think it is once facebook (FB) came out. IM turned into away messages and idle usernames. It became a ghost town. I think I was a spohmore in College before it really faded away. I love stalking people FB, but I am not gunna lie...I missed chatting with friends.

Recently, I switched e-mail address to gmail and discovered g-chat. It's good, but you can only chat with other people who have e-mail address with gmail. THEN, FB came out with Facebook Chat. It's wonderful. I am not on it to often but, everynow and then I will get to catch up with someone who I haven't spoke to in a really long time. Even though it isn't as personal as a phone call it get's the "stay-in-contact" job done.

Maybe I am being to impersonal and distant, but honestly I probably wouldn't ever talk on the phone to some of my friends that I FB chat with so I say it's better to type than to never talk. I am part of "generation y" what do you want from me?

True or false...i googled what generation I am in. Generation y aka The Net Generation, Millennials, Echo Boomers, and iGeneration.