Has Conversation Died?

[Lil devils x_v1legacy]

I am one of those that LOATHE texting, facebook and honestly, I hate people emailing me and I really hate people expecting me to check my email daily. I find those things extremely irritating. Not because I don't enjoy talking to people, I would just prefer a face to face converastion or at least voice. I honestly really have no interest in having old school mates contacting me out of the blue, and even worse is when they are just as creepy as they were when they were in school and have not matured beyond that.

As for those assuming that people simply "only care about themselves" I don't see that to be true at all either, I mean the same people that may have no interest in gossiping about old school mates or getting overly involved with a childhood aquaintence may also be spending the majority of their time volunteering at homeless shelters, working in an ER saving lives, or charging into burning buildings to save their neighbors, it is just they do not value idle conversation with someone that isn't very close to them, or there is a reason they stopped talking to you and did not include you in their life.

Many have "moved on" and are not the same person they were when you knew them. They may have bad memories, or bad feelings towards that part of their life and "closed that book" and started a new one. Not everyone wants to include all the characters from their previous books in their new one. They become a new person, and surround themselves with people who share their beliefs/ ideals rather than hold on to ones from the past.

I can say though I probably did not respond in the most cordial manner when approached even in person 5 years later by the guy who used to staple his knee in class and had a crush on me. The farther he stayed away from me the better. LOL

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I've had good friends who I still keep in touch with, best friends from high school who turned out to be jackasses who talked tons of shit behind my back, people who hated me in my younger years turn out to be pretty cool people once they grew up and realized their jackassery, and friends I thought I was cool with but I actually burned bridges with that they never told me.
Chances are your problem is possibly the last one. Some people may get pissy about something they'll never tell you about and cut you off as a friend. I'd say though in five years if you haven't talked to them at all or seen them they probably have moved on or don't give a rats ass about you.
I have plenty of people who were deluding themselves that I was their friend (even though I made it a point to be obvious I didn't like them... apparently "Fuck off and die" isn't english) some who STILL think I'm a friend when I don't ever talk to them or want to. Just don't like them and want to keep them out of my life.

 

[Froggy Slayer]

I'm an introvert but I actually do enjoy conversation; especially one-on-one. However, I find it difficult to initiate conversation; I feel awkward and am worried about a 'why are you talking to/messaging me?' situation cropping up.

Hell, there's a lot of time when I've wanted to have conversations with people on here and have been too worried about them thinking 'AHWHATKINDOFAWEIRDOAREYOUSTOPTALKINGTOME'.

 

[Mersadeon]

What happened to you is kinda understandable. If you meet someone on the street you haven't seen for years, you might start a quick conversation, but if one of you doesn't want to talk, nothing else will happen. In the online world, however, everyone is always reachable. So if someone messages you without reason, when you haven't talked to that person in a long time, it's kind of hard to telegraph that you are not interested in conversation.

 

[Foolery]

Is conversation dead? Absolutely. For me anyway. Rarely heard from any 'friends' in well over a year.
I've always been more of an in-person type of person anyway. I've also come to realize I don't really have any friends aside from my brother and immediate family. Just acquaintances. And not even very good ones, at that.
I've no use for facebook, twitter, etc. Email, skype, steam, or a phone-call is enough for me.

 

[FalloutJack]

Conversation hasn't died, but human intellect has taken a blow. Facebook is a bane of humanity.

 

[The Wykydtron]

I'll be honest . I have no idea how to carry a conversation . None whatsoever . And my speechcraft skill drops 20 points if the person i'm talking to is female . Is conversations dead? I don't know , but I am sure i'm not helping disprove that idea . I'm Asocial and hate talking to people , even ones i know.

O-oh well, i-if that's how you really f-feel then... I THOUGHT WE HAD SOMETHING SPECIAL KRAZY! UWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAA~ T_T

OT: I don't even have a Facebook page, I never really had any friends outside of my main three at school so following god knows how many "acquaintances" online is a tad silly. Srsly, I would rather forget 80-90% of the people from my school.

I have found a bunch of (totally awesome) Internet friends but we all seem to have come from some no Facebook nether realm, except one who finds joy in fighting all the egocentric assholes having silly arguments on the damn thing with pure logic and clear minded reasoning.

It infuriates the ragers pretty fuckin' hard. Angry people + logic = more intense rage.

 

[Realitycrash]

Conversation hasn't died, but human intellect has taken a blow. Facebook is a bane of humanity.

Oh, hardly. It's just that with easy access to attention and anonymity encourage platitudes and shallow comments.

 

[Juste Goose]

I'll talk for HOURS face to face, but any sort of message/text will either get a once sentence reply or an 'ignore.' I just hate messaging. I've been "offline" on Facebook for three years.

I don't know why I hate text-based conversations so much. I guess it's just a lack of tone, facial expressions, and body language. Plus people are less likely to treat you as a person, more likely to treat you as a line of text. I doubt your friend would have said "why are you talking to me?" in real life...

 

[MammothBlade]

No. Definitely not. You're just hanging out with the wrong people. Some people are just blunt and/or distracted by other things.

As for real life, well, I can't say really, if someone is just dull and does not like to talk at all, then that's their problem.

 

[FalloutJack]

Conversation hasn't died, but human intellect has taken a blow. Facebook is a bane of humanity.

Oh, hardly. It's just that with easy access to attention and anonymity encourage platitudes and shallow comments.

Wait... Your position is contrary, but your statement could be interpretted in my favor. Could you expand on that one a bit?

 

[Realitycrash]

Conversation hasn't died, but human intellect has taken a blow. Facebook is a bane of humanity.

Oh, hardly. It's just that with easy access to attention and anonymity encourage platitudes and shallow comments.

Wait... Your position is contrary, but your statement could be interpretted in my favor. Could you expand on that one a bit?

'Human intellect' hasn't taken a blow by the rise of Facebook or Social Media, we are all as smart and well-educated (if not more) about current events and knowledge in general as we have ever been.
However, social media also allows us to become 'distracted' with our basic urges in a far direct manner. Need attention? Post a pic/vague comment. Want to feel like you belong? Post Shallow-platitude in a discussion, or even just press the 'like' button.
You have to take the good with the bad. Social Media is still a new thing, and in a few decades, people might get used to it. Maybe it will evolve into something better.

 

[FalloutJack]

Whish!

Or maybe it'll just get highly-addictive like WoW. I see where you're going with this. I just have a more cynical view on the matter. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

[Altorin]

Social Media is a strange beast. I always feel strange adding old school friends to my circles, and I never talk to them. If they started talking to me, I'd probably be pretty uncomfortable.. But I'm a bit of a recluse. The fact that we have access to so many people sort of twerks our perceptions.

I don't think "conversation" has died, but if you can't answer the question "Why are you talking to me?" then you're not really having a conversation. You're initiating small talk with a person who isn't used to having random now-strangers from their past dropping in on them.

That might seem strange if you use Facebook or other Social Media frequently to talk to people - most people don't. They use them as personal sounding boards. They use them to keep in contact with family and close friends. Even if they've added you as a friend doesn't mean they even want to talk to you, as strange as that may sound. Maybe they added a bunch of old school chums because they were feeling nostalgic at some point. Or they felt silly having 5 friends. Or many other reasons. It's important to not take these sorts of things personally though.

The thing to always remember about the internet is everyone comes at it from a different place, and utilizes it in a different way. I had somewhat of an epiphany in that area when I realized that my closest friend keeps a vast catalogued list of bookmarks for websites, that he's been keeping for years. I do not use even a single bookmark in the old sense of the world (I utilize the bookmark bars to keep uptodate with various sites), whereas he had thousands. We see eye to eye on almost everything, but when he entered the internet as a child, he started amassing bookmarks. I did not.

Social Media is sort of the same. I have a cousin who I'm pretty sure only uses facebook to Like various pictures of 80's subjects, and my mother primarily uses it for her various Farm games. I use it just as a place to put thoughts that occur to me, and others use it only to plan parties.

One of the side effects of this is that occasionally, you'll find people who just completely view the pasttime of social networking in a different light to you, and it leads to those sorts of embarrassing moments.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

I feel that this is appropriate:


I feel that conversation is harder to get out of people as of late, with the advent of twitter and such, we have brought everyone closer together, but also distanced ourselves from each other.

It's also very relative: I enjoy spending time with someone if I have a debate/conversation about something, a discussion if you may: I actively try to get them to argue with me about something(yes, I have read that Cracked article, but I still find debate intrinsically fun).

I feel that a discussion, a set of opinions communicating with each other is as close to conversation as we can get nowadays, but a discussion about the state of the world makes me feel weird, as I realise how much of a pretentious wanker I sound like.

In closing, people are more hesitant to have a conversation, but it is not dead, just harder to draw out(and it is also extremely relative: my mother has incredibly long conversations with her friends regularly, be it when we visit them or when she's on skype, and she would certainly say that conversation is not dead).