Are You One of Those People?

At this risk of making people mad at me, I will post this...

Are you one of those people that reads jokes forwarded to you, and laugh to yourself, and then continue on with your day? Are you one of those people that gets a link in your email or you are told to visit it, and you do, and then do nothing except keep it to yourself. Do you never respond to links, jokes, or other non-personal e-things?

You just think to yourself, 'Oh, that was neat.', or you laugh to yourself, or you think 'Ugh, weird.', never to let those comments reach anyone else's ears except your own? Do you not think it is odd that you do not respond to the person who sent you the e-link/message/joke? Do you think they are all rhetorical, and that you should not bother to send something in return, that they'll somehow think that you are thinking what you are thinking, that you subconsciously think they have some kind of ESP that can understand what you are thinking without them actually knowing, and so your need to respond to them in the physical world is not needed?

In reality, they never ever actually receive your thoughts of amusement, disgust, or impassiveness. They have no knowledge that you even opened the email. Does everyone live such jaded lives that they cannot bother with a simple response, that you mind-numbingly go on to the next email and revolve around your own little world? Yes, harsh words, especially when I am somewhat of a hypocrite, since I can answer yes to most all of the questions I asked in the couple paragraphs before this. Are people's lives are oh-so-busy that they cannot seem to spare a moment to acknowledge the person who sent them something or link to something of interest?

Let us take a personal example for instance. I sent out an email about a comedic explanation concerning quantum physics. I sent the email to 12 friends. I do not get a single response... not one. Wait, I take that back, I got one auto-response telling the person was out. Did each one look at the email and skip it? Did they even bother to open it? Heck if I know. Should I have written in the email, 'tell me what you thought'? I thought that it was courteous to respond to someone who was nice enough to share a bit of something they enjoyed. I guess my internet manners are set too high and I should not expect such things from friends.

Another example, I had a link in my Gmail status message to some pictures I took. I am pretty sure that many people saw the link and might even have clicked it. At the risk of sounding high-minded (or is it too late?), I can say that those pictures were damn cool and that I am sure that others thought they were damn cool too. In the nearly five days it has been online (almost all day and night), only one single person has said anything. You know how happy it made me? You probably do. When someone acknowledges something you are proud of, something you spent considerable amount of effort on, that is the feeling I got when that person told me the pictures were damn cool. Of course, some people might have thought to themselves that the pictures were damn cool, but I do not have ESP, so I have no clue what they thought.

Perhaps those two examples were fuel for this blog, but they were mearly the catalyst for something that has occurred to me for quite some time, that people do not thing it is worth their time to respond to a friend.

No, it is not like I want everyone to be like; 'that was super cool' (super is said with a French accent, pronounced sue-pair), but a comment here and there is surely appreciated, and I am sure that when you send out something that is funny or weird or interesting, that you would like some kind of acknowledgment of appreciation too.

So next time you get an email from someone or a forward, perhaps you should try and respond with a comment that takes you less than ten seconds to compose and send out. You will make that person a little happier for actually responding to them, I mean, they are friends after all. If you remain impersonal to them, you will drift apart when you no longer see them after they have left for jobs not near you. That excuse for being too busy sure wears thin after the umpteenth time of hearing it. Where it may be true, you surely are not always too busy.

Respond to emails, you will be surprised on how far a response, that takes less than a minute to send out, will go.

I am sure to have raised the ire of my friends, but I am trying to say something that encompasses not only me, please remember that.

Ciao for now
-K