Saturday, June 24, 2006

The End of Electronic Ties

While I'm not inclined to cut ties with anyone, those who spend the least effort in connecting with me is undeniably the logical place to start. I have recently been taking stock of MSN . You might treat it as the natural development of my rejection of facebook not so long ago. In essence, what I am beginning to notice, is that inspite the vast size of my contact list, that I only really use it to talk to a handful of people on a regular basis, a total of which might number about 6. In addition to this there are about another 5 people who I infrequently talk to as well. To the greatest part, with just one exclusion, they amount to Hong Kong people who I went to school with or knew otherwise. Of my grand list perhaps 2 to 3 people feel inclined to begin contact with me.

I find it interesting that the usage numbers are so low, because in fact I have about a hundred odd people on my contact list, the majority of whom somehow at somepoint I needed to talk to, but the reality of the situation is that while we may be on each others lists, there is very little chance that we will ever talk to each other again.

What I should do with my contact list? Should I trim it down, and start removing people to give me greater clarity and ease in finding the people that I actually want to talk to? Should I start organizing by groups and hive of this elite batch so that I can focus on them to the exclusion of the others? And is this the right thing to do in the first place? Should I not be trying to talk to the people who I interacted with previously and renew our communications?

The last of the list above is particularly invidious as it sounds so benign and good, yet I know that in fact I have very little to say to these people and that our conversations usually are composed of inane banter and polite formalities, that do nothing but waste each other's time as we have no interest in each other and apparently little common interest. Afterall some of these people have been on my contact list for nearly half a decade, yet I can recall only sharing perhaps a dozen words with them, and my history attests to the same frugality of conversation.

I think this is interesting because people do react to the size of your contact list, they think it somehow impressive that someone has a hundred, five hundred or a thousand contacts, that they must be more socially superior then suspected and that they must be multi facetedly involved in something to meet all these people. The fact of the matter is that most of them reflect history rather then the present and I'd rather not have false impressions conveyed.

Perhaps the time is nigh when my contact list will have to suffer a great purge that will leave me feeling happy with it. Those who wish to speak to me will always have my contact, and they're obviously more then welcome, I just won't be initiating contact with them anymore.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm afraid my name will appear on the list of people who never initiates a conversation. It's not like I have nothing to say, but I'm always anxious that the conversation will be cut short because one of us is busy, or worse, we run out of topics after exchanging three sentences. I am a perfectionist, after all...

Anonymous said...

Hey mo!

thanks for your comment on my xanga! =) I dont know why im finding dune hard work.. It is really interesting and bratislav has nagged me to read it so I am and I will endeavour to finish it..
I think its the kind of book where you cant just read it through all in one go, there is so much to take in it can be a bit overwhelming perhapes..i found i was enjoying the book much more after leaving it for a day..
anyway, I will decide what I think of it after finishing the book! =)

with msn, i know what you mean, and i've been through and deleted contacts of ppl of whom i will never speak to.. mainly because theres was a limit to how many contacts that were allowed at one point and i somehow reached it.. I havent been online in aagges but I've put my contacts in groups which helps differentiate who you'd rather chat to kinda thing.. oh dear rambling now =P

hope alls well with you and will you be in HK this summer?

Fredel