McCulloch's section on conversational timing got me thinking again about something that's been bouncing around in my head for a while: the millions of different of styles of instant messaging.
The most frequent place I DM is Discord. The most common way of chatting on Discord is rapid-fire, which each thought being its own line, or even breaking up one thought into many multiple messages so that the person/people reading can read it "as you go" and not just read a big block of text when you finally finish. It also allows for interjection. The downsides are that if you have notifications on, it can get pretty annoying. (The upside of this is that in group chats, at least, the notification can be set to true/false: there are either unread messages or not. You don't have to look down and see "unread messages: 137" or watch the number rapidly rise.)
But even though this rapid fire text might be common amongst Discord-savvy users, it's hardly the only form of "speech" around. Plenty of people will just compose everything they have to say into one message and send it like a text. This is especially common in heavily populated servers where the chat would be unreadable if everyone was talking rapid-fire.
One particularly interesting "dialect" a new friend of mine has is that she will type every separate response to the myriad things happening on different lines.... and then send that multi-line message as one message. It's an interesting blend of two different techniques that I've never seen anyone else use on Discord, but arguably must be popular somewhere, or she never would have picked it up.
I'm interested in learning more about this "style of messaging" on other services. I use Kakao and LINE, as well as regular texting, and find that both of these tend to be far less rapid-fire than Discord. I think it might be because people are always on their phone or mobile device for those, whereas Discord is often used on desktop/laptop, like ye olden days of AIM, Skype, IRC, etc. Do any of you use both computer-based and mobile-based instant messaging systems? If so, do you notice any difference in how quickly messages are sent, and how large/cohesive those messages tend to be?
As an answer to your first question, I have to say that I do not actively use any computer based chat systems, but I do use quite a few texting based messaging systems on my phone, such as the DM's for Twitter and Instagram as well as regular texting. When texting, I have seen people do similar rapid-fire ways of telling a story, and I myself tend to use the long block of text often. I have never seen anyone use the way your one friend uses, though. That sounds like a very unique way of responding to a series of messages.
ReplyDeleteIt seems wild to me, as I actually hate texting on my phone (my texting speed versus my typing speed... is pathetic. I only got a smart phone a few years ago, after all!), but I think more and more people your age (oh god I'm the crypt keeper) message primarily or even entirely through their phones as opposed to a desktop or laptop computer. It's really fascinating!
DeleteThis is an interesting subject! I don't know much about Discord at all and can't quite picture everything you've written about. (I blame me--it's been a long day and I am tired!--not you.)
ReplyDeleteI use Facebook messenger more than any other messaging platform. In one-on-one conversations, I might use big blocks of texts/returns, etc. The same is true when I am telling a story via text. Actual, real-time conversation, especially with multiple people chiming in, tends to result in me sending lines or shorter messages.
Interesting!
I thought about including screenshots, but as I quickly discovered, the realities of sharing direct messages online for class is! Not so straightforward! And if you ask someone to perform knowing that it's for a class, they act super weird, which was actually kind of funny to see since McCulloch talks so much about that.
DeleteThat's very interesting! I'm glad that other people find themselves "talking faster" in multi-person conversations. I feel like an interesting study could be done on that, if one could figure out the ethics of it.
Hmmm.. I wish you would've put a visual up so I could see this rapid fire thing your friend does. I'm trying to imagine it but I'm feelin' like a fish out of water over here! I haven't even loaded FB messenger on my phone and people stare at me like I'm crazy when they ask me if they can contact me that way. I do text, though, but we all know how that goes... I am intrigued by the different ways that people text, though. I have some friend that use no punctuation, whatsoever. Not because they don't know how to write, but just because they don't use it in text. I have friends that send separate lines or sentences (even I do that sometimes) as they write them and some who write long-winded answers to everything. It's interesting the different styles of messaging.
ReplyDelete