How YOU Doin'?

Imagine yourself in the following situation: You’re at a bar, dancing with a really good looking person and you want to somehow contact them at a later date.

Do you: a) Ask for their number
b) Get their email address
c) Find out their name so you can find (or creep) them on Facebook later

Oh how simple dating used to be. Way back when the way to contact a person would be through a phone call. Nowadays hardly anyone will give out their home phone number, if they even have a home phone. Technology has had an increasing role in the way that people date and maintain romantic relationships.
I got the idea for this post the other day when I was watching Gilmore Girls on CosmoTV. The station will show trivia at each commercial break and on this particular day it had something to do with using technology for dating. Whatever the fact was (because for the life of me I cannot remember) it made me think about how many people use different forms of technology to pick up.
I mentioned in a post a few weeks back about He’s Just Not That Into You and how Drew Barrymore’s character needed to check all sorts of technology just to try and get in touch with a guy she was interested in. It used to be that you would just check your answering machine and that would be that, but in today’s world, you have to make sure you’re always on the ball and checking any sort of communication device that you’ve got.
So back to my hypothetical situation: once you’ve finally gotten a hold of the hottie from the bar, what is the relationship like? I think that if you had gotten their phone number it would quickly become a lot more personal and you would better be able to see if there was a connection (one which is not influenced by alcohol). While emailing back and forth is more convenient, you could fire off a quick email asking for a supper date while at work; there is a certain something that is lost by not talking over the phone, and especially face to face. You lose the personal tone that comes along with each individual. This new person may be incredibly sarcastic but in an email he or she could come across as kind of mean. Now what about the Facebook option? By becoming friends on Facebook, that special someone can find out more about your hobbies, likes, dislikes, and what kinds of things you and your friends talk about. This could be a good thing because it’ll give you a starting point when you eventually get out on that first date, however, it could also prove to be detrimental because you realize that person from the bar loves their poodle a little too much.
A lot of people will use Facebook to keep updated on all their friends’ relationship statuses. Come on, admit it – you have been immediately curious when you see a change in one of your friend’s relationship status. Just recently I have been curious about why a friend from elementary school and his girlfriend broke up. There was another instance where another friend got rid of the part on the profile where it says single. He is still single but Facebook announces this on the home page that “so and so is no longer single.” Immediately people were asking him who the girl was. Similar occurrences last year led my boyfriend and I to screw with our friends’ heads. We decided to put both our relationship statuses as single and see what people had to say. It turns out that 1. we have a lot of great friends who were concerned about us and 2. way too many people believe what they see on Facebook. Even my roommates were wondering what was up, and I had seen them all just after I changed my status and was clearly fine.
So here you are at last call and are confronted with the possibility of never being able to see the dancing machine from the bar ever again. What are you going to do? You have so many options available to you thanks to technology’s advancements. But worry not, you have been spared this decision tonight – hottie from the bar turns out to have a significant other and they seem none to pleased with you being near their honeymuffin. This would be the time to bolt…and be glad that you never gave away your name, because you can be sure that you’d be the victim of some Facebook stalking. Joey seemed to have it so easy…

How much is too much?

What happened to the simple task of making a phone call? Or even writing a letter for that matter? Instead of a quick, easy, and efficient method of communication, our society (for the most part) prefers to use about six different types of technology to keep tabs on our friends and family. Drew Barrymore addresses this well in the trailer for the upcoming movie, He’s Just Not That Into You: “I had this guy leave me a voicemail at work, so I called him at home, and then he emailed me to my Blackberry, and so I texted to his cell. And now you just have to go around checking all these portals, just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It’s exhausting.” (Check out the YouTube clip for the full trailer, if you’re interested).
I suppose this is just a way that society is changing, but the question is, why? Why do we suddenly need so many different forms of technology? For me, it seems like things have gotten much more complicated in the four years I’ve been at university. I think it all started when one of my friends, who went to a different university, asked me, “Do you have Facebook?” I think I can pinpoint that seemingly innocent question to when I had too many technologies to look after. When I entered university, I was just getting used to having a cell phone (a graduation present), then along came Facebook. It was both a blessing and a curse. However, the marvel that is Facebook is a topic for another post at a later time. For now, I want to concentrate on how many different technologies we have to look after if we want to even think about having some semblance of a social life. When I am at school, I have to keep track of my home phone, cell phone, hotmail, school email, Facebook, and WebCT (for those of you who don’t know what that is, it is an internal site for our school where we can access some of our classes, and discuss with and message our classmates). Like Drew said, it really is exhausting. Yet I check many of those things several times a day. I have a roommate who doesn’t check any of her many technologies regularly (she has the same number as me) and it is actually frustrating to me, which is beyond ridiculous. There has been the occasional time where I have gone through all her emails and Facebook messages for her and acted as her secretary. Is this really the type of world we are coming to? I think my roommate actually has a firmer grasp on reality. Why should we feel compelled to check so many different types of technology several times daily? It is excessive and fairly absurd. However, this is the world we are now living in.
Technology is now such a big part of our lives (especially as a student) that we have a panic attack when our Internet stops working. We’re breeding a generation where the Internet and various other technologies are the be all, end all to their (our) world. What do you all think of how dependent we are on technology? I’ve got a mixed opinion about it. I am completely reliant on the Internet and my cell phone, but there are times when I wonder why on earth I care so much. This has been a bit of a rambling post, but my main point is that we have so many different types of technology to look after, and I don’t know if it is really necessary. Let me know what you all think! I’m really interested in finding out how many different types of technology you all use and how attached you are to them, whether you want to be or not. On that note, I will be signing off. Kstar is done philosophizing.

Special thanks to the article in the city magazine Will entitled, “do u c what i c & r u ok w it?: The (d)Evolution of Communication,” written by Derek Krismanich, which helped inspire this post.