Ubercool

The New Social Swim

August 14th, 2008

If you need any proof that our social dialog has changed, some say for the bad, you need look no further than a new service called Slydial, which allows you to leave a voicemail on a mobile phone user’s number (but not landline), while avoiding any direct interaction.

Slydial media coverage honed in on the subterfuge this particular approach to consumer interaction might entail, although most reporters acknowledged that Slydial would come in handy for breaking up, or other difficult communication tasks.

But Slydial is just another twist in a long line of technology solutions that since the early 70s have provided consumers with a convenient way to avoid contact. In 1971, Phonemate launched its model 400 answering machine. By the time voicemail caught on in the 80s, office workers were already well-versed in the habit of leaving messages at hours they knew no one would be able to answer the phone.

Today, the world revolves around social networking, which has ushered in its own set of social swim rules. How does one deal with curious ex-boyfriends or -girlfriends who poke their nose into your profile and make snide comments about your social life?

Or what is the proper etiquette for dealing with that endless stream of “friend” requests? And what should you, or should you not, write on someone’s “Funwall” to avoid any pretext? In fact, wasn’t “pretexting” a term that surfaced in that infamous HP boardroom spying case?

As the “Social Swim” movie used in the above video illustrates, things have changed markedly since the 40s or 50s. And our social networking-propelled human interaction is bound to change yet further as the rest of the world joins this pervasive trend.

The new social swim has engendered a set of definitions that now litter the pages of Wikipedia, like Social Engineering (computer security), which explains terms like “phishing” — the act of fraudulently obtaining information by parading as someone else.

And if you like to “phish” for rich people, it’s called “whaling” — revealing a streak of techie humor not lost on creative writers. Our dialog is evolving to keep pace with a fast-changing culture, much like such new terms as “rip off” popped up in the 70s, mirroring an anti-capitalist fervor that ruled society then.

But the changes in social articulation are not limited to words. The online chat revolution has brought an ingenious device that adds a new flavor to electronic conversations: emoticons, or “smileys” as they’re best known. As The New York Times reported a few weeks ago, the emoticon was first used by Carnegie Mellon University Professor Scott Fahlman in 1982.

A survey of 40,000 Yahoo! Messenger instant-message users discovered that 55% say they use emoticons every day, with nearly 40% of respondents noting they first discovered emoticons within the past five years. One has to feel sorry for that 45% that doesn’t use smileys often enough, or at all.

The emoticon after all is a very important human interaction tool. That’s why it’s surprising that the ultimate design control freak, Apple CEO Steven Jobs, has let the Mac community be encumbered by some of the ugliest smileys this side of MSN. He clearly belongs to that 45%.

Then there’s that other phenomenon. The one that has job applicants adding smileys to their correspondence, to the consternation and disapproval of job counselors. We say get used to it. Because if the evolution of our written dialog is any indication, thou hast no reason to refuse i wud ♥ to work 4u!! ;), lest thy wasteth away.

Just call it an acute case of contraantidisestablishmentarianism.

Entry Filed under: Lifestyle, Vocabulary