The Me In Media

TEXTS & SMILEYS⚘✾

 Getting a hang of the social virtuality, a lot of hilarious things happened to me.

Oftentimes, I chatted loudly; while typing, I mouthed the things I typed. Normal or freakish?

Other times, I would type long texts or record a lengthy voice note, only to have it all wiped out at the end; due to a poor connection or a slight mishap. It freaked me out!

And other times, I listened countless of times to the voice message people sent to me like they had said something so special, meanwhile it could have just been that I adored their voice.

I was also fond of decreasing my phone's brightness when my parents came around. Wouldn't want them peeking into my chats. I wasn't guilty of any immoral deed online as it may have seemed, but I just wasn't comfortable with people going through my chats, not even Remi.

I sat to recall when I and my mom would hang around in the supermarket or mall and at every sight of a teenager, they'd be with their gadget, glued to it. It fascinated me and on the other hand, it irritated my mother.

I would stare at anyone engrossed in their gadget in deep wonder like, "What's going on in there anyway?"

I saw a lot of people abbreviate their words and think it was cool. I hated it. At first I thought I could follow along but then, I realized it was just really dopey.

Remi also tried to make me understand that, "I'm fine, HBU?" was a lot different from "I'm fyn, hw abt u?"

He made me understand that people who did that needed to check themselves and improve more on their writing skills and English skills because "Irrespective of almost anything being accepted on social media, no one wants to chat with one who can't use words, alphabets or punctuations correctly, except your kind, cause it may give the impression that you're not intellectually sound."

There was something about me being conscious of people's mistakes while texting. And I as well was careful enough not to misspell a word or use the wrong punctuation while texting just to prove myself—that I was intellectually sound and smart. My keyboard's autocorrect did a great job as well and backed me up.

Remi then gave me some tips on how to roll on this absorbing media that's social; how to make posts and how to initiate conversations.

I didn't think that was necessary though. The guy just really loved enlightening me on completely everything!

"Learning to make conversations online is really crucial," he said. "When you are virtual friends with someone, especially one you don't know, there are certain ways to approach the person and spice up your convo even though you haven't met."

He proceeded, "truth is, some people don't just know how to make or keep up conversations online even when they know whom they are chatting with-that is, even when they've had a physical contact with whom they are chatting with, they still don't have an idea of how to engage in convos. So here's what's what."

He continued, "First things first: GREETINGS; You can begin with 'hi' or 'hey' or 'hello' or 'howdy' or 'yo'—just simple and short. Such matters when starting up a conversation. So, if your virtual friend turns out to be the one who texted first with any of those words of greeting, you're not meant to give a simple response such as any of those greetings and then stop there. That is, if someone gives you a 'Hey there,' and you choose to reply with a 'hi,' you shouldn't just stop there, awaiting the person's next next response, 'cause that'll be the start to making your chat boring. It's actually meant to be them saying a word of greeting and you responding with a word of greeting AND a question. So it's going to be them saying probably 'hi,' and you saying something like 'Hey, what's up?'—a question in addition."