By Tony Samson
CHAT GROUPS usually have a common bond. They are members of a civic club, homeowners’ association, alumni group, or family (one side of it). The chat is a way of keeping in touch, disseminating news (like meetings and required costumes), as well as sharing posts, which include homilies, jokes, cartoons, and fake news on prophecies of future eruptions and the spread of a virus — decimating half of the world’s population.
Is chatting the same as a conversation?
Before digital exchanges of thoughts and opinions, which is how a conversation is defined, there was the physical setting of being in the same room, taking turns to speak up — can we hear from the gentleman in the crimson cape?
Conversations in business conferences can involve strangers (Do you have a calling card?) and limited by proximity. The search for a familiar face can entail tearing out place cards from their taped positions and appropriating an empty seat in another table. (Sir, your number is the one near the washroom.) The randomly tabled conversation-mates may have little to say to each other, limiting themselves to small talk like the phase-out of jeepneys and the effect of the virus on cruise ships.
Corporate meetings are not conversations. There’s little give and take or jumping from one topic to another. Meetings involve an agenda and a series of presentations by designated resource speakers. Even the pre-meeting conversation over coffee is not as freewheeling as it looks. There may be some lobbying going on prior to a proposal to be taken up. The casual conversation ends abruptly — can we start the meeting?
The hierarchy for turn-taking is observed. The rule is simple: never interrupt someone who outranks you. (A client, even with a lowly rank, tops the service provider regardless of his exalted title.) When a CEO is talking, even if only commenting on the state of national badminton, lower life forms need to just listen, and continue patting butter on their soft rolls and nod.
Do status rules apply in chat groups?
The chat is a free-for-all forum. Anyone in the group can jump in and post without waiting for others to stop typing. There is no such thing as hogging a conversation as the posts can be as lengthy as they need to be (or do not need to be). They don’t have to be original thoughts and include opinions from the empire of fake news. They just pop up in sequence.
Everyone in the chat is part of the conversation. Woe to the one who forgets who’s in the thread and talks about that person thinking he is not part of the group. And opinions can be forwarded to others not in the group, especially personalities mentioned in passing or holding views being excoriated. Someone not in the group can jump and crash into a discussion.
What about offensive material? The capacity to be offended varies with each person. Praising one public figure too fulsomely may offend those who puke at the mention of his name. An online “word war” takes off. Cooler heads chime in or people just opt out and meditate on their belly buttons in private. (No videos please.)
Only for greetings on birthdays and occasions like People Power Day or Ash Wednesday does everyone chime in. The same goes for good wishes for ailing chat-mates — hope the lump in your groin is just a cellphone.
Unlike in real conversations where an offended party calls attention to himself when he huffily walks out, chatters simply exit without drama.
So, a chat is not quite a conversation. There are no clues on emotional impact and reactions in the body language. Squirming in the seat, cringing at somebody’s peroration, rolling of eyes, raising of eyebrows (just one or both), and simply being quiet when the conversation is in full throttle are missed out in the chat.
Somebody who hardly chimes in is still part of the chat group. He just has nothing to say or has had enough of the brown stuff being flung around in every direction. He can decide to stay clear or throw some of his own. Some consider it a sport.
Chats and conversations are the same in one aspect. They are easy to start as well as end. In both cases expletives are hard to delete or take back after they’ve been posted. In digital conversations, prolonged silence is called ghosting… and can be just as haunting.
Tony Samson is Chairman and CEO, TOUCH xda.
