IM communication – linear or non-linear?
I know that thinking about how people communicate bores the crap out of most people, but I find it totally fascinating. This is an aggregate set of ideas here, I am not referring to any individual person.
I am most interested, at this second, in the differences between how people use I.M. For some, it is a linear narrative that must not be broken. And some people handle many threads, all together, as a unit.
When I am writing with the latter people (who probably grew up with the TV and radio on while talking on the phone, like I did), I lay out my thoughts as they occur, and generally our discussions splinter and join – A given response does not necessarily go with what immediately preceded it.
With the former, I notice two types of responses. Some people continually reform the conversation into a linear discussion. If they are writing about something and a second topic is interjected, they will erase what they are writing and follow that up, and return to the original topic in some classical fashion. Others either ignore the interjection or completely give up on topics because they were ‘over-run’, following only the thread most visible.
I think this sort of thing is awesome. I freely admit that when I think someone prefers a linear discussion, and will erase their response to my last comment if I diverge… I’ll hold back from sending my IM until they send theirs. I don’t really think about it, I just find myself waiting until their typing finishes and the line shows, and then hit enter.
I remember talking with SysOps in the days of the BBS (or PCAnywhere’s Split-screen chat), and how different that was. Because you could see every letter (and every mistake) as-it-happened, not only did there seem less desire to remain linear, but it was impossible to reform the conversation into something completely linear – your text and theirs were literally separate, and a one-sided conversation makes no sense.
How do you use IM? Do you prefer to keep multiple ideas going at once, or to follow one at a time, or something entirely different? How do you react or adjust to people who do it differently from you?
I am definitely in the second category. At times, I’ll have two, possibly three threads going on in a single IM conversation with a person. It just seems normal to me, an extension of the idea that I can be talking with four people at once. It may be happening in a single chat box, but it doesn’t mean that one conversation is less valid than another.
Most of my online peers seem capable of the same. My mother had difficulty adjusting to IM. At first, she would write long, complete messages and sign them “love Mom”, every time, as if it were e-mail. Eventually she dropped that in favor of something closer to a phone conversation.
On the other hand, my best friend in high school (and he still sometimes does this) could not complete sentences without hitting enter when he was excited about telling me something. Four words, ENTER, two words, ENTER, seven words, ENTER, “AND” ENTER, “AND!” ENTER, etc.
*chuckle* I have, on rare occasion, used enter in the same way someone might. emphasis. with. periods.
Both very modern, as far as I am aware, methods of emphasis, at least as far as everyday (non-poetry) language is concerned.
When I’m talking with one person, I tend to do a combination of both, depending on how focused the conversation seems to need to be. If, perhaps, that particular topic seems to be closing, and there’s a pause, and I say, “So, how about this [new thing]?”, then they hit enter, and are clearly continuing the conversation, I weave back to the subject, or if I haven’t said anything yet, delete what I have ready to send, and go on. But if we’re both just sort of chatting, I’ll go ahead and keep two balls in the air at a time.
Many IM programs will tell you when the person you’re speaking to is typing, which I find useful.
If I am writing to someone who does not have that enabled, I do not often wait for them to reply before continuing, because there’s no predicting when someone has disappeared.
What I find really funny is that at least one person I used to talk to would -also- wait to see what I had written, and sometimes we’d stalemate each other. They wanted to see what I would say next before writing, but they often changed what they had to say, and I wanted to know what I missed! *laugh*
I don’t fond the “___ is typing a message” information to be predictable. People will type then delete and just sit there, or sometimes, rarely, Joe’s said to me, “I was waiting, it said you were typing” when I wasn’t typing. I only pay attention to them as a tool to know whether someone seems to be around at all, or might have wandered away from the keyboard for awhile.
*nod* They are frequently incorrect, it’s true, though some programs specify the difference between “is typing” and “has typed something”.
The paused state, as you say, is wildly unreliable – sometimes a person accidentally hits the space bar, for instance, and has nothing to say, but the “is typing” is more useful to me.
Regardless, the attempt is very nifty and it’s still a useful, albeit a wholly unreliable tool.
I hate it when I type something and hit SHIFT+ENTER by accident, and I thought I dropped a message but it just made another line and my text just sits there and stews in psueodspace.
Then the guy on the other end yells at me, and I’m usually multitasking with like, ten things, so I don’t notice till an /hour/ later.
I always feel so embarassed =P
That’s definitely happened to me.
Regrettably, you’ve experienced first hand how I type in IM. :-P
Occasionally when I see the other person is typing, I’ll hold off.. but i don’t always, and I don’t expect the other person to either. If there is some form of etiquette on that, it was lost on my long ago.
As to linear or non.. depends on the person I suspect. I don’t think I have a preference, flow of thoughts is the flow of thoughts. *shrugs*
I don’t think there’s some sort of unwritten law about whether a person is typing or not, and if there is, I don’t follow it, heh. It wouldn’t apply to everyone’s style, anyway.
Your last comment there is interesting, because I think some people are very relaxed about letting the conversation go wherever it wants (sometimes not getting anywhere productive, if that’s how it wants to be), and some people would like structure to their conversation – a beginning, middle, and end to the topics touched on.
I will admit to being somewhat persistent on some conversations topics.. but thats often the case of me wanting more info out of someone, and having to manually get it, where others might freely share. :-P
I love this topic, btw.
I am definitely a multi-threader, both in chat, and in normal conversation. Dave was the first to really bring it to the fore, because it was normal in my family. Topic A lends itself into topic B, and 20 minutes later, I could reference topic A without having to preference it with anything, because whoever I was talking with would know what I was talking about. Because Dave and I have such polar opposite ways of communicating, in every day conversation, I’ve had to retrain myself, and change how I communicate on a basic level. He, too, has made an effort to understand how I communicate, and has started to be able to follow me all over the map, on good days. :)
Used to do that all the time with a couple friends in the service. Haven’t clicked the same way with too many other tho.
My best friends are the ones that can ‘keep up’ with me in conversations, I think. I think using the term ‘keep up’ is misleading, because it implies that folks who can’t follow my conversations are slow, but that’s not true. It’s just and entirely different way of communicating, I think.
See, there was a reason we got along so well. That, or that we both disliked the job in flint equally. :-P
I think both.
Now that’s really funny – I totally hadn’t received this comment when I made mine.
whatev.
*chuckle* I am very aware of how you do this on an oral level (oh hush) – in fact, I think some of your best friends are those who similarly converse.
I would not call Dave the opposite end of the spectrum as far as linear vs non-linear goes. I would call Scott Thom the opposite. Well, it’s more complicated than that – he can easily hop with someone, but he will drag you back, kicking and screaming, until point A is done and buried, flowers, memorial plaque, and Best Of video.
I think he’s opposite in terms of how a typical conversation flows with him. If he has control of the conversation, it’s very linear, I think. If I have control of the conversation, it’s all over the place.
Dude. I’m linear. Slow brain.
I have trouble having conversations when the TV or radio is on, haha.
I can be easily distracted, but I don’t think that’s the same thing. :)
Personally, I try and make IMing as close to direct speech as possible.
Rather than drop an entire paragraph or block of text on someone, I tend to hit enter after each sentance, each /major/ pause, like in a conversation.
If someone interjects with something quickly and it would “interrupt” my current sentance, I immediatly hit enter with what I have (the broken sentance is immediatly tagged with “…” at the end to denote a break) and depending on how important it is (like in real life), I’ll either continue with it, quickly comment on it (like just saying “heh”) and break back to my original sentance with “as I was saying” or some such thing, or I’ll ignore it (if it was a “heh” or some sort of uncommentable sidenote to what I was saying already) and keep going.
I rarely, if ever, erase what I type, simply because I justify it as, when I type it, it’s being said “in psuedo person”, therefore it cannot be altered. It just keeps things more natural, more real, and there’s less of an issue with me or other people masking/hiding their thoughts and emotions behind the unforgiving distance hole between sender and reciever.
But, basically, with the frequency that I hit enter, and the way I handle interruptions, I tend to IM in a naturally branching pattern. Or, well, maybe I just speak in a branch pattern in real life, too. (Speaking of which, I never use “lol”, because I hate netspeak. I use “Bahahaha” or something else to that effect). When I talk IRL, I run down a topic, and sometimes digress on a tangent, which might have many more tangents, but I collapse them all in due order kind of like an outline (I use underscores to denote spaces because the formatting sucks on comments):
A
__1
___I
___II
_____a
_____b – then finish II
___III
_____a – then finish III, then finish 1
__2 – then finish A
B
C
__1
etc
My dialogue tends to follow a C++ nestled loop method =P
Also, if someone interjects with something and I comment on it, I either, like I said, adhere it to the current system (extensionto current process), run with it and double back (create a subprocess, For example:
A
__1 – Subprocess
___I – Subprocess of subprocess – close up original subprocess (I), double
_______back to original process A, continue.
or nod and continue (finish current process).
Er, I’m sorry, I’m very weird =P
But it’s how I run my IMs ^_^, and dialogue IRL!
(Oh, and if they take forever formulating a response, I either continue, or I poke them and see if they’re thinking or not =P “X USER is currently typing a message” is my absolute favorite IM feature, lets me know they’re still alive)
Addendum: Also, because my thoughts run so fast and I type so quickly (120wpm on a good day) everyone I tend to talk to online ends up being kind of accidently forced into the same method of typing, simply because it works best when with someone else that does it.
And also, after I explain the “IM like IRL” thing to them, they tend to adopt it and like it, makes conversations less formulaic, more interesting, and more human-like.
i’m a multi-tasker for the most part. what i really find amusing is when i’m having a conversation with someone, and we’re not even talking about the same thing. but we continue talking to each other. for example, i could be discussing the history of American political theory, and he’ll be talking about burritos. i LOVE that for some reason
This is fairly awesome. This is what I shall call linear by nuclear force. :D
Kekeke, woot.
It depends upon with whom I am chatting.
The linear people sometimes (okay, OFTEN–I was being NICE) miss everything I said, save the latest line, so I TRY to adjust, but I am not always successful.
My best IM chats are with non-linear people. ONE OF ME.
So, start chatting with me, already. ;)
Me too =D