You've Got a Message

Yesterday, while we were watching You've Got Mail in class, I couldn't help but notice the similarities between the start of my relationship with Adam and the movie.

When Adam and I first started talking, it was purely an online relationship. He sat across from me at work but my company had an unwritten code of fulltimes not mingling with coops, mainly for the reasons that coops come and go and you end up with no friends if you fall into their clique.

He was about halfway through his second coop term at my office when we were caught in the elevator together and an awkward conversation about how he's always in earlier than me ensued (with me defending myself and asking him why he's monitoring me). Two weeks later, when I came back from my business trip, I emailed him and told him that I was in way earlier than him that day. After a few email exchanges that day, we moved our conversation on to google chat and began the two-month long of chatting every minute of every workday (as corroborated by the message history). We talked about everything that was both important and unimportant. From whether the Backstreet Boys comeback is logical to wondering why people want to buy lululemon shirts that contain seaweed to the meaning of life. However, if there was one thing we did not talk about, it was our present personal lives. We also contained our converstaions strictly online because I didn't want people to know we were talking. We would chat for 8 hours with four monitors between us in an open concept office and then we would go home without even saying goodbye out loud.

I made a point to tell him that our relationship is nothing but "intimacy by convenience" (which was kinda mean) because he happened to be someone who was easy and fun to talk to and made me laugh a lot. I didn't want to know about his problems in life nor was i going to share mine with him. I was on guard because I felt a little embarassed that I was talking so much to someone who was two years younger than me and really enjoying it. A month later, I lost the battle.

Is Email any different than chatting? There is the obvious delay in time of response as well as the difference in topic. When two people are having a conversation, they are quick to exchange ideas and, for the most part, the topic is limited to one (at most two). Things one person will say and their attitude changes depending on the reaction of the other. But at the same time because the response time is quick and you have less time to modify what you say, you won't be able to take more care in plotting out and executing some longterm rhetorical goal. When two people are exchanging meaningful emails, it becomes an exchange of monologues and you can only predict how the other person will say based on (educated?) guesses.You may even engage in three or four different topics at the same time.

So which one is more expressive of your true self? When you are chatting and there is less time to plan your response or when you are emailing when you can't modify what you say based on someone's immediate reaction? Would Adam and I have gotten together if we were exchanging long and meaningful emails with longer gaps of time between each exchange? Hmm...