Dear Ilana Gershon,
“Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover” completely resonated with
my ideals on relationship maintenance and digital media. The concept of media
ideologies, and different mediums having specific uses and values is
intriguing. The story that the undergraduate Halle gave, about using text for
joking with her boyfriend, leading to his text message break-up as perceived
completely inappropriate is totally proves the concept. The fact that Doug had said that he felt bad
because he was not kidding when they would joke about the other girl, shows
that he has difficulty communicating “serious” messages. The fact that he chose to use text message to
finally come clean and end the relationship was unfortunate for Halle, since it
was so unexpected and the conversation was awkwardly drawn out because of the
misunderstanding.
Imagine if text messaging did not exist, especially in
situations like this. The people who
have the most trouble with confrontation face-to-face would probably never be
moved to action. In a way, you could
almost say it is a good thing that it does exist, or else how many people would
just be stuck in a relationship they do not want to be in because of fearing
conflict? I think that this shows people
need to realize the importance of learning effective communication skills with
and without technology in order to maintain our interpersonal
relationships. Mediated communication
has become an easy way out, but in the end it leaves one person defeated and
the other feeling like they had saved face, when in fact they just appear
worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment