Over the last three months, I have tried to cut down on the amount of time I spend staring in the direction of an illuminated computer screen or burying my chin against my chest to read any type of iApple creation. Buying magazines, writing paper-and-pen letters, ignoring Twitter, and delegating wedding planning tasks are just a few of the tactics that got me through the first quarter of this year.
At the pinnacle of my no-computer program, I had 87 unread emails, among which were answers to my hand-written letters. I longed for a paper envelope with my name written on it to be waiting for me on my kitchen table. My third grade teacher once said, “If you want to receive letters, you should write letters.” That I did (write) , and, boy, did I not (receive).
Another hallmark of my analog adventure was my choice in news media. I clung to my weekend edition of the International Herald Tribune as though it were my sole source of news for the whole week. I bought it on a Saturday and inadvertently spread out the articles until I finished it the following Thursday. This was a cool experience. Holding the paper in my hand, I felt like I owned the news, like how a child, in possession of an entire set of encyclopedias, owns all the knowledge there ever was. I did not want to let that paper go even though I was reading old news.
Don’t get me wrong, I love receiving emails. But I was hoping that external forces would be kind to me and help me keep my eyes off the computer screen. I guess I hoped wrong. I was one photographer short and more than a few home addresses away from getting some major party-planning tasks done at the end of my lo-fi debacle. I also couldn’t be bothered to buy a paper for every day of the week. Nor could I bring myself to open my iPad and open the NY Times app. I had the nagging feeling of being left out of the “conversation”, as Twitter culture pegs the notion.
Now, I just give into emails and spending time online. But one way I’ve coped with it is by incorporating emoticons into my online conversations. They say a ton in just a couple of characters.
I feel like Farhad Manjoo would have written about this subject before, but he hasn’t as far as I can tell. An essay at Thought Catalog seems to defend emoticons and incidentally has the same title as this post. Stephanie Georgopulos writes:
[Emoticons] make me feel like I’m eliciting something that a nonverbal cue would otherwise notify me of, but cannot, because LCD screens and stuff.
Quite flowery language, don’t you think? She says that there’s something about nonverbal communication that tells her something. Actually, I can’t garner much from this passage. It’s not so clear!
Well, facts can tell us a bit more clearly what is going on. Last month, a recent study in the journal Cerebral Cortex found that people tend to focus more on “nonverbal cues” than verbal ones when they try to judge emotion in the people with whom they are interacting. This preference for seeking out visual clues is represented by higher brain activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), when measured with fMRI. The DLPFC is a spot that’s kind of near your forehead.
So, we have proof that we seek out nonverbal cues in order to assemble emotional information of another person. In my case, I have found no way of completely shutting email out of my life, so I comply with sending one- or two-sentence emails with at least one emoticon.
