Avoiding online chatting is my new catharsis. I have been ignoring my messenger tool for a few weeks now! For me, the effect of such communication has been rather reverse. I know it’s weird for me to say this. After all, I helped creating and running some of the components of such tool several years ago!

I’ve never communicated with any of my coworkers thru messenger because that’s not a place for them. They could email, call, or even walk in to my office if they need me. I prefer face-to-face interaction when there is a potential for misunderstanding. I work in an environment where some self-proclaimed smart people compete to walk on each other.

More than a few dozen of my tech-savvy friends and acquaintances are included in my messenger list but some of them use it to prove a point that they wouldn’t otherwise know how to convey. I venture to say that IM becomes really handy for insecure people – because where the weight of face-to-face quarrel is lifted, the otherwise lethargic jenny is out of the bottle … Ladies and gents: meet the monster.

Any form of communication without manners is pathetic. Communication by definition is the process by which information is exchanged between individuals through a common system of symbols, signs, or behavior. The exchange needs both transmission and reception. If you send the message, communication isn’t complete. The other party at the other end has to receive it, and accept it. Your manners will help the reception otherwise: the receiver might flip the bird on you on the other end, and you on this end think: s/he accepted it. Manners is about our awareness of the feelings of others.

"The newest computer can merely compound the oldest problem in the relations between human beings, and in the end the communicator will be confronted with the old problem of: What to say and How to say it!" … Edward R. Murrow