answer:Texting is the easy way of communicating, but it is often not a very effective way of communicating. It seems like it is very easy to send or receive a text message and read all sorts of things into it. Sometimes the wrong things. Hence all of the questions on Fluther regarding: What did he mean when he said this in a text, or even in real life. Because apparently people can’t figure out what people mean anymore, even when they’re being spoken to, because they’re only familiar with texting. And getting lots of texts gives the illusion of popularity. The more you get, the more popular you must be, even if you have no close friends : ( Hey but there are always hundreds of Facebook “friends” right? Regular phone calls or (God forbid) actual face to face contact, means that the message giver and receiver have to know exactly why they are talking to each other in the first place. And it helps if they have some kind of real relationship rather than just a perceived relationship. It also means that they must have some basic language skills and not rely on txpsk. Txspk has it’s place, but real language means so much more. Real language, either through phone conversation or the real thing (face to face in person) is much more likely to give the other person the real information, or at least more information, because the receiver gets verbal cues and facial cues and verbal intonations and inflections which simply aren’t possible with just a text or even an e-mail, or even with Fluther, even though with Fluther, we have the added ability to add some depth and nuance with our writing. With texting and e-mailing and instant messaging, there’s a lot more yakking going on, but nothing is really being said, and IMO, not much thought is going into what is being typed into cyberspace. To me texting is the TV equivalent of silly reality shows, where as actual face to face conversation is more like Masterpiece Theater. I don’t expect that most people will agree with me, but I also don’t expect to get any handwritten letters from anyone explaining why not.