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@ 0xTree
2024-09-02 18:16:08The internet removed many classical excuses for lack of communication. The cell phone demolished the rest. If, back in the day, you wanted to avoid a caller, the simple out provided was "I wasn't near a phone". Nowadays, you have not only a phone in your pocket, but a portable telegraph.
Nonetheless, there still exists a kind of malicious communication or half-communication. People will often fail to answer texts, or they say they "forgot". Sometimes they wander off during a conversation to do something else entirely while the crucial part of the communication is still unfolding.
Some people blame this on bots, but it is easily observable in human beings that, as far as can be discerned, do not have silicon processors in their noggins. Sometimes the behavior is to flat out ignore what was said or comply with the communication much later. The new catchy term is that it is a kind of "psy-op". The communication is meant to be annoying and ambiguous as a kind of incursion into an organization, the thinking goes.
When I was growing up, it was a "You better speak when you are spoken to when someone who is your elder is asking you something," issue. Failure to comply was often met with helpful reminders such as groundings, yellings, or other kinds of physical displeasure.
The difference now, is, in my estimation, that there is a whole lot more information available and communication potential to the point no one fully knows what to pay attention to. Priority information and valuable information have no analogs. Most of these problems disappear, I have noticed, if it concerns someone's place of work. This of course, implies a kind of work-culture slavery that puts the "masters of money" in a priority communication scenario which implies an uplifting of the perceived security of the self over everything else.
However, it isn't only a generational thing, as I have also seen so-called "Boomers" do this too. Usually, this kind of behavior occurs in proximity to other kinds of bad behavior that the title warrants. Most often, these people have a sense of entitlement as they happened to get their gains at a time when the world and society was at a point it no longer occupies. A population of 3 to 4 billion is a much different set point than 9 billion. The heuristics used to make decisions, though, stay the same. Otherwise, the story would have to change. It's easier to ignore anything that is suggestive of change, and instead live in one's own bubble.
That, in my opinion, explains the problem the best. Everyone is retreating to their own communication bubble and so they cannot have exchanges smoothly across different mediums. Surely, tech has influenced this some as the attention span has become smaller. However, ignoring aspects of reality you don't like is really just what an autistic child is at the extreme end. They live in their own reality at at their own time. Of course, they are also considered disabled. Why then, should degrees of this communication problem not warrant the same label?