Thursday, November 10, 2005

Society - Research reveals the long and the short of text messaging

Taken from the following article:
Men's texts get longer when addressed to women, and they are more likely to use sarcasm, sexual humour and swearing.
Your task is to write (using no more than 160 characters) a text that fulfils all the above criteria, without resorting to chauvanistic, un-PC insults. You have 3 hours.

"We found that people have very quickly adapted to using mobile phones as a way of managing different aspects of their lives at the same time.

"For example, it has become common to text when you want to keep communication private, especially if you are in a group. An obvious example is that a man is more likely to text than phone his partner when he is out with friends or peers.

"This prevents him by losing face by switching from 'friend' mode to 'partner' mode in front of his peers," he said.
Seriously thou, the friend mode/partner mode duality is obviously quite prevalent in our society, but is it something that can be avoided? I don't want to have modes - I want to have only one "me". Or is there some invisible evolutionary advantage to having them?

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