IM.

From yesterday’s list of technological annoyances on Coachean Life:

1. Instant messaging. When the IM was invented, I was sort of there. Says I to me, well, that might be useful. But to be honest, I have always found that Instant Messaging prioritizes annoying way above utility. I simply do not wish to be available to anyone, anywhere, any time. Nor do I wish to give the appearance that, because I am available to anyone, anywhere, any time, and I am not somewhere responding to you at this very moment, I am doing my best to be available to anyone except you, anywhere, any time. But, of course, that is mostly the case. Most of the people who would IM me are people I do not wish to be IM’d by. My universe of the IM-worthy is very tiny. Creating such a tiny list for IMing hardly seems worth the effort. Besides, my mother doesn’t even own a computer.

I don’t like IM much either, but I do use it. It’s convenient since I’m usually on the computer anyway, and since I like cell phones even less.

It helps to humanize interactions. I use real words whenever possible (with the exception of “haha,” I suppose), and I hold my messages to the same grammatical standard as my speech. I set Adium to display people’s real names instead of the vomit of letters they often identify themselves with online. (I also used to display photographs instead of buddy icons, but after the sixth time hearing, “You used that picture of me?” I gave up.)

In the past I would go through my buddy list every so often and delete the people I didn’t talk to anymore. (I didn’t want to get sucked into compulsive away message checking; I waste enough time on the Internet as it is.) Recently I’ve taken to using IM more like a phone. I put all of the deleted names back, but reorganized the list into two groups: “People,” which is people who I talk to often, on speed dial, as it were; and “Aliens,” which is everyone else, or at least everyone who I can reasonably expect to talk to again. I keep the latter group collapsed, so my buddy list only displays the handful of people who I’m most likely to message.

With regard to the “available to anyone, anywhere, any time” issue, IM etiquette seems to have solved this — if you have an away message up, people will assume you’re screening your calls and won’t expect an immediate reply. It solves the “annoying above utility” problem quite nicely.