O gr8, now even strangers are sending txts with kisses
An explosion in text messaging is breaking down social barriers, encouraging instant flirtations – and leading to serious embarrassments
How many times did you “x” today? I did it four times and had it done to me by 13 people. Nine x’s were from friends, three from an overfamiliar PR and one from . . . my mother. It seems that nowadays it’s impossible, downright rude in fact, to sign off a text with anything other than a techno-peck.
But is a single x enough any more? Just one can look so perfunctory and two can imply little more than mwah-mwah sophistication – so you’ll need at least three to register giddy enthusiasm or actual romantic intent.
And x’s are only the beginning of the texting minefield. Scrolling through the inbox on my mobile, I find an entire week of professional and personal relationships lived out through acronyms and emoticons: friendships maintained with a simple :-), a date set up (oh dear – when I wrote “lol” I meant “laugh out loud”, not “lots of love”), bosses placated and family members held conveniently at arm’s length, all via the tapping of my thumbs.
In isolation, these texts seem no more consequential than the notes we used to pass around in class; but thanks to their sheer volume they need to be taken rather more seriously. In the UK alone, 1.2 billion text messages are sent every week, more than were sent in the whole of 1997, the year that texting arrived on these shores.
Change is afoot. What began as a means to fire off useful flecks of information – a meeting time, an address – has become not just a social facilitator, but also a social bulldozer. By dint of their ubiquity and enforced casualness, texts are breaking down class barriers, work hierarchies and social awkwardness. They are the new great leveller and, one could argue, they have had the positive effect of making us all more friendly. They are also making us careless.
A recent report revealed that young urban men have taken to regularly texting “wot u up 2?” to the entire female half of their phone books because they’re feeling bored and flirty. Women, meanwhile, are highly prone to gossip at length via text – and even more indiscreetly than they would in person – trading up to 20 or 30 messages at a sitting. No mean feat when you consider that, on average, women not only write longer messages than men, but are also twice as likely to use formal grammar.
In the past seven days I’ve sent and received 187 texts, which somewhat embarrassingly puts my texting habit on a par with a 13-year-old girl’s. I’m not alone. While teenagers may still top the charts for the number of texts they send, the majority of texters are now adults.
By 2010, it has been estimated, half the world’s population will have a mobile – some 3 billion people – and somewhere between a quarter and a half of that number will text regularly.
Even now it’s almost impossible for me to imagine a day going by without hearing that reassuring double ping, or feeling that discreet vibration, that lets me know that a little envelope icon has popped up on my screen to make me feel that I’m, well, part of things.
Of course, that envelope, with its overtones of formal, dignified communication, is misleading. Having weaned ourselves from cave walls, papyrus and parchment and progressed to typewriters, faxes and e-mail, it turns out that 3,000 years of polite human correspondence have left us unprepared for the text effect.
The initial panic was about language. It was feared that the fast-established patois of text messages, known as “txt-spk” or “textese” – would somehow dismantle English as we know it. If children spell mate as m8, atoms as @oms or translate “hope to see you soon” as h2cus, what hope is there for future national literacy rates?
However, the occasional infraction aside – such as the woman who had to be told by a judge recently that she couldn’t call her daughter O.crnia (Oceania) – this concern has proved misplaced. Professor David Crystal, in his excellent new book txtng: the gr8 db8, argues conclusively that even the most gibberish-addicted teens scoff at the idea of using textese anywhere other than on their mobiles or in internet chatrooms.
He even claims that the playful nature of texting encourages inventiveness and can help the cause of literacy. And there’s no doubt that it can be simply good, clean fun, such as when a friend texts you Homer Simpson’s face: ~(_8-^(|) (clue: it helps if you turn this page on its side).
“The research into linguistics and texting is pretty solid,” Crystal tells me, “but the social consequences of texting are only beginning to be seen. It is now a social marker and you can be judged on it as such.”
And that’s where an element of danger comes in, chiefly because texting is so inherently unceremonious. Before it arrived on the scene, almost all human communiqués, even if they were dispatched electronically, could be teased up to resemble a formal letter: “Dear . . .” at the top, appropriate line spacing, paragraphs and a sign-off that included the sender’s name.
Perhaps the nearest we came to the text was the telegram, but whereas thrift dictated that telegrams were largely emotionless (“WAR OVER STOP COMING HOME”), texting has already become the greatest catalyst for sinful overexpression and instant intimacy since the pill.
Without warning, we have started having all sorts of relationships with people we might otherwise have barely acknowledged. Work acquaintances, casual friends, even the estate agent, are suddenly sending us virtual billets-doux filled with personal information and delivered in a pally tone, which tend to arrive when you’re in bed or have just hopped out of the shower. The temptation to spill is immense – maybe add one of those little x’s in your reply? But be warned: the potential for fallout is high.
Take the example of Ed, a university graduate from Manchester who applied for a job with a top accountancy firm in London. After a virtuoso performance at the interview, the vice-president in charge of recruitment gave him his mobile number in case he had any questions. Young Ed thought nothing of texting him the next day with the following message: “m8, wot a gr8 intvw!! u shld def give me the job lol.”
Needless to say, the vice-president did not oblige. “The problem,” said the recruitment consultant who told me this story, “is not that he was a stupid person per se; it was because he was texting and thought that text rules applied.”
Kristina Grish, who interviewed hundreds of adult texters for her recent book, The Joy of Text, tells me: “The thing that’s both good and bad about texting is that it gives us a false sense of connection. It’s just so easy to be brazen, funny and even raunchy, to overreveal and say things you really shouldn’t because there’s this overwhelming sense of immediate kinship.”
She recalls being surprised at a party one evening when two acquaintances, who didn’t know one another well and had been standing at opposite ends of the bar, suddenly upped and left within moments of one another. It turned out that they had spent the evening frantically texting across the room, engaging in a kind of electro-foreplay, until the man could bear it no longer and texted: “i hav 2 hav u now. mt me outsd in 5m.”
“Traditionally, intimacy was developed over a long series of meaningful interactions, but text messages create this fast and furious pace that turns so many of us on. It’s techno-lust and you jump on it,” says Grish.
By revealing so much of ourselves so fast, the risk is that we either lead the other party on, or alienate him or her. How do we negotiate the new rules of textual engagement?
“There are some rules here, for sure,” says Grish. “For one, your text persona should always match your nontext one. If you’re funny and shy, text that way.
“Secondly, whether it’s a friend, colleague or potential lover, you have to respond to personal texts in an appropriate time-frame. If you’re at work, it’s acceptable to leave it till the end of the day. If it’s the weekend, you must text back within three hours at most. Anything more is just rude.”
Fast-thumbed lotharios must also watch out. “Texting makes it easier to have affairs, to set up a rendezvous or text your lover from under the table,” she continues. “But a lot of women aren’t shy about hacking into a phone or a BlackBerry and reading what their partners have been up to. It’s the modern equivalent of finding a restaurant receipt in your husband’s pocket.”
It’s clear that we need to adopt a more cautious approach, but there’s also a problem with being overformal with our texts. Dan Hawes, co-founder of the Graduate Recruitment Bureau, who helps scores of university leavers into employment, says that it sometimes pays to be matey: “There are firms where there is either a more old-school culture or a big generation divide for whom texting is not going to work – but if you’re texting someone at Google, they won’t bat an eyelid. In fact, coming across as too stiff could be even worse.”
Crystal says: “The problem is that the whole phenomenon is less than a decade old and it’s still evolving fast and will continue to do so.”
Where does that leave us when it comes to “x” etiquette? “The number one surprise I discovered,” says Grish, “is that women love throwing the x’s around and men are damned confused by them. My advice would be: don’t type it until you’ve done it.”
THE TEXT FILES
- John Prescott nearly lost his job as deputy prime minister in 2006, thanks to phone texts. His extracurricular romance with Tracey Temple, his diary secretary, came to light only when Temple’s lorry driver boyfriend discovered texts from Prezza on her mobile. She sold her story to a tabloid newspaper shortly afterwards.
- Matti Vanhanen, the Finnish prime minister, dumped his girlfriend by text in 2006, issuing an incisive: “It’s over.”
- In 2006 Jane Garvey – then a Radio 5 Live presenter – got into hot water for reading out a text from a listener. “Why don’t you give airtime to the thousands of people who write to Blair and tell him what a tosser he is?” she announced breezily. The splutters of her co-host were audible.
- When The Accident Group (a company that pursued personal injury claims) went bust in 2003, Mark Langford, the director, sacked 2,500 of his staff by text message. “Urgent. Unfortunately salaries not paid. Please do not contact office. Full details to follow later today.”
- On his 21st birthday in 2005 Prince Harry received a text wishing him many happy returns. He was astonished to discover that it came from his grandmother.
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