Organic as our thumbs

Text messaging has, since its birth as a means of communication not all that long ago, been the center of so much controversy, so much elderly cane-wagging and youthful insolence, that it is a wonder we even have time to text given the amount of time we spend arguing about it. People lament its effects on the capacity of people to communicate emotionally. People lament the terrible degeneration of humanity's capacities to make face-to-face contact. People lament T9's removal of a need to know how to spell something correctly. People lament that folks spend so much time staring at a little 1.5"×2" screen instead of the world around them.

And they have a point, to the extent that the people lamenting every other unproductive distraction's effects on society have a point. It's just a point that's about as likely to be supported by society as a presidential bid by Carrot Top. Because really, as much as the elderly think that texting is the newest means through which society will decay into nothingness, texting is harmless.

Normal people still meet with each other in person. Normal people still experience emotions. Normal people still can appreciate a warm summer breeze or the gentle rumble of a purring cat on the shoulder. So for normal people, texting is just another means of communication.

And why is the text-hater's rallying cry always something to do with just making a phone call like God intended? Alexander Graham Bell is turning over in his grave as you trivialize his invention. Nothing about the phone call is natural. You are talking to a box, and the box talks back to you and you're pretty sure the box is saying what your friend would be saying if your friend were in the room with you having the same conversation. Texting is the same. Sure, we could debate the amount of emotion expressed by vocal tone and so on, but even then there is a vast array of emoticons at the disposal of anyone who might want to express any emotion.

Making these comparisons is missing the point anyway. Texting is held by normal people as a supplemental means of communication, not a means to supplant communication. Why do we embrace these stories of the wacko who would only text his girlfriend? Because they're bizarre to us. If normal people acted that way, we wouldn't think the story so strange, and maybe then we should take a retrospective if it's so harmful.

So leave my texting alone! Much unlike a rude phone call in a crowded room, at least it's not bugging anyone.