/srs

 

I like deliberate obfuscation. It is rare that you mean everything you say – rarer still that you say everything you mean. Conversation (and maybe all forms of correspondence) seems to be as much about what is unsaid or incapable of being articulated. It is why we depend outside the text for meaning. If talking was sufficient, facial cues would not matter, the tone of voice would convey little. The glint in someone’s eyes as they report mischief would be inconsequential. I like to play around with these things. Deadpan delivery, for instance, makes it very difficult to gauge the exact amount of truth or sincerity in a statement. A sort of post-ironic no-man’s land where anything can be said because the recipient’s immediate concern is the veracity of your narration rather than its consequence. A mutilation of form to engineer more uncritical acceptance of content.  

A similar thing I can think of is listening to babies tell you stories. They sometimes make things up to narrate with complete sincerity. They are not lying in any appreciable way. The disconnect between hearing something fantastic from a narrator that is not doing it deliberately is not something you get to experience often as an adult.

Even when you are talking to just one other person, the search for meaning extends beyond their words. You want to be aware of the context, you will use all the characteristic information you know to be integral to the narrator, and without a doubt, your response will be a function of your extant relationship with them.

These things also manifest in text; the use of emojis as tone indicators is a truly fascinating phenomenon to me. A speaker who is worried about sounding harsh uses them to reassure. Someone who cannot bring themselves to type something vulnerable uses emojis to convey affection. Everyone is familiar with the use of ‘lol’ to soften the landing of something otherwise incredibly mean. Obfuscation is a lot easier on text. To type without emojis already presents a dilemma to the recipient: “how do I read this? are they mad at me?”

For me, this post-ironic tendency of being almost dishonest about the level of sincerity in narration is perfected in texting. There is significantly more room to play around; there is always more than one way to read a sentence. Without facial cues, tones, or even emojis, every message presents homework. A task in textual interpretation that also allows the narrator to say more than they would with the cost of being taken at face value. When I am texting, it might even be fair to say what is meant is much less than what is said. The excess is a buffer; a bubble wrap of sorts that enables me to overcome the hesitation of saying what I want to say, and risk being perceived as me myself.