racoma.netI love to write. I write to live. I live to love.

You often hear it from senior citizens. Back in the day, communication wasn’t as fast and cheap as it is today. When you sent letters, you had to wait a few days (or weeks) for it to arrive at its destination. Therefore, you have to really be able to convey what you wanted in those pieces of paper. In the age of the telegram, every character cost money, and you had to be as concise as possible. People really anticipated these bursts of communication, even if it just involves one sentence. When the telephone became popular, time became precious because long distance calls also cost money–the longer you talked, the more you paid.

These days, though, with the ubiquity of mobile phones, talk has become cheap. With unlimited texting schemes, you could literally send thousands of messages in a day without worrying about the cost implications. You can send messages to everyone on your phonebook without much thought to the incremental cost, because if it’s “unlimited” then there is no incremental cost. But with each message you send, the average cost falls until it’s practically zero.

With the popularity of these unlimited schemes, don’t you think the quality of the message has degraded?

I often receive forwarded messages containing those SMS-speak greetings with SMS-type graphics (which don’t even appear properly on my E series phone). And in those instances, one gets to wonder whether the sender is really sincere in transmitting a greeting, or whether he is just broadcasting that particular text to everyone in the phonebook because it’s practically free, anyway.

The medium has become the message. And in this case, the message seems to say Hey, I have an unlimited message allocation, so I’m sending you this greeting because I have nothing better to do.

Well, sometimes I do feel nice about someone adding me to his recipient list when sending a greeting. But then again I’d rather receive something intended solely for me, than split someone’s thoughtfulness with a dozen other people.

I think any person would feel better if you make him feel important by being more sincere and thoughtful in your messages. Use your words wisely. Use your resources wisely. Even if something is free, you could add value to it and turn it into something beautiful and valuable. Send a sincere, personalized greeting. Why not call instead of text? A face to face conversation is even better.

Yes, talk is cheap. But if the message is gold, then the medium becomes golden as well.

Image credit: Flickr/mightyohm