There's this person i know, let's call him Mr X. We don't know each other too well having spoken like once with one another but from what I have always seen, he's someone who's always cheery, fun loving and friendly towards almost everyone. So you know the social networking system facebook right. Just so happens that his status there said something about loving school and it's workload. Having percieved him as a "cheery, fun loving and friendly" person who is also in his school's student council, I honestly thought he was a guy who enjoyed schooling tremendously because of the opportunities it gave him and i just assumed that he'd like schoolwork too. So me being me, someone who has never!!! enjoyed schoolwork, i tagged him saying he could do my work for me too! haha. Only to find out later that he was being sarcastic!!! gosh.the embarrassment.
Case in point being it is easy to miscontrue what people mean when we don't get to read their non-verbal cues. Online, all you see is what's written in black and white and people judge what they read in different ways. Hence miscommunication may occur. In this case, my interpretation was based on what i'd seen previously in his actions only. It was only after he replied to my comment that i found out i had been too literal with what he put up. So see, we all shouldn't jump to conclusions so soon! lesson learnt!
ps: since i do not know Mr X very well i couldn't ask permission to use this example and i feel a bit embarrassed to tell him abt it too so if he ever views this i hope he doesn't mind. *eyes shut tightly with fingers crossed*
6 Comments:
Bah, totally related to this one because I forum a lot and no matter how much someone says they're being 'sarcastic' with their posts, it's hard to tell sometimes! And it gets really annoying too. I guess that's why they invented emoticons.
xD =D (:
xoxo n
hahaha i literally lol-ed when i read this entry coz it reminded me of the time when u grabbed someone's photo on friendster. haha, horrors, the embarrassment :P
yup!! i agree and words like LOL, LMAO even sound words like grr, argh, ugh and my fav no meaning word gahhh! haha and shimah!!! dun let the whole world noe abt that!!!! i was young and stupid and it was a honest mistake though there's no waay the person could have known that. I still think he must have thought i was desperate for his picture.. ugh!
ahaha, i hate it when that happens. sarcasm never translates well over the internet, it gets so annoying sometimes.
<3,
j
non-verbal cues? i am duly impressed, ranper! :)
Oh I know who's this fun, immensely sociable and nice person! (:
Haha ok but that is beside the point. Yes I can relate to this. I tend to misinterpret people's online e-mails, msn messages and sometimes even what we read on facebook. I guess this is why there are such things as emotions where you can put a smiley face or you can even give an 'eye-roll' to someone to show ignorance. We can even write or type to someone in CAPITAL LETTERS to express loudness or seriousness.
This is also why I feel face-to-face communication works best in clearly encoding and decoding messages. We usually can get a good idea of what someone has to say via the verbal and non-verbal cues we sense from them.
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