Remember the day when you reunited with an old friend and you picked up the phone, had a 3-hour conversation and hung up the phone? Or how about when you were getting set up on a date and you “got someone’s number?” You’d dread it, plan it out, call, chat for whatever chemistry deemed the right amount of time, and then HUNG UP.
But how do you hang up in an email? When do you end the email chain and cut it off?
On email, if you don’t write back, it’s like you’re left hanging. You start out with the major email – and then it dwindles down. Back and forth with fewer and fewer words. Like pauses in the conversations. You’re wrapping it up. Eventually you have fewer and fewer words and you exchange emails with two words. See you soon … Great Catching up … Keep in Touch. Don’t be a stranger…
There’s no official hang up on email.
Facebook offers another opportunity for inappropriate over communication. People have entire strings of conversations all over each other’s walls. Whenever a person looks at that person’s wall all they see is a string of a one-way conversation. If you’re not friends with the other person, you’ll never hear the other side.
Corporate America spends countless hours communicating through the keyboard. Screaming out to cyberspace to satisfy our need for social interaction. We’re dynamic social beings who have been thrust into cubes. One step forward for technology, one step backwards for human relations.
I’m officially hanging up.
HeartsEverywhere 
You bring up some interesting points. I have a blackberry, and my husband always tells me I spend too much time responding back and forth to others. It can be time consuming, but there is something wild about being able to reach out to virtual strangers and make a connection with someone next door or half a world away. I don’t know…
My boyfriend doesn’t have a cell phone! Take that. It’s a whole piece I’m writing about cell phones. We are missing an entire layer of communication that it seems the rest of the couples of the world have embraced.Personally, I think it has done wonders for our relationship – and human interaction. When I’m with someone, I’m WITH SOMEONE. I try to take the multi-tasking out of human connection.That beings said, I am 100% guilty of Twittering and FB chatting all day. Go figure; this mouth (and fingers) are very hard to shut down!
If you find the answer let me know! I miss the phone sometimes when it was a simple hello, talk, goodbye!
I have a friend overseas who IMs a lot. We have a code for indicating when the conversation is officially over, so it’s not like we left the other dangling and there’s no question the other person will NOT BRB. We each type our single first initial.
Michelle, that is a brilliant idea! You create a code; your personal “Seacrest-Out” stamp.G – OUT.