Ask Lemmy

I am a person who prefers texts over calls.

Are you talking about sending long texts on a phone?

If that is so, even though I don't know if you're boring or not, I can assure that I would not read it. I never read/reply to a large text I receive on my phone (ok, maybe I would read it if it was from my spouse, but she can reach me much more efficiently using other means).

I find the screen of any phone way too cramped, and the font way too small, for any kind of long form reading. Plus, the text layout will be shitty at best.

Imvho, typing long texts on a tiny virtual keyboard is like trying to do brain surgery wearing mittens while riding a roller coaster. And reading it would be something like eating soup with a fork ;)

Obviously, that's just my personal opinion, anyone is more than welcome to disagree, but this may help explain, partly at least, the lack of reaction to your long texts? I mean, people simply do not bother reading wall of texts and/or they don't feel like writing their own wall of text on such a poorly adapted keyboard/screen combo?

As an experiment, you could try writing much shorter prose and see if you get more reactions from sending those?

I usually keep my texts short and with lots of spelling errors. And I almost always send them with a monotone in my head.

On the flip side I usually think reading texts should be a short task. Unless you're ~~arriving~~ arguing with someone I guess, but that should really be done in person.

So much text in one message comes across as monologuing. It makes sense that someone would only be interested if it involves something they're very interested in or passionate about.

The same amount of information broken up across several messages usually comes off better and invites a conversation. Especially if you wait for a response before going on with your subject.

Edit, also be open to the conversation moving away from the subject you wanted to go on about. Constantly moving the conversation back to your topic so you can finish your thought doesn't work out well

Some people like it, some don’t. People think I’m weird that I text someone before calling, because I don’t want to call at a bad time.

Also, if you post to a community that is pretty quiet, once you do, it’s no longer quiet ;)

I would hate to receive such a text and am too conscientious to send one.

I feel like I'm the only one who shares things I've been up to recently and usually the responses I get back are passive at best. Then when I intentionally stop messaging them and waiting for someone else to say something first the group chat dies down for a week. I feel like it's time to move on and leave these "friends" behind.

Hard to say without knowing the conversations or what the recipients are like.

Personally, I try to keep texts to quick messages, as I'm not one for text conversations. If someone started throwing blocks of text at me, expecting me to keep up the conversation, I'd just call them. If they didn't want to talk, then it probably wouldn't be long before I just stopped reading the texts.

So, this is definitely not a diagnosis, as I obviously don't know more about you than what's in this post. But your post sounds quite a bit like the stereotypical autistic experience:

• Being really enthusiastic about specific topics
• Bonding with other folks on the autistic spectrum (that friend also very superficially sounds like they might be there)
• Decidedly preferring texts over calls
• Walls of text
• Feeling like you don't fit in with the rest of society

Now comes the usual disclaimer: Autism is a spectrum. You might just have these few autistic traits as part of your personality and nothing else to do with it. But yeah, it could also be that you've got more such traits and that you'll find it easier to bond with other autistic folks. You can check out some of the autism communities here on Lemmy to try to gauge, if your experience matches that of others in more ways. There's also some questionnaires online, where you can get a rough score, which tells you the likelyhood of autism. For a real diagnosis, you'd need to talk to some doctors, though...

I will be verbose if there is an actual keyboard under my fingers but unless I'm extremely invested in the topic and not also doing something else at that time I keep messages from my phone terse.

k

I have the same problem. I usually end up editing out a bunch of text, yet still end up with a wall of text. I’m sure there’s a balance in there somewhere between enough information and too much information. I also try to remove unnecessary words and phrases to be more concise. If you figure it out, let the rest of us know. 😊

I used to, but people didn't engage, so I stopped. Learned a few years ago to notice when someone doesn't care (which is most of the time) and only engage when someone broached the topic.

I like to watch this every once in a while if I start overthinking texts.

Yeah I do that too. When I get really enthusiastic about something, I can talk about it for hours. So, it exists.

I was told it is apparently an ADHD thing. Because some people I used to meet, did the same thing, about their favorite topic each. So, it's an ADHD thing, apparently.

But I'm glad you can bring up the mental energy to talk about a topic for a long time! That means you're healthy :-) (imo)