I'll confess that I've never sent a text message. I wouldn't know how and, frankly, I don't care. As you know, if you've been following my blog here at The Red Room that I started Tweeting in December.  These can be useful forms of communication if your intent is to connect with others, do some book promotion, etc. But something else is going on. These forms of communication have led not just to expediency in reaching others but to new heights of rudeness and a further isolation of people, the very people who are reaching out to others across time and space.

My best friend commented that she and her husband had taken their teenaged son and one of his friends out to dinner. Instead of casual dinner conversation, they were utterly ignored by the teens who sat at the table texting each other. Not only were they not communicating with the adults but, amazingly enough, instead of talking to each other when they were face-to-face, they were sending text messages!  What an incredible phenomenon.  Not to mention stupid.  How can you sit across a table from someone and use text messaging instead of verbal communication and eye contact?

You're probably thinking that it's because they're kids. Well, that would be bad enough, and certainly my friend raised her son better than that!  But I read a recent series of Twitter "tweets" from a certain author who was asking the friends he'd just left in a bar if they were still tweeting each other across the table! Yes, you read that correctly. Adults sitting together and tweeting instead of talking.I 'm not going to mention any names here even though it was a very public admission. If you didn't see it on Twitter, then please do keep your illusions about two authors, an actor and a producer intact. Oh, and the wife of one of the authors who was also present.  

Does anyone else see this as bizarre?  Were they playing like children? Why would anyone waste time on such nonsense when they are actually sitting together, face-to-face, not thousands of miles apart?

Aren't authors isolated enough by the very nature of our work? Personally, I relish the times when I can interact with friends, communicating eye-to-eye, hearing the inflections of a human voice.