Texting

With Gordon grumping about in No.10 and Boris clowning around on the streets of London, it’s time the online community took charge and helped to bring a bit of order into our messed-up world. And the biggest danger to society isn’t MRSI or STDs, but the rampant spread of ITMS (Inappropriate Text Messaging Syndrome). The thing is, we can’t get enough of texts; we use them for everything, everywhere, from pub quiz cheating to microblog Tweeting – and so we should. They’re ingenious wordbundles of convenience and pleasure. But all too often we underestimate the power of a humble SMS, get bold and busy with our fingers, and wreak merry havoc before we’ve realised what we’ve done.

Ladies and gentleman of the social media, I will highlight just a couple of areas where unrestrained ITMS is ruining our lives:

·        Business. There are serious hazards here, something the Manchester-based Accident Group learned to their peril when they sacked some 3,000 loyal staff via SMS and were subsequently held liable for compensation by the irate employees. Are kisses on the end of work-related texts always inappropriate? Should you always keep a separate work phone to prevent drunken SMS career suicide? We need to decide!

·        Relationships. Ah, David, your sneaky text sex with the bacon-loving Loos almost caused the downfall of Beckingham Palace – and most of us are becoming increasingly prone to ‘accidentally’ checking our lover’s Outboxes. Is it ever justified? Is it too easy to ‘harmlessly flirt’ on SMS? Are ‘love’, ‘xxxx’ and xoxoxox’ used so indiscriminately in texts nowadays that the value of affection is being debased?

Usually an advocate of all that is free speech, free love and free text, I’ve decided that enough is enough. We need to pool our experiences and work out some rules. So, bloggers, forum members, online opinion-leaders of every kind, I call you to build your own Text Manifesto: your top 20 dos and donts of Modern Text Etiquette. We’re saving lives here, people. Get to work.

I was sent this old article recently which first appeared on The Times Online in 2005 only to surface on Digg more recently. Eye-catchingly titled ‘Why texting harms your IQ’, it reveals how psychologists have discovered that “the regular use of text messages and e-mails can lower the IQ more than twice as much as smoking marijuana”.Hmm….I don’t really know how much lower your IQ gets after smoking some weed – it may not be much at all - but I still find this claim hard to believe and think the dangers of ‘infomania’ may have been overstated somewhat. Or maybe I’m completely wrong and my addiction to information has made me so dumb I just can’t understand where they’re coming from…

I hope this isn’t true and in an effort to support my case, I spent the better part of the morning researching for non-dumb things to do with text messages that will help you be more productive, more connected, or just generally more clever than your dope-puffing buddies. Even better, I’ve rather intelligently packaged my findings into a list of ten.

10 Non-Dumb things to do with a text message:

1. Write a blog post. It’s entirely possible to update your blog purely through the power of your thumbs – though I’d hesitate before committing to that 1000-plus word rant that’s been building up after a long, busy day.

In the US, LetMeParty is a decent choice while us Brits should make do with Blog-It to avoid the international text charges. This way, if you have an unlimited text package, you won’t pay any extra and can blog as much as you like!

2. Command the DJ. PartyStrands is being promoted as a way of ‘evolving the party’ – presumably not by inviting more scantily-clad honeys, unfortunately. The technology lets you dictate what music gets played at a club by texting your favourite songs. Your choice of ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ will probably be over-ruled, however.

3. Update your Twitter. We decided to leave this to number three, just to be awkward. Being able to easily update your Twitter profile via a single text has arguably proven the most revolutionary of innovations introduced by the grand-daddy of the micro-blogging scene. If you haven’t texted in an update from the toilet, you just haven’t lived.

4. Update your Plazes. While most people will have heard of Twitter by now, not many would be familiar with its geo-blogging equivalent, Plazes. This site lets you send similar updates about what you’re doing, but with a focus on ‘where are you’ instead of ‘what are you doing’. Worth a look.

5. Update your blog status. If the prospect of writing an entire blog post on a numeric keypad the size of a credit card is only marginally more attractive to you than the thought of Lisa Riley dressed as Barbarella mud-wrestling with a nude Vanessa Feltz, you might want to settle for this solution.

6. Organise an impromptu flash mob. Flash-mobbing no longer fascinates the tabloids in the way that it once did, but that does not necessarily mean the bizarre trend is dead. Use your phone to draw together a crowd of individuals equally as prepared to commit to some public insanity as much as you. Buddyping is a highly useful tool in helping you accomplish this task.

7. Find out your local taxi service when drunk and lost. Sometimes, it’s the best idea in the world to trek two-thirds of the way across London to reach that late-night bagel shop which makes them ‘just right’. Other times, you’re just being a drunken idiot. Cabwise is the easiest way to find a local taxi service when you need one.

8. Settle all arguments by having questions answered. On the aforementioned journey home, you can avoid an unnecessary punch-up with your mates in an argument about the name of the main bad guy in the classic 80s cartoon series, ‘Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors’ (Saw Boss, by the way) by using AQA. Any Questions Answered is pretty much solely responsible for that team you hate winning the pub quiz every single week.

9. Buy stuff online. Relatively recently, Amazon offered its US users the opportunity to buy products via an SMS text message. While there appears to be no plans to introduce this in the UK, it’s a nice reflection of how companies are continuing to innovate in the texting area - after all, most of us are with our mobile phones 24/7 – they’re the ultimate connection device.

10. Send inspirational messages to the kids. Well, if it’s good enough for the Pope…