its been awhile

Posted on: July 31, 2008 - 2:30pm
its been awhile
wow, its been such a long time since ive been on one of these sites. oh how i missed outminds. it was like an addiction :-P im glad ive got something else i can be on and talk to some new and old people again. looking forward to talking to some of you! :-D

im generally a pretty easy going person and easy to get along with. im up for any kind of conversation, you wanna vent? ill listen. anything else, im good for as well. in person though, im a pretty shy person and it takes awhile to warm up. dont be offended if i say something. a lot of the time it gets twisted. i say what i mean but the words always get warped.

Posted on: August 1, 2008 - 9:45pm #1

Welcome, welcome!

We started this site largely, 'cuz the.alphy was a ex-OM addict and wanted something like it again. And I like computers. So we thought "Hey! Let's make something that OM people can visit." 'cuz OM is down and we are all sad and it's been so long... *sigh*

Somehow, talking online is always easier than talking in person, for me. I say things here and talk to strangers like never before in person. Online was where I discovered all this about sexuality and whatever.. so it'll always stay close to heart. (I'm such a computer nerd, eh? XD *snorts* I love it!) 

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"No one has ever said that life is to be easy. Only that it is to be lived." - Grandmother in "The Road to Rankin's Point" by Alistair Macleod

Posted on: August 13, 2008 - 10:03pm #2
It's so easy for words to come out wrong, whether online or in person! At least for me, lol. Glad to have you on board! 
Posted on: August 14, 2008 - 2:00am #3
 'ello. yeah seriously, it's easier to talk to people online because you don't have to look them in the eye. for some reason looking people in the eye, or even just having someone look at you changes the whole dynamics of a conversation, you feel different emotions like for example embarrassment, online you don't feel that therefore it's easier.
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this is just a ficade

Posted on: August 18, 2008 - 6:42pm #4
"It's so easy for words to come out wrong"

oh its not just you love. ive got the same problem. online conversations are much easier and you always feel ree to ask whatever or talk about whatever you like without feeling too awkward.
Posted on: August 18, 2008 - 6:56pm #5

Maybe that's why online groups and forums like this work.

Imagine if you did this in person. Would you actually go and meet a GLBT group that described itself like OM except in-person? 

__________________

"No one has ever said that life is to be easy. Only that it is to be lived." - Grandmother in "The Road to Rankin's Point" by Alistair Macleod

Posted on: August 19, 2008 - 12:32am #6
believe it or not, i don't speak or act any differently around people in person. i probably should. i mean, i don't say 'lol' or 'ttyl' but i have said 'brb'  ;)
Posted on: August 19, 2008 - 1:18am #7
oh gosh. i have friends who actually do say ttyl or lol. its a little odd.
Posted on: August 19, 2008 - 12:28pm #8

Haha.. saying lol is funny.. XD lol and rofl are really the only chat abbrev's that you can pronounce. I've heard people say "t-t-y-l" and I have to recite the letters in my mind to figure out what they're actually meaning. -.-" I teh slow..

Bye is so much more convenient that t-t-y-l. Yups.

Lol on the otherhand.. You can turn it into a verb and have fun lolling with friends! XP 

__________________

"No one has ever said that life is to be easy. Only that it is to be lived." - Grandmother in "The Road to Rankin's Point" by Alistair Macleod

Posted on: August 19, 2008 - 12:59pm #9
bye is so much more convient. i had a conversation with someone on the phone the other night and she said ttyl and it took me a minute to get it so we argued about which is a better way to get off the phone. i won. its bye.
Posted on: August 19, 2008 - 1:07pm #10

Bye, it is. ^_^

I've had people say b-r-b, but I can understand that a bit faster.. There's still that repeat-it-in-my-head process, but it's not as slow.

It's funny and sad (at the same time) when you see chat lingo creep into formal writing and schoolwork. XD The most common seems to be the change from "you" to "u". I suppose it's that homonym confusion - the same reason people confuse "your" and "you're" or "there" and "their" and "they're". *sigh*

Spelling nuts and grammer nazis are awesome. Yups.

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"No one has ever said that life is to be easy. Only that it is to be lived." - Grandmother in "The Road to Rankin's Point" by Alistair Macleod

Posted on: August 19, 2008 - 10:29pm #11
i think people are just getting more lazy. its easier to write u rather than you and brb and what not.
Posted on: August 20, 2008 - 9:38am #12
The art of conversation is certainly changing and especially so since the advent of the internet. It is becoming more about technical efficiency rather than artfulness. I grew up very much in the older more traditional South and when I moved to New England I really was bothered by the approach to conversation here. Everything becomes abbreviated and people are always in a hurry. This spills over now into all fora of communication. And so we see it here as much as we see it anywhere. I find that my own posts are often extremely long when compared to the posts of others but I try to be clear. Oh yes, welcome aboard.
Posted on: August 20, 2008 - 2:49pm #13

It's definitely true that Internet and casual communication through IM, text messages, and Facebook have together contributed to a sort of abbreviated form of English (aka. chat lingo?).

I've also noticed that email responses in work settings are usually uncomfortably terse and cut-short.  These are people older than the young Internet generation, people who picked up email and Outlook well into their adulthood and who don't use those chat lingo abbreviation. Maybe this observation is more indicative of where I've worked (a couple financial companies - a large bank and a small hedge fund).

Usually the email responses are a quick "Thanks" or a neutral "Ok" acknowledge with little feedback or reflection of the initial message I've written. Has anyone else noticed this at work with email?

Still, I think there's a distinction between succinctness (which I think is nice) and that hurried abbreviation that's the hallmark of text messages and lazy chat conversations (which is unclear and sometimes annoying).

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"No one has ever said that life is to be easy. Only that it is to be lived." - Grandmother in "The Road to Rankin's Point" by Alistair Macleod