For me, IM is just one more way for the outside world to intrude rudely on my train of thought, which is something that I can do easily enough on my own. By the way, is it lunchtime yet? See, I did it already.
Someone who shall remain nameless (because she edits this column and would probably remove her name anyway) suggested that "perhaps the usefulness of IM is that people don't feel right about calling each other for a 20-second phone call. They feel like they need to make the call count for something. Hence, IM." That is exactly my point. People don't feel the slightest hesitation about using IM for conversations of little or no value. With the exception of casual social discourse, if people are going to intrude on my time, I would prefer that they do feel the need to make it count for something.
My abhorrence of IM derives partly from the fact that I am not the world's greatest conversationalist. In fact, I probably don't make the top five billion list. I've been told the reason is that I think too much. Funny, but I've always thought that too many people don't think enough before they speak. A few politicians come to mind. Who am I kidding? Most politicians come to mind.
Politicians should love IM because it is the anti-thought. IM punishes people who like to think before responding. Here's the typical scenario: You're sitting at your computer, inevitably in the middle of some deep, life-altering thought, when a message pops up on your screen. It nags you, just begging to be answered. You know that someone on the other side of the Internet is impatiently awaiting your response. No doubt, the sender would consider any delay to be terribly rude. Never mind that the intrusion on your time was even more terribly rude.
Since you can't type anywhere near as fast as you can talk, you figure that you better start your response right away. Thinking only gets in the way.
It is not the discouragement of thought that bothers me the most; it is the intrusion. I know, I know, you can set your online status to "busy" or "on the phone," but there will always be people who say to themselves, "Oh, he's just doing that to discourage other people who might want to bother him." Let me set the record straight. I am trying to discourage you--specifically you.
After a few days of intrusions, I got smart and permanently set my online status to "away," which dissuaded messages from most people. Of course, that defeated the purpose of IM. When I finally let someone through, he was a much faster typist and thinker than I am. He dashed off four messages to my one. Soon, I was dozens of messages behind and just gave up. I called him on the phone and asked what he wanted. We resolved the issue in about seventeen seconds, after which I told him never to IM me again. I then uninstalled as much of Messenger as Microsoft graciously let me uninstall and never looked back.
If something really is so important that you need to get to me right away, call me. If it is not terribly urgent, email me. The nice thing about email is that I don't have to interrupt what I'm doing in order to respond immediately. And I can easily and conveniently keep a record of our email correspondence to jog my aging memory. If it is not at all important, send me a snail mail. However, I should warn you that I live in Canada, and the Canadian postal system has a motto that differs a little from the words over the General Post Office on 8th Avenue in New York. Canada Post's slogan is "Snow, rain, heat, and gloom of night are just a few of the many things that stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."
In conclusion, I recently came across a couple of interesting statistics that put this whole IM issue into perspective. Statistic one: In 2002, almost 32% of American adults had sent at least one instant message. Statistic two: In the same year, about 22% of American adults suffered from a diagnosable mental illness. Coincidence? I think not. My only question is, how long will it be before the other 10% are diagnosable?
Joel Klebanoff is a consultant, a writer, and president of Klebanoff Associates, Inc., a Toronto, Canada-based marketing communications firm. Joel has 25 years experience working in IT, first as a programmer/analyst and then as a marketer. He holds a Bachelor of Science in computer science and an MBA, both from the University of Toronto. Contact him at
Joel Klebanoff is a consultant, writer, and formerly president of Klebanoff Associates, Inc., a Toronto-based marketing communications firm. He has 30 years' experience in various IT capacities and now specializes in writing articles, white papers, and case studies for IT vendors and publications across North America. Joel is also the author of BYTE-ing Satire, a compilation of a year's worth of his columns. He holds a BS in computer science and an MBA, both from the University of Toronto.
MC Press books written by Joel Klebanoff available now on the MC Press Bookstore.
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