n+1 and a brief history of chatting

I love the articles in n+1, but this week they’ve posted an excerpt from an article called  “Chathexis” that REALLY speaks to us, a group of people who make a living providing a way to “chat” with strangers. The article gives a brief history of chatting, spanning from the invention of the couch (it’s being comfortable AND being able to sit with a friend and talk!) to AOL to gchat. They write:

“Previously, we’d decided which screen names to include on our “Buddy Lists” (poor AOL: it came first and had to name the animals, and it named them in a corporate-Midwestern way that couldn’t help but become comically creepy). Gmail made the choices for us, pulling names from our email contacts. It was like standing outside the door of a party that all your friends had been invited to. Maybe they had already arrived!”

The entire article is witty, smart, and true, but we were mainly interested in how our users and readers thought of “chat.” What do we gain from chatting now, almost 20 years after AOL’s IM system began? What does chatting lend us that video or in-person conversations cannnot?

image via http://k8thebounce.blogspot.com

n+1′s take on videochatting is hilarious. They write:

“There is something so literal about video. It reminds you of a world that can’t imagine anything but itself. It’s almost as bad as walking down the street. Our friends are made over into evasive strangers: just try making eye contact in videochat. You can’t. It’s as bad as a first date, or a job interview—you sit there, face to face with another human being, and feel unseen. Videochat’s promise of intimacy—friends on the other side of the world, looking at us in our homes!—makes us forget the conditions in which actual intimacy occurs. Where have we had our best conversations? When we were sharing a booth with someone in the back of a dark bar, or lying in bed, or walking somewhere, or nowhere at all, our faces turned in the same direction: outward, toward the world, into which we moved forward together. We arrive at a shared perspective when we do, actually, share a perspective—when we take, quite literally, the same view of things. Then, turning away from that view—and toward each other—can mark a moment of surpassing agreement or sympathy. There are no such moments in videochat.”

Sometimes, users will ask us at GutCheck if we plan to implement video chatting. And we do — there is a demand for the capability, so we’ll meet that demand because that is what we do. But whenever people bring this up to me, I tend to shy away from the idea. Maybe it’s because, at 25, I am someone who has grown up with all of the computer-based conversational tools touched on in the article. Because I grew up comfortable IM-ing and I still spend all day on gchat (BUT NOT ALWAYS CHATTING, guys! I am a GOOD WORKER!). Something about the video chat seems awkward. You’re hyperaware. You can see your own face staring back at you, in the corner of the screen. You can’t do anything else, it feels cheap. Long distance relationships feel more strained. The distance is palpable. It hurts more.

n+1 suggests that the one-on-one, intimate setting afforded by chatting at home, on the couch, or in bed, is our secret to continual attention and good conversation:

“Gchat’s bright bulbs go out, one by one, until a single circle glows hopefully. Like Gatsby’s green light, it is the promise of happiness. [...] Gchat has at times liberated us from this dialogue of the deaf, and provided us with a template for another way of talking.”

So what do you all think of the video/text chat concept? Has the way you communicate changed — and what do you prefer? How do you talk?