Away Messages, Freud & B. F. Skinner Have What in common? Part 2

Economics: So the obvious first, you have your computer on all day, your internet connection on all day, your instant messenger program on all day. Directly and indirectly you're using a lot of electricity (think about it)! The other economical factor is opportunity cost. But how could one loose or gain with a task that is idle and optional? Which away message do I choose? Is this what I want to say now? You can see the user is faced with a most difficult task. Choosing what to display. Often individuals will have many saved away messages, that they've created and at their disposal. So as the supply of away messages is increasing, the demand for each one becomes significantly reduced. The interaction of supply and demand has the potential to create anxiety in the user because one does not know which away message best represents what they wish to express. Of course it would be foolish to not mention the dichotomy, which is those who know what they wish to express and little anxiety is created. I would suspect that the former users have a significant more amount of away messages then the latter.

Socially: What are the social implications of away messages? What is the underlying need that surrounds letting someone know where we are, if we're sleeping, taking a walk, angry at our significant others or taking a shit? Socially, I believe the underlying factor is dependency and is operated through the need to feel connected to a larger population (everyone who has you on their buddy list).
For example on my buddy list one individual's current away message is "Ahhhhh BIG date tonight :)." This individual who is recently divorced (3 months at most) has opted to tell us this information for a long duration of time. The other part of her away message is "I am at work." So to briefly hypothesize, this individual may have placed this away message up at around 8 AM and perhaps will take it down (if we're luckie) around 5 PM, for a total of 8 hours. Knowing first hand both parties have each other screen names on their buddy lists. So why display this away message? Why possibly tell your X that you have a new relationship opportunity? Why not just tell your friend close that you have this opportunity? By the time word of mouth ends I'm sure more than the number of people on her buddy list will know this information. My statement has one strong implication. That people are reading this away message! The answer to all three of these questions is you write and read away message to provide and learn cathartic information that attempted to compensate for the dis-connectivity of the most connected generation.

This brings us to the three factor away message model I've created. Informative, Antagonistic and Analytic. It is my belief that every away message can be categorized in this triangular model (figure 1). Firstly every away message is Informative. It will always provide information either explicit ("At the store") or implicit ("to the bowels of society's nutritional factory"). The question that must be answered is how informative the away message is. This is what contributes to the Y-axis increase or decrease (figure 2). Is the away message telling you nothing or something meaningful. The interpretation is sensitive to subjectivity. To reduce this factor emphasis on the explicit or implicate intensity should be used to create a more general criteria. You'll notice that "1" and "2" are present in figure 2. These are to indicate my two examples. "1" would correspond to "At the store." "2" would correspond to "to the bowels of society's nutritional factory."

Next once informative criteria has been established you may then deviate on the X-axis to the left or right for Antagonistic or Analytic (figure 3, "1"). First I will discuss Antagonistic. An antagonistic away message in light of our previous example "Ahhhhh BIG date tonight :)," may be intended for the X-spouse. It also may be used to provoke positive feelings of friends such as "I'm glad she is finally getting out" or "I'm glad she is moving on." Another example can illustrate a truly antagonistic away message. After recently hearing from a girl that she just wanted to be friends, this individuals away message reads "Whoa-oh! Oh Angel! Come greet the dawn, it's a brand new day!Whoa-oh! Oh Angel! Let burn the passion that fires your soul!! Each lonely night I get through without you becomes my victory. Each empty night I fight against the light that is my destiny." Needless to say this is directed at loosing the girl. When I asked the girl if she had read his away message she responded "yes." If rated on the triangular scale, this away message would fall somewhere to the bottom far left. In general, antagonistic away messages are meant to provoke negative emotional responses or on the flip side positive sympathetic feelings germane to the poster's life. They can be implicit or explicit, but both will incite strong emotional reactions in the reader.

The last dimension in the 3 factor scale is Analytic. Analytic works on the same X-axis as Antagonistic (figure 3, "2"). To this end we have dichotomy. Either an away message is Antagonistic or Analytic and can be somewhere in between. An example of an analytic away message are quotes and jokes that are not emotionally relevant to the poster. It would be a good hypothesis to posit if individuals can detect when a poster is being antagonistic or analytic and expecting others to read this away message.

However one may ask how can an individual know if what is being said is intended to be antagonistic or analytic and how informative the away message is. The truth is we may sometimes know because of our relationship with the individual and sometimes we don't. These gray area away message, so to speak, would reside in the white area of the triangle. An example of this would be the away message "Wo0t! Pies are being made." Below are several examples I've composed to help illustrate the 3 factor triangular model.

Figure 4: "Ahhhhh BIG date tonight :)"



Figure 5: "Whoa-oh! Oh Angel! Come greet the dawn, it's a brand new day!Whoa-oh! Oh Angel! Let burn the passion that fires your soul!! Each lonely night I get through without you becomes my victory. Each empty night I fight against the light that is my destiny."




Figure 6: "Look, I told you when we met that I wasn't a real leprechaun, that I was from Rhode Island, and that I was half Korean, and you said it didn't matter."



Figure 7: "Wo0t! Pies are being made

This wraps up part 2 of Away Messages, Freud & B. F. Skinner Have What in common? Part 3 will conclude how and what type of individuals are posting and reading away messages and how this contributes to the dis-connectivity of the most connected generation.