The Invasive Texter
Ever heard of cybernetic stalkers, those guys that stalk women and children online? They seem to have a distant cousin called the invasive texter, a person that when armed with a smartphone can invade your privacy and even your thoughts. They seriously have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder when it comes to texting other people. These people stop at nothing when they begin to text you, its just an endless stream of IM after IM, you try to answer them in the hopes they might just shut up, but before you can another stream of IMs starts coming your way, after that its just blinking, and ringing/vibrating and letters and numbers all coming out of your at once at you. Like any sane person, you decide not to answer them because you don't want another invasion of IMs and you also didn't have the chance to read anything that they sent you, the end? No, because you didn't answer there's another endless stream of IMs coming your way: it will just never end and it's your fault, since you gave this person enough trust creating boundary issues in them.
What makes someone become an invasive texter? Simply put, boredom! Invasive Texters are people that have nothing of importance to do and to kill some time, before some extraordinary event in their life occurs, they randomly pick on a victim from their contact lists. That's the first theory, but being this a serious and academic study of the human psyche, there has to be another theory, or two. The other theory, the Romantic IM Theory, is that the invasive texter has got the hots for you and, for some odd reason, lacks the social and people skills to actually approach you in a less freaky way. This texter seems to think that they can use words to make them fall for you, so ladies and gents, please beware when romantic IMs start flowing your way. It's sick, I know! The final theory, that is the Boundary Issues Theory, is that the Invasive Texter is actually a very good friend of yours, who suffers from boredom, boundary issues and has a strange need to know everything about everyone, and since they know they are friends with you, they just grab the phone and IM till you die or answer, or both. The problem, of course, is that they are unpredictable and will resort to invading your phone whenever they feel the need to communicate something to you.
How to survive the IM Invasions? Answer in short, ambiguous words and phrases and use a lot of smileys, to repel any IM invasion. If you want to counterattack, just throw your own volley of IMs towards the invader, in other words, invade their phone. If that doesn't work you've got an unstoppable invader on your hands and the best thing to do is to turn off your phone, put a blanket on it, grab a gun, shoot it and get another phone and a new number.
The Evasive Texter
These people seem to be allergic to their phones, at the first sight of their phone ringing/vibrating their hands swell up, their eyes bulge out and they start getting all red as hives start to appear all over them. They are terrified of IMs, and some even avoid reading them, let alone answering them. But the focus of this study is the Evasive Texter that replies to you with unnecessarily short IMs, that person that if possible only sends a single word in reply. Annoying? Check. Its worse than the guy that only reads the IM but doesn't IM you back, at you can give that one the benefit of the doubt that they were to busy to text you back. The Evasive Texter, on the other hand, seems to want you to know that they hate texting back.
People become Evasive Texters for many reasons. The first theory, the Touchscreen Theory, is probably the most commonly occurring one: the texter hates to write long IMs, because it is extremely hard for them to type on their touchscreen-only phones. The squinting and robot-like precision they need to type on their phones is just too much for them, so they resort to not texting you back or answering in what can only be described as military orders (i.e. Yes! No! Pick me up! Call me! Answer the phone!, etc). Another theory, the Lazy-text Theory, shows that people become evasive texters when they simply find it boring and tiresome to write IMs on their phones. They have Whatsapp, BBM or whatever app installed just so other people can contact them just "when the need arises", they are border-line enemies with their IM apps and resort to answering with military orders, too. To them IMs are just a tool for whenever direct communications are not possible. Some scholars (read: me) also theorize that people become evasive texters since they are just too busy to answer your psychotic texts or they simply are too VIP to mix with the common rubble through IMs.
How to deal with evasive texters? Just call them, they don't have a complete aversion to human communications, you know. Or be like them and send them a really summarized and abridged short IM so a) you don't feel ignored and b) the other person doesn't die from an allergic reaction to their phone. If you want to be evil, on the other hand, invade their phones with your own IMs, but be prepared for physical retaliations.
The Mute Texter
This guy is actually very sociable and talkative in IMs, but whenever you meet them in person they are extremely quiet and sometimes shy. It seems that they have a double personality disorder in that they are one person while chatting and another when face-to-face with you. I don't know if I warned you, but texters all have some degree of mental illness in them, the mute and invasive texters being the craziest of all, so please, if you dare, continue reading this dark, somber and professional research errr...post on the psychology behind text messengers.
Mute texters are the life of the party- don't know how that can be possible in IM chatting, but lets use it figuratively- because they joke around, scream (read: uses lots of exclamation marks and capital letters), laugh and generally talk a lot through IMs. You might think the guy/girl will be just as fun in person. You thought wrong! They seem to be asleep, because they don't talk, let alone joke or laugh, while in person, they just stare into the void with no words coming out of their mouths. They are annoying, alright, but for another bunch of reasons, actually, a completely opposite set of reasons than those that make an invasive texter annoying. People around them are laughing, talking and having a good time, but the Mute Texter is just there, physically but not mentally, at least not in a way discernable to normal sociable human beings.
How to survive the IM Invasions? Answer in short, ambiguous words and phrases and use a lot of smileys, to repel any IM invasion. If you want to counterattack, just throw your own volley of IMs towards the invader, in other words, invade their phone. If that doesn't work you've got an unstoppable invader on your hands and the best thing to do is to turn off your phone, put a blanket on it, grab a gun, shoot it and get another phone and a new number.
The Evasive Texter
These people seem to be allergic to their phones, at the first sight of their phone ringing/vibrating their hands swell up, their eyes bulge out and they start getting all red as hives start to appear all over them. They are terrified of IMs, and some even avoid reading them, let alone answering them. But the focus of this study is the Evasive Texter that replies to you with unnecessarily short IMs, that person that if possible only sends a single word in reply. Annoying? Check. Its worse than the guy that only reads the IM but doesn't IM you back, at you can give that one the benefit of the doubt that they were to busy to text you back. The Evasive Texter, on the other hand, seems to want you to know that they hate texting back.
People become Evasive Texters for many reasons. The first theory, the Touchscreen Theory, is probably the most commonly occurring one: the texter hates to write long IMs, because it is extremely hard for them to type on their touchscreen-only phones. The squinting and robot-like precision they need to type on their phones is just too much for them, so they resort to not texting you back or answering in what can only be described as military orders (i.e. Yes! No! Pick me up! Call me! Answer the phone!, etc). Another theory, the Lazy-text Theory, shows that people become evasive texters when they simply find it boring and tiresome to write IMs on their phones. They have Whatsapp, BBM or whatever app installed just so other people can contact them just "when the need arises", they are border-line enemies with their IM apps and resort to answering with military orders, too. To them IMs are just a tool for whenever direct communications are not possible. Some scholars (read: me) also theorize that people become evasive texters since they are just too busy to answer your psychotic texts or they simply are too VIP to mix with the common rubble through IMs.
How to deal with evasive texters? Just call them, they don't have a complete aversion to human communications, you know. Or be like them and send them a really summarized and abridged short IM so a) you don't feel ignored and b) the other person doesn't die from an allergic reaction to their phone. If you want to be evil, on the other hand, invade their phones with your own IMs, but be prepared for physical retaliations.
The Mute Texter
This guy is actually very sociable and talkative in IMs, but whenever you meet them in person they are extremely quiet and sometimes shy. It seems that they have a double personality disorder in that they are one person while chatting and another when face-to-face with you. I don't know if I warned you, but texters all have some degree of mental illness in them, the mute and invasive texters being the craziest of all, so please, if you dare, continue reading this dark, somber and professional research errr...post on the psychology behind text messengers.
Mute texters are the life of the party- don't know how that can be possible in IM chatting, but lets use it figuratively- because they joke around, scream (read: uses lots of exclamation marks and capital letters), laugh and generally talk a lot through IMs. You might think the guy/girl will be just as fun in person. You thought wrong! They seem to be asleep, because they don't talk, let alone joke or laugh, while in person, they just stare into the void with no words coming out of their mouths. They are annoying, alright, but for another bunch of reasons, actually, a completely opposite set of reasons than those that make an invasive texter annoying. People around them are laughing, talking and having a good time, but the Mute Texter is just there, physically but not mentally, at least not in a way discernable to normal sociable human beings.
There is no known reason why people become mute texters, but it is probably because they just run out of conversation topics over IM that when you meet them in person they have absolutely nothing to talk about. Or they might be shy, for any reason, and don't feel as ugly, little, fat, too tall or smelly when chatting through IMs, as they do when they are in person and their awful truth is not a secret to the general public. Obviously the legendarily ugly gentleman will talk like a playboy over IM but won't say a thing when sitting in front of you. Another explanation is that you make them nervous and since you don't see them sweating when they are texting you, they'll prefer to talk to you in that way instead of having to risk you seeing they are a human fountain.
The mute texter is probably the easies to survive: just follow their lead over IM and don't go near them in person. If you want to have fun with them, talk a lot to them in person, because they react in humorous ways.
The Read-Only Texter
Do you have a friend that only reads the IMs you send to them and all of a sudden, when they talk to you in person or over the phone they have systematically analyzed your IMs? That person is a Read-Only Texter, a person that does not reply to any IMs and just reads them. It's like talking- or rather, texting- to a wall or any other inanimate object, because there is no answer to your rants over IM. Yes, they are ignoring you, but not because they hate you, they just think they are too VIP to talk to us, the proletariat or they are simply too busy to express their opinion about the ugly pair of shoes you just bought or that girl that doesn't like you back. People become R-O Texters for the same reasons they become Evasive Texters.
These guys are the easiest to have fun with, you just have to invade their phones to get a response from them. Also, if you don't reply to their texts they also begin to slowly lose their sanity and become Invasive Texters themselves. If all else fails, start having conversations through them by posting things that shouldn't be discussed in public in facebook wall posts, for example.
After this exhaustive "study" of the psychology behind different kinds of people that use text-messaging apps all I can conclude is that all of us have, at some point, been any of the texters examined. Just remember, that if someone is smart enough they can have fun with you by exploiting the weaknesses of what kind of texter you are. And if you want to be any kind of texter, be an Evasive Texter, because the other guys have some kind of personality disorder that will be focus of another "investigation", for now, just be sure to know how to survive in the world of text-messaging.
