I Hate You, Text Messaging
You’ve probably spent a substantial amount of time on this earth contemplating such important questions as the meaning of life, how the universe came about and whether or not there is a God.
Now, I ask that you bear with me for a moment to address a far more perplexing question: Why do texting plans still exist? Better yet, why do carriers insist upon gouging our ****ing eyes out with them?
Tech nerds and blogs alike have all surmised that texting will inevitably die off. Unfortunately, though, the world’s cell phone carriers, being the parasitic leeches that they are, don’t want it to go away. So, they have basically found a suitable host located conveniently within our wallets, and are now continually jamming their filthy Cheeto fingers into our monthly salaries, and making it increasingly more and more difficult to afford food.
But enough of my anti-cellphone carrier diatribes. Killing off texting is more than just about saving an extra $20 a month and ceasing the often absurd rates that carriers are charging for something that costs them minimal bandwidth. (For reference, it would take us roughly 6,710,000 text messages to use just one gigabyte of monthly date.)
It’s about finally taking the right steps towards translating something that is as outdated and inefficient as texting to the grossly efficient world of social media.
Being Grandfathered In
Text messaging, since its inception, has become a staple for communicating among young adults. Growing up alongside AOL with all of its chat and instant messaging functionalities, text-messaging became the next logical step in my generation’s often detached and impersonal online communications with one another. It became extremely convenient because it allowed for us to send short, simple messages that were almost completely devoid of any emotions in settings that would have been at the very least uncomfortable to make a call in.
But even with the proliferation of Twitter and Facebook chat, we are still very much attached to the outdated medium of texting. In an era in which we are just about unlimited in how much we can write and to whom we can express that to, the 160-character and single number limit of individual text messages stands as a still functioning relic that has been preserved for posterity.
It’s a Facebook Messenger, Google Huddle Kind of World
But as with most technology, there are always better, and more efficient means of communication. If text messages have proven anything, it’s that remotely communicating with people through text is something that will most likely never die out. Text messaging began with Morse code and has since evolved into the likes of e-mail and instant messaging.
Now, with social media, the next logical step for messaging is in apps like Facebook Messenger and Google Huddle. These apps, like social networks in general, allow you to easily and conveniently (and, best of all, freely) communicate with all of your friends and acquaintances on those respective social networks.
Even Apple is getting involved in the mix, with some suggesting that their plans to roll out iMessage prompted AT&T’s recent decision to nix their limited texting plans.
All of these programs offer better, more efficient and significantly more feature-dense ways to communicate with others in basically the same manner.
On Its Way Out
Wireless carriers are definitely scared. Right now, text messaging plans are a very cost-effective way for carriers to make their customers hate them, while simultaneously siphoning copious amounts of money out of their customers wallets.
But with Facebook, Google and Apple, among others, all creating far more intuitive solutions to the text messaging dilemma, it’s going to become increasingly more difficult for carriers and customers to justify the purchase of a text messaging plan.
Still, with carriers already collecting on data plans, I don’t think that they will necessarily be hurting following the fallout of the text messaging extermination. But hopefully they don’t try to double the price of those data plans to compensate. Because if they do, this may end up happening to my local Verizon Wireless branch.