Awkward silence

After last class’ discussion about our fifteen minutes alone I was excited about my fifteen minutes of observation of the outside world. I had a whole plan that on Thursday after lunch I was going to sit on the stairs of CR and watch the people who walked by. Count the ones who were interacting compared to the ones who looked up at the world compared to the ones with headphones in compared to the ones doing god knows what else. However, it was Wednesday night that I really knew what I wanted to discuss.

Wednesday, I arrived home after an afternoon class at Willard to my bored friends wanting to hang out. After I told them I must do work they, of course, came into my room anyway. It was fine because I was just doing note cards and it was fun to have their crazy conversations in the background anyway. However, as I’m writing down some notecards about medical prefixes and suffixes, I notice something that had always been relevant but now I have the perfect opportunity to discuss it. No one can handle the awkward silence.

The awkward silence is the small pause of silence in a conversation usually when you meet someone new or during small talk. It has become so awful to us that we fear it more than most other things that we probably should be fearing like damaging the environment or who we are as a person. The awkward silence is the meter of a conversation. Meaning, if the awkward silence is present it is the trademark of an unnatural unconnectable conversation. The awkward silence is the 2000s babies biggest challenge.

Why? Here’s my brilliant theory: we have become a very rapidly advancing species. Since the invention of the internet, the race for knowledge and growth of the capabilities of technology have been expanding at literally exponential rates that are almost unfathomable when compared to the rest of history. Every year, every day for that matter, gets faster. For example, just the other night my friends and I were laughing about the mannequin challenge that was probably from middle school. And I argued that there’s no way that challenge would be able to survive in 2020 because no one would have the patience or desire to sit through a video that long. They all agreed. The rapidly increasing advancements directly correlate to the rapidly decreasing attention spans. We get mad when the internet loads literally 4 seconds slower than it should be. When, really, it’s knowledge that is moving faster now than it ever has been before in human history. Such a magnanimous achievement that gets overshadowed by our desensitized brains.

The awkward silence is caused by the fractured mindset of how to talk to new people. Logically, meeting new people is awkward. Not everyone Will be your friend and not everyone you will hit it off with at first glance. The awkward silence is probably 95% inevitable, but we are terrified. This all leads back to my Wednesday afternoon sitting at my desk making small notecards about prefixes and suffixes. The conversation stops and suddenly I hear piercing noises out of the small and atrocious iPhone speakers that belong to some of my best friends here. Tik tok. Instagram. Snapchat. When the conversation even started to mellow out just a little, they, we, all turn to our phones even though this a group of best friends.

The awkward silence is just silence made awkward because we aren’t used to it. It was likely just a pause at one point, but it has become a detrimental mistake in a conversation. If you hit the silence, it almost instantly is filled with phone noise or a bent neck into a screen. Thus, I suppose, the awkward silence is not only created by technology but is fueled by technology. The technology causes the need for speed in conversation but also it fills the gaps it makes by inserting some dumb app to fill time. Technology is therefore its own success and demise. It creates great tools as it destroys its work. Why? Because as we crank our necks farther and farther down into our phones, our social connection is weakened, and our relationships pay the price.