# Is the habit of chatting with neighbors at the front gate fading?



## AlanMexicali (Jun 1, 2011)

I have noticed a few things different lately. Before driving around I would see people standing around chatting. Now I see this only among the older people. I was in a glass high rise office building looking around the city and noticed all apartment buildings have Dish TV on the roofs, thousands of them. I also see people coming out of Walmart with flat screen TVs all the time. Are people staying inside more now watching TV?


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## joaquinx (Jul 3, 2010)

You can say the same about the US. I remember when houses had a front porch and people would sit out there in the summer. They would have conversations with their neighbors and people passing by. Then the TV station opened and everyone got a TV and went inside.


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

Can we conclude from this that the TV shows were more interesting than what the neighbors had to say??

Was that the same bygone era when kids went OUTSIDE to PLAY instead of inside to their computer games?
LOL.


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## joaquinx (Jul 3, 2010)

lagoloo said:


> Can we conclude from this that the TV shows were more interesting than what the neighbors had to say??


It is the same with any information device, e.g., computer, smartphone, etc, once you have it, you have to use it or you fall back on knowing the latest information.


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

joaquinx said:


> It is the same with any information device, e.g., computer, smartphone, etc, once you have it, you have to use it or you fall back on knowing the latest information.


Oh, don't get me started or I'll get into a rant about how "connected" a person needs to be in order to achieve the proper level of "with it ness". :blah::blah::blah:

What's to miss that isn't on the daily web news?

Sometimes I get that "look" from others when I admit I don't WANT to be "connected" via the social media. No facebooking, no tweeting, no Linkedin, etc. In fact, my cell phone is sitting in the car, in the "off" mode, with over 2,500 minutes waiting to be used up. I guess I am certifiable, but I like talking with people face to face or like this, on the web. Enough.

GO, LUDDITES!


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## RVGRINGO (May 16, 2007)

You have a cell phone? Not me! Hard wired phone is all I need. If no answer, an e-mail will get a reply the next time I am online. I have no desire to be connected beyond that.


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## makaloco (Mar 26, 2009)

I'm with lagoloo and RVGringo on social media and have no desire to "stay connected" by being constantly available by phone or online, any more than I want my neighbors ringing my doorbell 30 times a day. I have a cell phone but often don't take it with me unless I'm expecting a call. Drives some of my friends crazy, as does the fact that I refuse to use text messaging.


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## RVGRINGO (May 16, 2007)

It must be true, though, because there is much less stopping a car in the middle of the street for a chat, in spite of traffic patiently waiting behind. Yes, patiently. Seldom much horn honking, and the chat usually is not a long one. Folks just smile and wave when rolling again.
Another change: Fewer teens smooching in doorways. Now they have TV and a soft couch. Same outcome? No, the birth rate is dropping.


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

RVGRINGO said:


> You have a cell phone? Not me! Hard wired phone is all I need. If no answer, an e-mail will get a reply the next time I am online. I have no desire to be connected beyond that.


A while back, in the middle of a rainstorm with darkness approaching, in the middle of nowhere in Mexico, our small car and a large animal connected, with sad results all around.
We were at least able to limp it to the side of the road and....*use the cell phone *to contact our insurance company and get other help to get on home. That is the reason it has lived in the car, then and now. We have a plan that costs 50 pesos a month. Cheap insurance, IMO.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

There is a problem with not being connected. In Chiapas most people I deal with do not have house phones, they almost all have cell phones and because they do not have a lot of money they all text and if you try to call them they run out of money very quicly so if you do not have a cell phone and do not text you cannot get in touch with people. Almost none of them have computers, some use the internet cafes but only once a week at most so if you have no cell phone and do not text you just cannot reach anyone.

By the way even people in governamental offices text. Conaculta has no money for office phone for most of their people and everyone is texting, if you call the government phones no one will answer....


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## JoanneR2 (Apr 18, 2012)

citlali said:


> There is a problem with not being connected. In Chiapas most people I deal with do not have house phones, they almost all have cell phones and because they do not have a lot of money they all text and if you try to call them they run out of money very quicly so if you do not have a cell phone and do not text you cannot get in touch with people. Almost none of them have computers, some use the internet cafes but only once a week at most so if you have no cell phone and do not text you just cannot reach anyone. By the way even people in governamental offices text. Conaculta has no money for office phone for most of their people and everyone is texting, if you call the government phones no one will answer....


I talk to my friends, neighbors, my colleagues, people in restaurants, shopkeepers, my pilates teachers etc. face to face daily. However, I can only contact my children and friends in the UK by text, email and, best of all Skype. Technology adds to our opportunities to interact with others globally and freely in a way we could only imagine years ago. Even my 80 year old in-laws talk to us over Skype each week, as they do with their other child in New Zealand. Add to that the ability to contact help in remote places and difficult circumstances and it is hard to see why being a Luddite is any better now than it was when they were smashing looms in the 19th century...


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

Yes I also use skype a lot to be in touch with my family. They live in Asia , Africa and Europe and without skype or some similar program I remember the time when my phone bills were huge but with skype and e-maisl it really makes life much more pleasant.
I remember the times where we would write to each other on these blue sheets that we would fold and mail..it sometimes took 3 weeksor more to have any news , we could not exchange photos as it was very expensive to send anything airmail , we also were not able to get mail when we were travelling and so on
I take the internet, skype , cel phones . anyday . If I do not want to be connected , I just do not answer but that is my choice.


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

Email works just fine with friends and relatives, too. It works even better than Skype if you are hearing impaired.

Get over it, anti-"Luddites". The phrase wasn't meant literally. We're not in favor of smashing YOUR machines........but that doesn't make us "wrong" if we don't feel compelled to use them.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

I gues.s it all depends if you are working and need to be in touch with people who do use these machines or if you are retired and do not have to worry about it


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## GARYJ65 (Feb 9, 2013)

citlali said:


> I gues.s it all depends if you are working and need to be in touch with people who do use these machines or if you are retired and do not have to worry about it


I agree with you!
And you know what? It's a great moment in history, because we have all that technology available, if we choose to use it, or not. or if we change opinion too.
I don't like or use facebook myself, al the others, email, whatsapp, skype, cell phone, I would starve to death if I would not use those


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

_


makaloco said:



I'm with lagoloo and RVGringo on social media and have no desire to "stay connected" by being constantly available by phone or online, any more than I want my neighbors ringing my doorbell 30 times a day. I have a cell phone but often don't take it with me unless I'm expecting a call. Drives some of my friends crazy, as does the fact that I refuse to use text messaging.

Click to expand...

_Openly confessed Local Luddite #4 here. I must admit that I benefit greatly from Citlali´s skill at using cell pones, Skype and other modern communications tools and I am approaching an age when I really must have an operable cell phone with me when we return to Lake Chapala next week and I take my doggies (all five of them) on those lonely strolls on deserted lake beaches because , while they profess to love me, especially when I approach them with food, I doubt their love will suffice to provide rescue if I am stretched out on a beach along a rarely used path immobilized and in need of medical assistance for whatever reason. OK, so in terms of inexpensive connectivity, these days beat the days when I was an outside salesman for commercial bank loan related services from the 1970s through the 1990s but, if I must say, something of great importance has apparently been lost forever and that something for an outside salesman is _FREEDOM_. In the days when I was roaming the San Francisco Financial District and environs calling on prospective commercial loan clients, entertaining existing clients on the handball courts or working out with them at private gyms, sharing cocktails with them over Liar´s or Boss Dice, enjoying all-afternoon martini laden lunches at San Francisco´s finest Financial District restaurant/watering holes and all this on the bank´s dime, I was damn happy I could not be reached by desk bound head office administrators because the communications technology needed to keep me on the corporate leash simply didn´t exist. I had a secretary (remember those?) to cover for me and take dictation memorializing the day's events in shorthand when and if I returned that day and an assistant manager flack cátcher to man the hard line, non-portable office phones who knew how to reach me, if need be, at whatever gym or watering hole I was attending in fulfillment of my business development and retention duties I may have self-assigned myself that day. Of course, that assistant manager´s primary task was to handle any crisis without my participation if at all possible. What mattered was whether or not I brought home the bacon and the quality of that bacon; not where I bought it or the struggles involved in its acquisition and, I might add, my clients, mostly movers and shakers in what we commercial bankers defined as small businesses, were as pleased as I to temporarily turn over the factory or distributorship or law office or you name it to underlings for a while to attend these business related roundabouts with their banker who was providing an essential service needed to smooth out cash flow cycles if you know what I mean.

Today, everyone is on a tether and if one is obliged to answer his/her cell phone in the middle of a critical discussion with a client regarding planning for commercial loan cash access during the coming quarter over a couple of extra-dry doublé martinis and the boss is on the line who knows but that some clown in the bar/restaurant in his cups is going to feed the rather loud jukebox while one is talking with one´s boss and cause one to lose one´s concentration to say nothing of face or, horror of horrors, that outside job to become, once again a desk jockey with concomitant loss of hard earned stripes.


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## missvalentina (Apr 22, 2014)

Now everybody is chatting in the elevators


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

_


missvalentina said:



Now everybody is chatting in the elevators

Click to expand...

_Well, OK, I get it. Chatting to an old goober such as Dawg who grew up in the 1950s and 60s meant "chatting" with passers-by at the figurative picket fence out in the front yard a la Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird as in "Mawhning Miss Mitty, how you doin´ today? On yo way ovah to the Piggly Wiggly to get some Wonder Bread fo those wonderful BLTs you make with those heirloom tomatoes ripenin´on the vine in yore vegetable garden, are you? Well, say hello to store Manager Ned Riley for me and...." You get my drift.

I presume, although I have never set foot in the UAE, that missvalentina, there in Downtown Dubai has a different definition of "chatting" as Dubaians and their visitors and expat guests ride up and down in those high speed elevators in colossal high-rise mega-structures totally ignoring their fellow passengers between the first floor and the inevitable observation tower 200 stories up into the clouds while "chatting", or, I take it, texting friends riding up and down other elevators or in offices in those mega-structures in Downtown Dubai or some other Emirate commercial center rising incongruously out of the parched desert adjacent to the sea. I am making the assumption that these "chats" are taking place among participants within the confines of the air conditioned structures because only mad dogs and Englishmen would be caught outside in the noonday sun in the UAE.

Back in the highrises of the 60s which were the ones in which I first had the opportunity to work, there were no portable devices upon which to "chat" so people used to ride up and down those elevators totally ignoring each other as a rule for the most part. So, really, nothing has changed except now one can engage in silent chatter all the way to the top or bottom instead of simply staring at the floor advice buttons light up with a "ping" at each floor in succession.

However, maybe (actually, certainly) I am behind the times as there are no elevators that I am aware of in the Mexican towns in which I have resided in retirement for the past 13 years except, perhaps in some condo structures overlooking Lake Chapala the entrances to which I am not privileged to enter.


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## makaloco (Mar 26, 2009)

In my neighborhood, the figurative picket fence is the sidewalk or street, usually when people come out early mornings to go to work or late afternoons to water their trees and cactus. Especially during evenings and weekends, drivers stop their cars to greet acquaintances sitting outside their homes or driving in the opposite direction. If city employees (e.g. road repair, water dept) are working nearby, residents chat with them, too, and often bring them cold drinks. Neighbors I know have land or cell phones but use them sparingly. As often as not, cell phones are out of minutes and the cell-calling option on the land line is disabled so that the teenagers don't run up the bill while the parents are at work.


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## RVGRINGO (May 16, 2007)

OK, I admit that my wife does carry a cell phone, but not a ;smart one, when she is out and I am not, which is most of the time. My poor eyesight prevents me from using one; even a normal phone is difficult, and I certainly cannot text or read books any more. The computer allows me to touch type or even have it read to me if the text is too long to chase with heavy reading glasses and a magnifying glass. Of course, I can also enlarge the text on the computer.


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## Longford (May 25, 2012)

A lot of one-on-one communication takes place these days, where people are face-to-face and not just posting to internet forums, Facebook, sending emails, etc. I spend time in the USA, Mexico and Canada each year and participate in and witness this.

We shouldn't expect communication between people today to be the same as it was in the 1950s or 60's, however. Times change. People change. Cultures change.

In the building where I live, where more than 500 other people live .. I can have a little or a lot of this one-on-one contact. I sit with about 25 neighbors once a week and we discuss currrent events. I have breakfast Saturday morning's at a nearby McDonald's with friends and neighbors. We stop in the lobby of the building or on the street nearby to greet one another and talk.

It's not much different for me in Mexico, no matter where I travel. And I've traveled throughout the country for the past 45-years. Big cities and small villages with just clusters of dwellings. In the back of pick-up trucks or on busses. I see people talking over the fences, in front of their houses, at the schools waiting for their children or in the jardin or plaza principal at night or on Sunday. I strike-up conversations with all sorts of people I don't know. And I've lived and worked in Canada and still have many family members living there. Most of my time in Canada is spent in Ontario, and principally in Toronto which is a very communicable city.

The opportunities are there, right in front of us. All it takes is an "Hola!" or "Hello!"


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

No picket fences in my neighborhood in Mexico City and certainly no front porches, but neighbors do stop and chat on the street, while taking the garbage out when the "basureros" bell summons them to the garbage truck, while sitting and taking the sun at one of the many sidewalk cafes, and standing in line at the Superarma, to give a few examples.


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

I loved Hound Dog's use of the phrase "being on a tether".
Before moving to Mexico, my spouse was in one of those jobs where "tethering" was normal practice for the people who were important to keeping things going.

He was scheduled for some minor surgery requiring anesthesia, and the top boss thought he should have his device with him during the process. The astonishing thing is that he was *serious.*

I'm not retired; I'm self employed in a solitary profession. I can't think of any legitimate reason why having a land line phone with an answering machine attached and a computer, which I can check every few hours for email is not sufficient for living in my world.

If I choose to take a walk into the wilds, I can always carry that normally car-tethered cell phone with me. I like choices, and retain as many as I can. 

I want undisturbed "thinking time", which is almost impossible if one is always "tethered". YMMV.

The one device I like most is the Kindle: hundreds of books at hand without loading down the luggage. Now THAT is a good thing. The type enlarging feature and the light is another nice one.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

I like the chating in the elevator remark. We had a 20 year old with us for 3months and she was chatting nn stop with all of her friends even as she was watching moves so I think the young people look at chating very differently than we look at it. Nothing wong with it but it is different.


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

citlali said:


> I like the chating in the elevator remark. We had a 20 year old with us for 3months and she was chatting nn stop with all of her friends even as she was watching moves so I think the young people look at chating very differently than we look at it. Nothing wong with it but it is different.


You seem to be correct. Occasionally, i sit next to young couples, and sometimes old, in theaters and they want to talk all the way through. A couple weeks ago, I was in a theater for a performance of the NY Metropolitan Opera's live simulcast of La Boheme. There was a young couple a few seats away that were talking through the whole first scene. I leaned over and asked them to be quiet, somewhat brusquely I guess. It seemed to startle them. At the scene break a few minutes later, they got up and left and did not return. I suspect they thought I was as impolite as I thought they were. Purely a culture clash.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

TundraGreen said:


> You seem to be correct. Occasionally, i sit next to young couples, and sometimes old, in theaters and they want to talk all the way through. A couple weeks ago, I was in a theater for a performance of the NY Metropolitan Opera's live simulcast of La Boheme. There was a young couple a few seats away that were talking through the whole first scene. I leaned over and asked them to be quiet, somewhat brusquely I guess. It seemed to startle them. At the scene break a few minutes later, they got up and left and did not return. I suspect they thought I was as impolite as I thought they were. Purely a culture clash.


Not a culture clash at all! Just rude people who were ruining the opera for everyone sitting near them. I would have asked them to be quiet after just a couple of minutes of listening to their chatter.


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

Isla Verde said:


> Not a culture clash at all! Just rude people who were ruining the opera for everyone sitting near them. I would have asked them to be quiet after just a couple of minutes of listening to their chatter.


I have the feeling that talking during movies is not considered as rude or annoying in Mexico as it is in the US. True or not? At any rate, I seem to be the only one bothered by it when I have been near people talking in a theater.

In the US, talking during a musical performance is even more of a no-no than during a movie. But opera is pretty new here. I doubt that the kids sitting next to me, had ever been told that.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

TundraGreen said:


> I have the feeling that talking during movies is not considered as rude or annoying in Mexico as it is in the US. True or not? At any rate, I seem to be the only one bothered by it when I have been near people talking in a theater.
> 
> In the US, talking during a musical performance is even more of a no-no than during a movie. But opera is pretty new here. I doubt that the kids sitting next to me, had ever been told that.


In Mexico City I tend to go to movie theaters showing art films and the like, so the audiences are usually very well-behaved. When they're not, I have heard Mexicans shushing them, though that doesn't always do the trick. In any event, since I hate that kind of behavior, I usually go to the movies during the week, often in the afternoon, to avoid the crowds. Then if someone sitting near me is talking, I can just pick up and move to another seat.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

When I said our young friend was chatting, I meant on the cell phone not out loud but I have a funny story on the movie chatting as well.

Oe day we came in to a movie theater and the whole crowd consisted of 3 young women who started talking outloud during the movie. My husband said outloud: "oh great we managed to sit near 3 idiots" and one of them turned around and said" sorry we are just 3 dumb Mexicans" all in perfect English, we all died laughing and they were quiet for the rest of the movie.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

sorry guys you are showing your age chatting = texting


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## joaquinx (Jul 3, 2010)

Isla Verde said:


> In Mexico City I tend to go to movie theaters showing art films and the like, so the audiences are usually very well-behaved. When they're not, I have heard Mexicans shushing them, though that doesn't always do the trick. In any event, since I hate that kind of behavior, I usually go to the movies during the week, often in the afternoon, to avoid the crowds. Then if someone sitting near me is talking, I can just pick up and move to another seat.


There was a scene in _Two and a Half Men_ where Rose got someone to move by making farting sounds.


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

citlali said:


> sorry guys you are showing your age chatting = texting


Not so:
Chatting involves noise, as in cell phone.
Texting is silent.


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

lagoloo said:


> Not so:
> Chatting involves noise, as in cell phone.
> Texting is silent.


Not so:
Chatting these days can be a little box that opens on a web browser where you type in your questions or problems and someone in customer support types their responses. Or you can do the same thing with friends. Texting runs over the cell phone systems. Chatting is very similar but runs over the internet.

The only noise involved is the click of the keys, unless you are RVGringo and your computer reads the messages to you.


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

Iy seems to me that multiplex cinema houses have been identified as the nearly perfect money laundering tool in Mexico which is great as far as I´m concerned. Movie theaters, as a result, tend to start rolling films some time around noon and repeat performances throughout the afternoon but, in my experience, those early afternoon performances during mid-week are usually run in empty or nearly empty theaters so, like some of the rest of you, that´s when we usually go to the movies to avoid the bothersome and, at times, noisy crowds. I figure that, even though the auditórium is usually empty at mid-week matinee performances, the theater management is selling phantom tickets like crazy or else they have found a way to make money running movies to empty seats.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

yes Thundergreen, our young friend was using her Iphone for just about everything , she was using the internet as we were too close to the Guatemala border to use her phone without roaming in Guatemala and that was way too expensive for her.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

joaquinx said:


> There was a scene in _Two and a Half Men_ where Rose got someone to move by making farting sounds.


Farting sounds only, not the smell?


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

Packaged in a spray can.........I can think of all sorts of situations where it could apply.


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## Longford (May 25, 2012)

citlali said:


> sorry guys you are showing your age chatting = texting


"Chatting" is a commonly-used word in English (i.e., in the USA) which means talking. It's also a word less-often used in connection with online conversations such as when in a "chat room."


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## TundraGreen (Jul 15, 2010)

Longford said:


> "Chatting" is a commonly-used word in English (i.e., in the USA) which means talking. It's also a word less-often used in connection with online conversations such as when in a "chat room."


Which usage is most common may be a function of age. When I was young, one might be called in for a little "chat" with the principal. Nowadays, anyone chatting is probably on a computer or a smart phone or tablet.


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## Longford (May 25, 2012)

TundraGreen said:


> Nowadays, anyone chatting is probably on a computer or a smart phone or tablet.


I don't think so. Not in the USA.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

Longford said:


> I don't think so. Not in the USA.


I think it depends on the age of the chatters in question. Have you done a survey to back up your assertion regarding chatting in the USA?


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## lagoloo (Apr 12, 2011)

Has anyone done a survey about the point at which a discussion on a web board becomes a nitpicking contest?

If you're in a supermarket running into someone's backside because you're attempting to multitask, aka doing several things badly at once, it hardly matters whether you are "chatting", "speaking", "talking" or "texting". The end result is that you will probably get the evil eye from the victim, and deserve it.


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## citlali (Mar 4, 2013)

Longford , we are around Mexican teenagers and young people and they are all using the word so it is used a lot here and same in France.


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## emilybcruz (Oct 29, 2013)

This has been quite an amusing thread. 

I use social networking to the extreme but I'm not ashamed to say it. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, Keek, Pinterest and of course this forum and one other that I frequent. 

It started when I purchased my first computer in 2006 so that I could Skype with my dad in El Salvador. From there I stumbled upon a forum of people who had similar family immigration issues in the US. Over the years I bonded with all of these people that I had never met because they understand a part of me that so many people in my day-to-day life could never understand. These social networks keep us together, even though we are strewn all over the world.

And the same can be said with my family of course. My husband and I can see our children everyday, even while we are in Juarez and they are in Parral and Kansas City. Technology is a blessing for us. Now that doesn't mean we are couped up in the house on devices all day and never socialize with the neighbors. It's all about balance.


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

This afternoon I went to a neighborhood café for coffee and an empanada. I went alone, so I brought along a magazine to keep me company. At most of the other tables in the place, there were small groups of two or three people also enjoying the lovely weather and the rather decent cappuccino. In all cases, every person was communicating with their smartphone instead of the people who they were sharing a table with. And it wasn't just a quick look to read an important message - this went on for several minutes till the food arrived. I don't understand this kind of behavior at all!


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## Hound Dog (Jan 18, 2009)

_


Isla Verde said:



This afternoon I went to a neighborhood café for coffee and an empanada. I went alone, so I brought along a magazine to keep me company. At most of the other tables in the place, there were small groups of two or three people also enjoying the lovely weather and the rather decent cappuccino. In all cases, every person was communicating with their smartphone instead of the people who they were sharing a table with. And it wasn't just a quick look to read an important message - this went on for several minutes till the food arrived. I don't understand this kind of behavior at all!

Click to expand...

_An interesting observation Isla. 

As we had no children and, thus, grandchildren, we forund, as we grew older, that we were less and less exposed to young people except peripherally, to Young people in the famlies of friends with whom we interracted only occasionaly. Then, we went on the road with teenaged friends to far flung places from Chiapas to The Yucatán to Tabasco to Oaxaca and noticed this constant and total self-absorption with communicating on smartphones while completely ignoring other human beings in the vicinity, even those enclosed nearby in the small and intimate confines of an automobile closed up to accomodate air conditioning in miserably hot climates. To see young people we know and are close to personally act in this manner which we find, or, at least found, unseemly, was disconcerting. Then we realized that these Young people werer glued to these small devices constantly to the seeming detriment of others physically close by and a new social paradigm was being set over time as this social phenomenon progressed and, let me see if I can define this, humans remotely located but able to communicate over these small electronic devices took on a more important role in the life of the participant than actual living nd breathing human beings mere feet distant who, I suppose, are, by definition as we move along this curve. are less exotic and, thus, less interesting.

Then, being a 72 years old Goober, I thought back to 1953 when the city of Montgomery got its first televisión station and television arrived in South Alabama. I was so enamored of this thing that I couldn´t wait for test patterns to come on at 3:00PM so I could stare at them and I watched that crap until midnight when they played the Star Spangled Banner and closed down for the evening and, in those days, the old folks were lamenting the inevitable breakdown of society as people deserted the front porch swing on warm summer evenings to absorb themselves in this totally non-personal, self-absorbed joy ride through the Ed Sullivan Show with my dad, a really decent fellow. proclaiming all male dancers on televisión to be homosexual and , in a more appropraite sense, Martin Luther King parading with blacks through the streets of Montgomery changing things they never would have been changed without the advent of televisión and social interraction from the 50s through today did not turn to dust but we now have televison more that ever and people are still people just with modifications in behavior of no great significance.

I wouldn´t worry too much about behavior modifications yet to become manifest as a result of the new miniature .technology. We´ll be dead before any changes, if they are to be, take place, actually take place. 

I´m not that fond of people in general anyway. The more they talk into those cell phones the happier I am unless, of course, they are planning my demise which I will not discern anyway.


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## drope (May 1, 2014)

I chat with my neighbours in front of the abarottes next door con cervezas and every domingo do it with a bunch of amigos/as with similar interests, in front of what could be classified as a picket fence.
No different than the"old" days. Almost all are Mexican and very few speak english. Life is good!
By the way, all are much younger than I am. Bonus!


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## coondawg (May 1, 2014)

My only concern about the young' uns chatting is when they are driving. We enjoy our trips NOB, but have had so many "close" calls in our car from other cars where the driver was "on the phone".


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## Longford (May 25, 2012)

coondawg said:


> My only concern about the young' uns chatting is when they are driving. We enjoy our trips NOB, but have had so many "close" calls in our car from other cars where the driver was "on the phone".


Bad driving habits aren't limited to the "young'uns." Plenty of older folks, the "mature generation" behave similarly. op2:


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## coondawg (May 1, 2014)

Longford said:


> Bad driving habits aren't limited to the "young'uns." Plenty of older folks, the "mature generation" behave similarly. op2:


Yep, I reckon so.


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## drope (May 1, 2014)

I guess I live in a good neighbourhood and town where we all still chat live. It's what you make of it-no?


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## Isla Verde (Oct 19, 2011)

drope said:


> I guess I live in a good neighbourhood and town where we all still chat live. It's what you make of it-no?


Where do you live in Mexico? Having a more precise idea of where you live will make your comments more useful, don't you think?


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