5 Reasons You Hide From Others Online
“This person has signed off and cannot receive your messages.” Have you ever gotten a similar message on any instant messenger? You may be talking to someone and they may bid farewell quickly and just log off. You do not need to feel bad; many people have various reasons for hiding from you, and probably others, online. People may even just go offline on instant messengers because they have to focus on other things online, like blogging or checking e-mails.
You yourself may be hiding from people on instant messengers for various reasons. You may even e-mail people every hour, but keep away from chatting live with people. Whatever the reason, you may be doing it on an almost daily basis. Finding out some various reasons for some action may allow one to find out how that action is affecting us and others around us in the online world.
5 Reasons You Hide From Others Online
Following are 5 random reasons you may be hiding from other people online on instant messengers and other forms of live, instant communication.
- You are busy
You may be working on some projects online, or you may be researching something online. You may even have accidentally opened your instant messenger program to check e-mails or something. However, someone has caught you, and now they are continuously talking about different things. In the future, you just remain offline or invisible because you are busy and do not want to be disturbed. You may even be just wanting to go to sleep at night, and thus you turn off your instant messenger or your computer.
- You think you have done something wrong
You may have stolen someone’s design or ideas. You may have even said or done something in public, whether good or bad, and may want to avoid people who may ask you embarrassing questions. For example, I know people who have tried to hide from online people because one of them told his friends that he was gay, and the other one told her friends about dating a close friend’s ex. Whatever the reason, you may feel as if your action of any sort may be being taken in a negative manner, even if what you did was a good thing in your view.
- You want to avoid the other person
You may have some grudge or some feeling against another person. You may even have strong, good feelings for the other person. You may simply not want to talk to a person because you want to talk to them for long, and you may not have enough free time right now. Such feelings and thoughts may result in you wanting to avoid that specific person only. One of the ways to do that would be to stay offline, to block someone, or to even come online during times when the other person is usually not online.
- You do not know how to, or do not want to, interact with others online
One of the things many people may not realize is that they may not be good at communicating and interacting with others, either offline or online, or even both. People may be shy, or they may not feel like talking to people most of the time. Whatever the reason may be, many people come online only to talk about specific, absolutely necessary things like personal or business related issues, and then they go offline right away.
You may also simply not like communicating with others. That is why going online and telling others about your daily personal events or even work-related jokes may not sound appealing to you.
- You have a great offline life
This can probably be the simplest or the most complex reason for many people. For you, your offline life overshadows the online one completely, and there is probably nothing online that you cannot find in your offline life. You prefer being offline, as it makes you more happy. You do not feel the need to go online that much, or at all. Cell phones, meeting people in person, mailing postal letters, doing offline activities, and even e-mailing people sounds better to you than chatting instantly with people online.
That is a list of various reasons you and others may want to hide from other online people. These are not the only reasons people hide from others online, though these reasons will give you a good idea how our own personal and offline mentality about things is resulting in us applying many offline principles to the online world.
Can you think of more reasons why you or someone else may be hiding from others in the online world of chats and instant messengers? Do you agree with the above points, or disagree with any point? Have you ever thought about such a topic and such reasons? What is your opinion on this?
Thank you for reading.
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( June 12th, 2007 at 3:58 am )
I subscribe to your no 1 here: when I’m very busy, I’d rather switch off distractions, so I can better focus to finish my job, thus I can understand other people who do the same. From experience, I can tell that switching your status to busy does not help - there’s always somebody out there who would ignore that. Or, it happens that I see one of my friends has just went online, and I feel like saying “Hi” - from here to absolute distraction is only one small step and my time schedule is blown away.
I can add one more reason: when using programs which require a lot of your memory resources, you shut down all unnecessary tasks. This always happens to me when I use Photoshop on my laptop: it works so slowly, that I shut down all programs that I don’t need in that moment.
I suppose the list of reasons could be much longer. I’m curious what others have to say about that.
( June 12th, 2007 at 4:19 am )
Sometimes I log off too quickly after saying goodbye, and cut people off accidentally while the other person is still typing goodbye.
Sometimes, since I’m logged on whenever I’m on the computer but I may not feel like talking, some people keep bugging you. Even if you say you’re busy or don’t feel like talking.
Me: Sorry I’m sorta busy atm… I’ll talk to you later
Them: Oh okay. What are you doing?
Me: Just school and stuff
Them: Ohh what subject?
Me: Um… I’m kinda busy, I’m gonna go okay
Them: Okays
Them: *5 minutes later* So you done yet?
I’m not kidding. Some people… grrrrr. Lol.
I don’t avoid people often (intentionally), but when I do… hmm. I think it’s because something happened in real life, and since online-chat is verrry unpredictable in terms of knowing what tone you are speaking in… people can take things the wrong way. Therefore I’d prefer to talk in person.
Some people there’s just nothing to say online… you may be friends through a friend, and so in real life you’ll joke and chat, but online you don’t speak as you aren’t true friends. There isn’t much to talk about.
Hmmm.. I think that’s all I can think of. =P Take care.
( June 12th, 2007 at 4:43 am )
haha, very true.. will read in-depth and re-comment..
..but, if you get Windows Live - you can leave an offline message and in case the person was really offline (but is in front of the computer) he/she can receive the message
( June 12th, 2007 at 8:55 am )
Hehehehe, there’s a couple of reasons on here that I may have done that influenced you to write that on here, huh?! =P Hahahah, not going to name which one, but I bet you can probably figure it out! =P
( June 12th, 2007 at 2:47 pm )
Simonne, thanks for commenting. True, being busy because of work or other things usually results in us going offline, since distractions can waste time or not allow us to focus properly on something. I am guessing this happens to many of us every single mean.
Good point about using programs like photoshop; sometimes I turn off a program or two when I am downloading large files. Thanks for sharing.
Jess, thanks for sharing that example. Sometimes I also have to leave quickly, though usually I end up leaving late because of being nice to someone and explaining slowly that I have to leave.
The conversation example you gave is a very nice one, heh. Some people simply think that asking or typing something online is not intrusive on any level. I will sometimes be writing a post and someone will keep typing, even if I tell them that I’ll talk to them a bit later or that I’ll “brb” because of thinking or writing something on the computer.
I am guessing “Do not talk to me as I do not want to talk to you while I work on something” is the only thing many people will understand?
Vera, thanks! I’m looking forward to the “re-comment.”
Your current comment already does a great job at sharing another point: offline messages. I was using the “live messaging” term in my post for different reasons, and it seems the offline messaging trend also falls under it. Maybe we can tell people “Keep talking if you wish, I’ll get the messages when I come back online.”
SP, thanks! You probably have a good guess.
Can you think of some more reasons? Or whether or not any of the above reasons sounds more or less logical and polite compared to other reasons?