machines

google chat

I love how gchat is so democratic in who it selects from your email contacts to display. Anyone you’ve emailed with a gmail address shows up. Some awkward connections of people who’ve appeared in my gchat listing over the years:

• a professor I didn’t get along with
• a guy I bought things from over the internet
• someone I applied for a job from (but didn’t get it)
• friends-of-friends from reply-all exchanges
• a professor I worked for and then stopped working for without really giving a reason

I find it interesting that this seems awkward to me. It would be awkward to run into some of these people in social situations—is gchat akin to that? I guess so, at least in my head.

Notes:

1. rubyspurflower said: For sure! It’s kind of like it’s serving you these people on a platter: “wouldn’t you like to talk to X right now? Wouldn’t it be cool to tell Y about your day?” In most cases it’s no, no, and OH GOD, no.
2. rubyspurflower liked this
3. justintheghost posted this