My brother’s text messages can read like pieces of an ancient code: “Hru,” “wyd,” “plz” – truncated, cryptic and never satisfactory to get. I will often guess myself another whether “GR8” means real enthusiasm or whether it is a perfectory node.
This asymmetry has harassed me over the years, so I eventually started a series of studies with fellow researchers Sam Maglio and Yiran Zhang. I wanted to know if these clipped missiles could reduce the actual dialogue, discovering the unspecified signs behind the digital shorthand.
As we collected data, surveyed people and established experiments, it became clear that those small shortcuts – sometimes as a hallmark of efficient communication – reduce relationships rather than simplifying them.
Small words feel shortchen
Most people type “Ty” and “BRB” – for “Thank You” and “Right Back” – without batting one eye.
In a survey we organized 150 American texters between the ages of 18 to 65, 90.1 percent reported regularly using a brief name in our daily messages, and 84.2 percent believed that these shortcuts had either positive effects or there was no meaningful effect on how the messengers were considered.
But our conclusions suggest that the mere inclusion of the brief name, although appears to be benign, start feeling like a brush-off. In other words, whenever a texter cuts the words for its bare dishes, the recipients lack effort, which causes them to disintegrate.
This is a subtle but broad phenomenon that most people do not intuit.
We started with controlled laboratory trials, presented with two close text exchange with 1,170 participants with an age of 15 to 80 years: one set with a set brief name, the other was completely out. In each of the scenario, the participants reduced the brief sender as less honest and worthy of the answer.
The deeper we dug, the more consistent pattern became.
Whether people are reading messages about weekend plans or events of major life, “” “Plz,” “SRY” or “IDK” such as “please,” “Sorry” or “I don’t know” the presence of sentences and phrases such as “not know” made the recipients feel small.
The incident did not stop with strangers. In more experiments, we tested whether proximity has changed the dynamic. If you are text to a dear friend or a romantic partner, can you abstract your heart content?
Obviously not. Even people who imagined people chatting with a long-time friend used to inform them to feel a little away from half-incomplete words, and the spirit of despair removed how authentic conversation.
From discord to dating apps
Nevertheless, we suspected: can it be just some artificial laboratory effects?
We thought whether real people can behave differently on real platforms. So we took our questions on discord, a vibrant online social community where people talk about everything from Anime to politics. Even more importantly, the discord is full of young people, which uses a brief name like another nature.
We asked random users to recommend them to watch TV shows to messages. A set of messages fully wrote our investigation; The other set was filled with a brief name. The truth is true for our laboratory results, fewer people briefly responded to Ask. Even a text plaster plaster with-a text-loving user who is well-proficient in the casual parlance of the text messages-a text plaster with a text message was still undercurved among the digital origin.
If some missing letters can do casual chat, what happens when love enters the equation? Eventually, Texting has become the cornerstone of modern romance, from Koy Ishqbaaz to Sol-Baring Confession. Can “Plz call me” unknowingly can endanger a budding connection? Or “You up?” Indication more indifferent than affection? These questions directed our next forest, as we asked to find out if the brief efficiency of the brief name can actually reduce the delicate dance of girlfriend and intimacy.
Our leap in the scope of romance ended on Valentine’s Day with an online speed dating experiment.
We added participants for “dates” inside a private messaging portal, and offered half of them to peep their answers with brief names such as “thank you” instead of “Thank you”.
When the time came to exchange contact information, the brief-and-be notes receiving the datars were especially more reluctant, citing the lack of effort from the other side. Perhaps the most eye -opening evidence came from a separate study, running a deep analysis of hundreds of thousands of tinder conversations. Data showed that messages filled with brief names like “U” and “Rali” made less overall reactions and short-circulated conversations.
It’s the thought that counts
We want to be clear: we are not promoting to ban “lol”. Our research suggests that some scattered summarization does not necessarily do a friendship to torpedo. Nor does each day of many messages sent to many people warns complete spelling-out treatment. Don’t care about coming as honest? Do not require recipient to answer? Then, in every way, briefly brief.
Instead, it is overall dependence on condensed phrases that continuously reduce our impression about the sender’s honesty. When we type “plz” a dozen times in the conversation, we risk broadcast that the other person is not worth the additional letters. The effect may be subtle in single exchange. But over time, it accumulates.
If your final goal is to nourish a deep connection – then it may be a friend, a brother -in -law or a possible date – taking an extra second to type “thanks” can be an intelligent investment.
The brief name began as a clever workaround for clunk flip phones, with its keypad texting – taping “5” three times to type the letter “L” – and type strict monthly character boundaries. Still here we are long in those days, still smuggling in “OMG” and “BRB”, although the need never ended.
After all those studies, I have withdrawn my brother’s texts with fresh eyes. I have since shared our conclusions with him how those small shortcuts can be revealed as half-incomplete or indifferent. He still sets fire to “BRB” in half of his texts, and I probably will never see him “I am sorry”. But some shifting – he typed “thank you” for some time, even surprisingly thrown into “Hope You and Well”.
This is a minor change, but perhaps it is: sometimes, just a few more letters can tell someone that they really matter.
David Fang is a PhD student in marketing at Stanford University.
Sam Maglio, an associate professor of marketing and psychology at the University of Toronto, contributed to the writing of this article.
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