World, every day I’m shufflin’…no…that’s not what I meant to say…what I meant to say is that every day I wake up to a barrage of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) status updates that help me stay distracted while in bed fighting to not fall back asleep. These colourful updates have a very interesting psychology behind them and have inspired me to break down the types of statuses commonly expressed.
The life-story – These updates will notify you of every single step in this person’s life. Sadly because MTV can’t afford to give every person in this world their own reality TV show this person is generous enough to use BBM to make up for it. We will know when this person is “eating” “sleeping” “stressed” “sick” “swinging from trees”…yes…it appears that this person is our virtual roommate.
The mystery line – this update will consist of one word or at most two about something no one on the person’s bbm list could possibly have a clue about. It probably relates to an inside situation between themselves and someone else or even just between themselves and the mirror. Of course the intent here is to get us all to think to ourselves “gee golly this person is so mysterious…what could they possibly mean by this”. So eventually when we all do indeed congregate around a blackberry and analyze that status update we can come out with one conclusion…the translation of that status update: “please someone ask me what my mysterious status is about”…
The Countdown timer – We all have one on our list…yup the person who will countdown the days to any event in their life. “-1249834 days to go”…and surely the next day it shall be updated one more time to reflect that the days to go have now decreased. Apparently bookstores around the world have now ran out of calendars and the good old fashioned way of putting an X on a day that has passed now has to be replaced with the spamming of my BBM.
The GPS – This person will constantly update what part of the world they are in…Sometimes they will even update what part of a city they are in e.g. “beach”, “mall”, ”underground bunker”…I’m sure the logical thinking behind this is…”if I ever get lost, my BBM list will know where to find me”.
The emoticon – This status update will consist of just an emoticon and no words. It will let us know their internal state of emotion. E.g. a smiley face will signal happiness, an angry face will signal anger and a tired face will signal that they should have spent less time chatting on BBM the night before when they should have been sleeping.
The lovers – this update will tend to consist of one word, followed by a heart, just to let us all know that they absolutely like it. It could be a person, a type of food, a place, a city, a dog name …whatever it is…they love it…and we should know it.
The useless ones – these updates have no point, they provide no benefit to humanity what so ever…if anything they make us just a little bit dumber perhaps. These updates can be in the form of a question or a statement…for example “what if…?” or “some people don’t deserve good things”…sometimes these updates can even be related to a display pic “ <— OMG, look so cute!”. Unfortunately, I did indeed look, and I’m sorry to say that I do not share your sentiments…that is one ugly dog…
The statusless – finally, the weird ones. The ones who can resist the temptation of that oh so tempting empty bar with a 64 character limit (yes I counted) throughout their entire lives. Sometimes they may grace us with the oh so very rare status update…on those days…I feel blessed.
Well there you have it; if you disagree or have any more types to add, do let me know by adding a comment below.