Leave-taking in Instant Messaging

In Erving Goffman's legendary book, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, he identifies three social norms for conversations ("facial engagements"): opening, maintaining, and leave-taking aka ending the conversation. Instant messaging is great for openings ("Accept this message?" and the little ping) and maintaining (the open window, the noises), but is terrible about leave-taking.

There is no good, standard way without seeming rude to end an IM session. In person or on the phone, we usually give some indication ("Bye!") we're ending the conversation, but with IM, that's not typically the case, at least not with my conversations. Thus, by the end of the day, my screen (unless I am using Adium with its tabbed IM sessions) is littered with conversations that have simply trailed off long before. Just closing the window seems rude, especially if the person on the other end sees you have disengaged with them.

I'm not sure if a solution needs to be designed into IM clients, or whether after a few more years of IMing becoming mainstream, social patterns will work themselves out.

Originally posted at Monday, November 7, 2005 | Comments (2) | Trackback (0)