Better than texting a Stranger

Hello,

I may be one of the only people who still uses Google Alerts. Yes, I’m that old.

If you’ve not heard of this Google tool, or have forgotten, it is really simple. You tell it some phrases that you want it to scan the internet for every day, and then email you if it finds something new.

Needless to say, I have one for “Lynn Ferguson” to see if my lovely wife has been mentioned in the press - it’s not unknown to discover that she’s been considered for an entertainment job before anyone has thought to mention it to her directly.

You would think my own name would be pretty unique; however, for me, I have the alert set to ‘ “Mark Tweddle” -rugby -jupiter ’. This is because there are a number of idiots sharing my name. So it’s set to exclude the one who plays rugby, and the one who has a company called the Jupiter Group. Hopefully, neither is the idiot who keeps giving my email address out because he can’t remember his own and guesses mine instead. {Dear reader, if this is you, I hope you were able to attend your divorce court proceeding, as I received your email notification.}

Anyhow, long story short, I have an alert for “human connection.” I set it up years ago because I have been obsessed with this subject for over a decade now. It used to send me an email about once a week, often linking to a psychology paper or a marketing article. Now it sends me about 10 links a day, so I obviously skip most of them.

But not yesterday. Yesterday, the third link down was “Study Shows Texting a Random Stranger Better for Loneliness Than Talking to a Chatbot.”

And the article was what it said on the tin. I mean, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that human connection requires another human, duh! But I guess, as the kids would say, “They brought receipts.” {Yup I’m also old enough to use the phrase ‘as the kids say.’}

Anyhow, I'm hoping the next ‘study with a bleedingly obvious finding’ will be to prove that meeting a bunch of strangers at Fish & Bear is better for loneliness than texting a random stranger. Duh! 😜

But you don’t need to set up a Google Alert; you could just come see for yourself. “Lynn Ferguson” and me (“Mark Tweddle” -rugby -jupiter) will be there.

Mark

xx