You don't learn anything in the chattering classes‏

I've been in communication with a nice guy who contacted me on gaydar, and while it's been very pleasant trading quips back and forth, it makes me feel old.

I often get this feeling when communicating with guys over the internet. You see, I really don't do "chat". I like a good chat, but only when it's backed up by some sort of relationship. I can chat with my friends, but chat with strangers via websites just seems pointless. This is why I'm not on Facebook, and why I never spend time in chatrooms.

I mean seriously, why would anyone want to spend hours trading subliterate messages with people they don't know and have no intention of ever knowing? What's the point? If it's not leading into something more intimate, in any sense of the word, why do it? Do other people really find endless smalltalk that engaging?

There's something about trading messages with this particular guy that makes me suspect that he's content to just send snippets of news and gossip back and forth, while I'm regarding our conversation as the precursor to something more tangible. I'm conversing in order to establish that he isn't a loser or a bastard, with the intention of eventually seguing into going out for a drink. But I'm aware that a lot of guys (especially the much younger ones) regard chat as an end in itself.

The odd thing is that he's only one year younger than me. Perhaps he's just hip to the vibes of Gen Y in a way that goes over my head.

At some point soon I'm going to have to email him and say, "Look, are we just spinning our wheels here, or are you interesting in actually taking this somewhere?"