I would like to dedicate this article to one of my colleagues, but I really don’t want to hurt his feelings. So I will not mention his name here.
So, I will like to tell you a little bit about the so-called finger on respond, or send button which is quite a terrible affection that it is expanding very quickly lately. You will find out how this disorder started and spread out, on an epidemic scale.
The history of FORBA (Finger On Respond Button Affection)
It originally appeared in the ancient China when smoke messaging was invented. The first mention about it, is dated in the early days of China and happened when a young Chinese sent a smoke message to his friend on another mountain terminal, over the Great Wall and he never received a response.
After months of long waiting he decided that something has to be done. So he started a long jurny over the mountains, to his friend house fearing the worse.
When he finally arrived, he was happy to know that his friend was still alive. But couldn’t respond in months because he was terrified to light up the fire so that he could send the message throw the smoke terminal.
Later, an investigation team of 21 persons was set up and they discovered that thy guy was not able to use his hand when he was close to send a smoke message. 2 years later they had no idea why was this happening and 3 years later the investigation team dissolved and the case was closed.
This was the first case of his kind and it was known in the ancient Asia the “hand on smoke respond” (smokus responchinus) disorder.
Recent cases of FORBA (Finger On Respond Button Affection)
Not more than two decades ago, a group of young enthusiasts from Harvard, detected a small modification of this disorder that was spreading very fast. They observed that the “hand on respond” was now seen in a more subtle form, when people were sending messages over the mirk chat.
So they made a study over a limited group of 20 people and what they find out was frightening. 2 out of 10 people were terrified when they had to push enter keyboard. After 2 years of investigation, they came up with a cure for “finger on enter” affection. They invented a little button and they call it “submit button” and a little device that they call it “mouse”, due to the long intelligent cable attached to it.
The process was very well set up. The person suffering from the “finger on enter” didn’t had to touch the enter key ever. He only had made a small action called “click” on the so-called “submit button”. The idea was great.
The epidemic spread of FORBA (Finger On Respond Button Affection) today
But today, with all this technologies all around as, and with so-called globalization, this affection has come back stronger.
For example The New York Times reporter Alina Tugend noticed that lately, people are much less likely to respond to emails from their friends and colleagues. She talks about The Anxiety of the Unanswered E-Mail.
With the smartphones explosion it seems that the affection also evolved and it is now affecting people of all classes and social status. It affects people using the mouse, the enter key or the touch action on tables or smartphones. The scientific name of this affection is “fingerus respondus butonus sendedus” disorder, better known under the generic name of: “finger on respond button affection” and it includes all 3 forms of this disorder,
- push enter to send
- click to submit
- tap to respond
How to better understand the people suffering of this cruel affection
Well this was a small introduction about finger on respond button. Let’s now understand why people suffering of this affection, acts like this. Well, in some aspects they are common people like us. They can eat, sleep, see with other people and they even shake hands. Il all starts when they see Respond buttons. They have to quickly close the window, or schedule sending at a later time because in that moment they are petrified and they can not take action.
Simple tasks like hitting a send button seems impossible to achieve by a person suffering from FORBA (Finger On Respond Button Affection).
They actually not always acting like this. There are times that you can have a normal chat with them. But suddenly when you ask something that seems important to you, they freeze and stop responding. Why do you think this happen? You can try to call on the phone after a prudential time, but they even fail to “slide to answer” button.
The scientists notice that this has gone badly on people using, WhatsApp, email, Facebook and other communication apps.
I have to say that after all time spending throw materials, newspapers and other archived documents, I totally understand this affection. You normally have to arm your self with lot of patience and hope for the best. There are some that after long, long wait receive an “ok” response. This moment it’s really glorious but tremendously difficult in the life of a FORBA (Finger On Respond Button Affection) person.
After reading this carefully, I really hope that you can understand the FORBA people and at some point of your life when you will find one (and you will find one) you will do your best to help him get over this crisis in the best way possible.
Disclosure: This article is not meant to offend people in any way and I apologies if it does. On the other hand, writing this down really helped me in the process of dealing with people like this. I am sure we all (and I include myself here) have our reasons for acting like a FORBA and it is totally respectable. But I also understand the reaction on the other side.
I would really enjoy reading some of your experiences in this. Hope you enjoy mine.