Why people say good morning (or something like that) on chat after a night?

SVcrossDO@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 3 points –

I mean, I see chats as one continuous conversation and unless the conversation has been properly ended, it shouldn't be necessary even if a night has passed.

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I see chats as one continuous conversation

Well there is your answer.

If you would view them as individual conversation then putting a greeting at the beginning of each makes perfect sense.

Most people consider conversations ended if neither party adds anything for a space of time.

A reasonable space of time is definitely overnight.

If there’s been a pause of several hours, people consider it a new conversation. “Good morning” implies that the speaker assumes other participants have slept overnight.

Oh I see, even if chats are organised by person, the conversation has ended (even if improperly) if X time has passed. So people organise mentally the conversations as individual interactions, it is the social component that overrides the digital organisation.

I think I get your point.

Thank you.

You sound like a robot pretending to be a human lol

Sadly, I get that a lot. Even as a child. Now I'm approaching 40 and we'll, that never changed.

It’s also just a way to ping you and see if you’re there and ready to continue a conversation politely / small talk and a way to start talking again.

A heads up. Yeah, I can see why that could be necessary.

Reading a bit into "ended improperly", one possibility of them saying good morning could be if after they stopped talking late at night you still added 10 or so more messages in a row. Hehe. I used to get that alot. Basically both sincere and sarcastic at the same time. To let you know they are awake now and caught up on your continued posts after they fell asleep, as well as poke a bit of fun that you maybe missed a "too subtle for us" hint that the other person was going to sleep before you kept posting.

A lot of people literally wish you have a good morning. Those are saying this because they like you and hope all is going smooth for you.

It lets the other person know you are up and available for chatting in case there was anything they want/need a quick response to.

To synchronise.

Synchronize what?

It announces “I have returned to the chat, and am available for messages or have something I wish to tell you, and am checking for your availability”

But chat are asynchronous, availability is not important

Whether or not a response is time-sensitive varies.

If you're talking within the same day, I would consider it fine to continue talking.

...But if you're talking overnight or longer, I feel like you need a greeting of some kind to acknowledge that the time has passed. I wouldn't call it rude not to, but it's an extra pleasantry.

The time seems to be different according to the relationship.

As others have said, I think that comes down to how people view online conversations.

I personally view them as an extension of in-person conversations, so a lot of the same mannerisms carry over for me.

The same reason we do it face to face. We’re dead inside and have nothing to add.

It's interesting how some things have changed over the years when it comes to chat rooms. And how other things haven't. When I first started in The Palace the internet was new, and chat rooms were for shut-ins, agoraphobes, and nerds. We basically lived on the internet. So it made sense to some to treat the room as a place you entered and left.

Now you can sit on a discord server on mobile and have a life, pop in the middle of a conversation somewhere and then leave it. And some servers still suggest you greet a room like you live there.

It's like, when I was a kid, having internet access to all human knowledge, anywhere, would have been a divine gift. Now we all have computers in our pockets and some people still argue about basic facts that can be resolved instantly. We treat technology very strangely.

It's fascinating to see and understand the unwritten rules, and have them written. Sometimes a rule it's obvious to some, others like me, find them just weird.

Here's the thing, it is weird for today technology, because you never truly go away from the chatroom. But back in the IRC times joining a chatroom was very similar to entering a room, you would only see messages sending from then on, so if you wanted to keep track of a chat you were having after you left you needed to leave your computer connected and online, so it was impossible to know when someone was online and when they just had left the computer on to follow up on a thread that was happening when he went to sleep, so it was a common courtesy, just like saying hello when walking into a room. It was a way of telling people "I'am here now", but most chatrooms today have an away status you can set.

I agree it doesn't make sense on discord or whatever, which is why I don't do it there. But it might be one of those things that people just keep perpetuating because it's what they always did.

It's like, when I was a kid, having internet access to all human knowledge, anywhere, would have been a divine gift. Now we all have computers in our pockets and some people still argue about basic facts that can be resolved instantly. We treat technology very strangely.

That reminds me of a quote: Do you remember in the 90s when we thought the issue was lack of access to information? Nope, that wasn't it.

Some people like saying good morning. Maybe the chat is just a handy channel to say good morning to you.

Most chat people live in the UGT timezone. ;) It's easier to say morning when joining a chat and evening when you leave then try to figure out the timezone of everybody. That was on IRC.

Most still use it in other chats, when joining the 1st time that day (usually after a night of sleep), you greet.

To me someone saying good morning in a group chat is usually a bit of a fuck you to other members that aren't having a good morning.