No Responses

Electronic communications, email and social media in particular, have greatly expanded our interactions.  Presidents and Rock Stars have always gotten fan mail, perhaps even hired people to keep score on how much and what it said.  And talk radio from its earliest days have people in the audience who take it upon themselves to call in.  Now we have likes and comments.  Anybody can place either or receive either without having to be a celebrity first.  In its place we have created Influencers, people whose blogs take off or whose YouTubes of their pets capture the fancy of an immense audience.  And we have electronic communications in its corporate form.  Every corporation with a website includes a Contact Us option.

But for all the enhancements in the ability to connect, Loneliness has become more prevalent.  We want a response, but don't always get one.  My inquiry to consumer purchases gone bad mostly do not get a reply from Customer Service.  Overcharged for parking, minichopper part warped in dishwasher, camera purchase online not what I anticipated getting.  All ignored, or maybe tabulated into internal company statistics.  

Twitter, maybe one notification a day, though for good reasons I don't always open it.  Yet that is the most popular, though superficial, feedback forum in the world.  Among FB where I choose my preferred contacts, something relatively routine like a birthday greeting will get dozens of responses while experiences or ideas that are profound get none.  And Like becomes a surrogate for response, no thought involved, no exchange involved.

My Blog had a little boomlet of views last week, thirty or so a day for several days.  No comments, just views.  I don't know why.  

Maybe we are all inundated with contacts. Responses may be taking the form of lottery or other game of chance.  It might happen, and for some Twitter presences it will happen, but only in one direction.  It's not really an exchange.  The people who have hundreds of followers accumulate them by doing other things more vital than Tweeting.  They rarely tweet back.

My professor once described type 1 diabetes as starvation amid plenty.  That's where our electronic interactions seem to be headed.

Fixing What's Wrong

When I tabulate my monthly expenses on or about the 17th of each month, a Comcast bill on autopay takes a significant cut.  I put it in the Entertainment column of the Excel spreadsheet, though I'm hardly entertained.  For that sum I have landline telephone, an ISP with my email address, and cable TV.  People who need to reach me largely call that number.  Organizations do it from their wired phones, people reach me from their cell phones.  Yet I prefer to call others via that telephone access.  I never really logged how many calls I receive and from whom, or how many I make.  Mostly relatives and those who want money.  Virtually no idle chat, while exchange of serious ideas uses other forums.  I'm on the internet all the time, often idly so, enough times purposefully so.  It's failed twice via hacking.  Xfinity did their best to undo the damage.  Most of my monthly fee goes there.

And then TV with streaming.  When I sign on with my Roku/TCL unit, I get a message that they are now connecting to my entertainment experience.  Most of the time I don't really want to be entertained.  I seek out documentaries.  But it is still learning.  It's not exclusively to Comcast, as Netflix also gives me options of what to watch.  Indeed, in recent months I've been watching more series on Netflix.  But it still came as a major annoyance to get blocked by Comcast when I wanted to browse.

Instead of connecting to my entertainment experience, the screen asked me to authorize that I want to be there.  I typed in the six code numbers onto a nearby laptop.  This has happened before.  Normally I would receive a terms of agreement to click and my entertainment experience would ensue.  Not this time.  The PC said success.  The TV gave me another set of six code numbers.  After a few cycles of this, I called the customer line of Comcast.

The NEJM had an op-ed in a recent issue trying to separate work that requires thinking from work that is repetitive or process oriented.  https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2202511  In medicine, the ease and repetitiveness of the Electronic Record has shifted medical care from expert analysis by physicians to data entry with processes and pathways.  Comcast took a similar approach.  When I called the customer service number, there were steps to get to a human being, one who reads from a script, as after telling my story, they ask me what I just told them.  When I called back for the umpteenth time, they have no record of what I told them last time.  Just an algorithm to unplug this or move to a different screen and click that.  After about six tries when I tried to sign on I did not get to my entertainment experience, blocked by recurrent code numbers to type in as before. 

Eventually they sent a technician, one with considerable experience who went through his motions concluding that my barrier was not with Comcast but with my TV. At least he is a person and could tell me what he thought.  And he listened to what I told him and watched what I showed him.  I could buy another TV.  So I called the TV TCL line, where they took me through their steps, including resetting the TV.  No better.  He concluded that my TV was functioning much as their factory intended.

So now I am the patient who cannot breathe with a cardiologist blaming the lungs and a pulmonary doc blaming the heart.  So I sought Google as the arbiter.  Sure enough, I was not the only person with a TCL/Roku unit who could not implement their Comcast subscription.  And there were solutions proposed, a message board with Comcast reps messaging in to Private Message them, but no solutions.  

Locally we have an Xfinity store, one used to having exasperated, even irate customers who wonder whether they should upgrade to former customers, traipsing in.  I spoke to the site manager.  He informed me that they have a TV specialist who deals with this and would ask him to call me.  When he did not call in a reasonable time, I tried to call the store back.  In the modern age, they have no phone number, just a central toll free number that takes you back to processors when you really require a thinker.  So I drove there, to find that the manager I spoke to was on vacation this week.  While the manager thought it was Comcast, the person filling in thought it was the TV, giving me two options.

1. Buy a new TV but only Samsung or LG that does not have to go through Roku.  Cost $400
2. Get an additional cable box for the current TV so internet would not be required.  Cost $8.50/mo

We settled on a middle ground.  Wait for the boss to return from vacation and see what their best expert could do.

In the meaning, electronic peasant me went back to the TCL site where they offer advice on what to do from their end.  I followed it step by step.  Clicking on the series of pathway, I reset from factory settings.  No risk if the alternative was to buy another TV, though I had already done that the last time the TCL rep ran me through the procedure.  Then another pathway to check for a MAC number.  I do not know what a MAC number is but I had one.  Then try to get back on Xfinity.  Another code number to authorize on my PC.  But this time, it took me to a user agreement, which I accepted, followed by a return to the world of streaming TV.  Elation.  A binge of viewing come nightfall.

I still solved this with process over thinking.  Perhaps Comcast, medicine, and everyone other than me is right.  Reasoning and expertise are overrated.