Yesterday, my husband expressed mild amusement as I logged out of Twitter. He expressed further amusement as I subsequently logged out of all the other applications open on my computer late in the evening (AceProject, CodeMantra, Mantis and WordPress in case you were interested). I questioned his amusement of course, as anyone would. He responded with something along the lines of: ‘Nobody else logs out of Twitter’. I was quite surprised by this. ‘You are the only person I know who logs out of WordPress’ he added.
The lovely AceProject
I paused for thought. I always log out of Twitter. And I always log out of WordPress. Somehow, to me, it feels rude not to. It is akin to putting the phone down without saying ‘goodbye’, or closing the door in someone’s face, or going to sleep without saying good night.
My weird thought is: am I alone in this strange behaviour? Twitter doesn’t care if I don’t log out. Twitter does not have feelings. It doesn’t get the hump. It doesn’t sulk. It doesn’t make a mental note of the times I have accidentally shut it down without logging out plotting some sort of twisted, online revenge for later (I’m not sure what this twisted, online revenge would consist of – taking away one of my many – 60 – followers?). It doesn’t even crash or stop working. Nothing happens. There are no consequences of not logging out.
Is this misplaced sense of good behaviour a result of my age? I was born before the ‘computer age’ in the 1970s. Do people who have grown up in this digital age feel the same need for a sense of closure from closing down or logging out? I will have to ask them.
If only computers looked like this today
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