Silent conversations, the new way of talking

I was contacted a while back about some suspicious activity, and asked to look into it. After doing a little checking, I could not find much, so I thought I would talk to the person who reported it and see if I could get a few more details about the case.

When I was first contacted by the person, it was online, via a social media outlet and the person appeared to be very upset and very concerned about what they were telling me. I was able to find a phone number to call the person (who lived out of state) and after a few attempts, was able to get them on the phone. When contacted online, the person had demanded something be done and even went as far as to tell me there would be "consequences" if nothing was resolved, but I was very surprised when the voice over the phone was a very soft spoken and almost shy young man.

While on the phone this guy acted like he did not want to talk and seemed no longer to care about the original complaint. Instead he was mind blown that I had gotten his phone number. "Umm ... we are the police," I said trying not to sound surprised that he was surprised that we could locate a phone number. After explaining that phenomenon to him, I tried to ask again about the original complaint he had sent me online.

This is when I realized there is a new type of boldness in today's world. Or as I like to call it "online bravery." I had to ask the guy a couple of times to repeat himself because he was talking too quietly, but what he finally said was that he wanted to continue our conversation online because that made him feel more comfortable. I told him I just had some questions so I could look into his "concern" and that a conversation over the phone was much easier than e-mails or messages back and forth.

He then quietly said, "I don't like talking to people over the phone," and told me he was sorry and asked me to forget about the whole thing. Within a few hours after I hung up with him, I received another message telling me how upset he was that I invaded his privacy by "calling him like that." So of course I did the only thing that seemed reasonable at that point and called him back.

He never did answer and I never spoke to him again, but after that conversation I could not stop thinking about how different the guy was depending on how you were talking to him. It was like night and day. Online he was very opinionated and even long-winded, and over the phone, just the sound of your voice could scare him into not wanting to talk.

I started wondering after this if the same thing could be true for people we interview in person? Is this a new generational thing? I decided to try an experiment the next time I interviewed a younger person that seemed to be a little shy.

I interviewed someone that appeared to be distracted with their phone, and not wanting to speak full sentences. I needed them to tell me what happened but they preferred to just shake their head if I asked questions and leave it at that. So finally I asked "could you just e-mail me what happened?"

And there we were. Me sitting in a room, watching the person sitting across from me type an e-mail to me! And guess what I got: a three-page statement detailing everything that had happened. Although we regularly ask people to fill out hand-written statements when making a report, I had never thought to ask someone to use their phone to communicate with me instead of speaking or writing it down. Maybe this is the first sign that I am getting old and a pen and paper is the thing of the past, but either way it worked! So if you ever need to talk to me and the thought of verbal communication is too overwhelming, feel free to stop by the office and sit down with me for a nice silent conversation via the World Wide Web.