Week 9 Lab: Dating without documentation

A Lab editing an opening message down to its one answerable question

Before the Lab#

Bring a draft opening message if you have one; if not, bring a profile you’d realistically message and draft one in the room.

In the Lab#

Introduction. Last week’s message sat unanswered for three days. This week looks at the opposite failure: a message that gets an answer, but only after saying so much that the actual question gets lost somewhere in the middle. As with the rest of this week, taking a speaking role in either activity is opt-in — an observer role is always available.

Activity 1 (groups of 4, opt-in roles): The 600-word message. One student reads the message below aloud; the group edits it live, down to one sentence that says the same thing.

The message was recovered, word for word, from a phone’s drafts folder, where it had sat for six days after being typed in a single unbroken forty-minute sitting and never sent. It is reproduced below exactly as written, out of academic necessity, with no edits of any kind.

hey!! okay so this is going to sound weird and you can totally just ignore this if it’s weird, no pressure at all, but I’ve been meaning to say hi for a while now and I just never really found the right moment, like there’s never really a “right moment” is there, everyone always talks about finding the right moment but I think that’s kind of made up if I’m honest, anyway that’s not the point, the point is I remember you mentioned in that one lecture (I think it was week 3? or maybe week 4, I genuinely can’t remember, my memory for weeks is terrible but my memory for what people say is actually really good, which is a weird combination I know) that you liked urban beekeeping, and I thought that was really cool because I’ve always wanted to try that but never had the guts to, and I don’t know, I guess I just wanted to say that was cool, and also maybe ask if you wanted to get coffee sometime, no worries if not though, genuinely no pressure, I’m not going to be weird about it either way, we can just pretend this never happened if you’d rather, actually wait, ignore that, that makes it sound like I want you to say no, I don’t want you to say no, but I also don’t want you to feel like you HAVE to say yes, anyway I’m going to stop typing now because I think this message is getting long, sorry, I’ll stop, okay bye, unless you want to say something, in which case, hi.

Discussion: What did the rest of those words actually accomplish?

Presentation: Each group posts its one-sentence edit on the board. Then, as a class, work through three more exchanges that need the same kind of decoding:

1. They reply “lol” to something you thought was genuinely funny — and nothing else.
2. They say “we should hang out sometime” with no day or time attached.
3. A message starts typing, stops, and nothing arrives for ten minutes.

For each, name what the other person probably means, and what an honest, low-stakes reply would look like.

Activity 2: Draft and edit your opening message. Bring a draft opening message if you have one; if not, bring a profile you’d realistically message and draft one in the room. Edit the draft down to a single answerable question.

Discussion / debrief (pairs): Read the edited version to one other student and ask what they would actually reply. Anything that gets “I don’t really know how to respond to that” goes back for another cut.

Wrap-up: This week’s reflection stays optional, as already established.

Afterwards#

Nothing is submitted. What leaves the Lab is a message you would actually send, and one other student’s honest read on whether it invites a reply.