Phatic verbal art

Aside from searching "phatic" on youtube for the fun of it, I have searched "phatic" on deviantart and used some of the search results as heading images on the "soul searching" blog. But aside from a few seemingly random photos and drawings there are several texts among the search results (and one random poem by a user named Phatic which I didn't include because the poem itself was not about phatics). These are just some random examples of how the term "phatic" lives a cultural existence in the margins of the interwebs.

Phatic Man

You sat by me
Having never met before
And you burst with details
You drag me from my public peace
I hope this train derails

I count every word
That passes your lips
Then each one with meaning
I’d never reach the double digits
Partly because I’m leaving

Phatic Man
Keep on preaching
Sell me every word
To be blunt you just repeat
Everything you’ve heard
Phatic Man
Keep on preaching
Sell me every tale
As long as people keep on listening
You can never fail

Coincidence kills me
As we share the same stop
You never cease your noise
I can’t think with your pointless speech
So strongly it annoys

Carefully I plan
The best way to kill you
As you drone me into hell
They’d never find your body
I’d bury it so well

Phatic Man
Keep on preaching
Sell me every word
To be blunt you just repeat
Everything you’ve heard
Phatic Man
Keep on preaching
Sell me every tale
As long as people keep on listening
You can never fail

(PeccableII, Mar 7, 2007)

I hear so many pointlessly irritation conversations. It drives me nuts just how trivial everything is, and yet how obscenely important it is to these idiots.
I'm a very angry person. (ibid)

The author of this poem is expressing discontent at people in public spaces picking up pointless conversations. In the comments section he adds that the poem was "Inspired because I was trying to think about something fairly important, and a person I don't find all that... pleasant wouldn't stop talking to me." In other words, it was borne from the author's lack of - to invent a term - phatic control (e.g. interaction management, channel regulation, etc.).

-Insert Phatic Communication here-

I had a great birthday, I ended up celebrating for basically 4 days in a row. Really freaking beats out my 21st, the infamous birthday where everyone said they'd show up and no one did. Not a soul, save my boyfriend and his friend. I'm a little bitter, no? lol. But this time all my friends in Reno came out and we had dinner and went drinking and I got silly drunk and that was great. (AutumnOwl, Sep 2, 2013)

This is a blog entry that skipped the routine of inventing a headline by making a pun out of the technical term "Phatic Communication", which most likely signifies conventional formulae of greeting or approach for the author. Surprisingly, the phatic aspect isn't limited to the title of the entry. She bemuses how her 23rd birthday was better than her 21st, which is - according to American cultural norms - one of the most important birthdays a person can have (because of the legal drinking age), and yet noone but her boyfriend and his friend showed up. Despite the bitterness, this is a valid expression of emotion over the contact (party with friends) that was as-if promised (cultural representations) and turned out, as reality often does, to be different and lonely.

How ARE You

Default Usero 6fa Microsoft Word 9.0@J‹6 @˜\ÚÈX @2ï=ˆr ø How are you? No, really. How are you?!?
I get this all the time… it’s ridiculous! You feel so patronized. Like there has to be something wrong with me all the time and if you deny it then you really must be sick, there truly must be something going on that you’re trying to hide. Ugh! It’s so frustrating. I get a call from home a few times a day everyday now that I’m in college. And the first 2 questions are always the same ones. Sometimes I feel like turning the table just to see what other say, just to hear their reaction… but I never do. I don’t have that kind of courage, but I know it’s safe in my head. You see the first question is sincere and the second one is the one that can drive a girl crazy. (coloratura, Oct 13, 2002)

The first "How are you?" is a phatic utterance; the second "How are you?" is an emotive utterance. Instead of a mere greeting, the "No, really." that follows it turns it into an inquisitive statement about emotional states. Through repetition and the inflection of the are the addressee (our author) is made to feel pantronized and pathological. Her musing over how she feels like "turning the table just to see what other say" is a characteristic of the nature of contact: she is as-if wondering if she is the only one who get's that repetition and inflection of an otherwise pointless question and what others would say in a similar situation. Much of the rest of that entry is graphemic noise, probably from opening a MS Word file with Notepad. The subtitle of this experimental piece of verbal art is "Fallacies via phatic discourse."