Stop Sending Me Voice Notes
November 12th, 2022
Call this a treatise. Call it a treaty. Call it what you want? Call me! But don’t you ever send me a voice note about a practical matter ever again. Voice notes are the weapons of the selfish, the inconsiderate, the impractical. If a voice note is your initial go-to move, I'm sorry, but nobody likes you and you need to change. That’s just a fact.
The whatsapp voice note is not a good communication tool. Here’s three reasons why.
It’s not easily accessible - the important information of the message cannot be accessed visually, and so key pieces of data (such as dates, times, details that need to be double checked) are hidden within audiowaves among useless drivel, pauses, and the silence of the sender in which they are not reflecting how this is a horrible practice that our society sometimes allows.
It's one way - the voice note sender, in their infinite laziness, thinks not about crafting a legible message, taking the time to construct a concise sentence with words. Instead, this labour is offloaded to the innocent receiver.
No Privacy! - You can’t check a voice message like a text. You just can’t. Instant communication shouldn't require headphones, or a trip to the bathroom to figure out where your idiot friend wants you to meet them.
Every voice note should legally be accompanied by a ‘sorry for the voice message’ text, and an explanation of why the sender HAD to use this medium. I have written strongly worded letters to multiple Parliaments, Congresses, Houses of Lords, and Oligarchies suggesting this. You may be thinking ‘I’’m just a little baby, a silly little voice message baby, who moves around the world picking fruit from trees with no conception of shame, and the existence of other people doesn’t enter my brain - are there not legitimate reasons to send a voice note? Also did I mention I’m just a baby?’. Yes. Here they are.
You are telling a long and complicated story about something that happened at work that is too mundane/time specific for an in-person catchup, but too complex to be typed on a phone keyboard.
You are my hot French wife telling me that you just want me to know that you love me. It is soft yet passionate, and there is a tenderness in the timbre of your voice that the written word could never capture.
You’re biking and the message isn’t urgent.
The manners of our communications are currently non-existent. We cannot seem to call, and we cannot seem to text, and so we settle for the bastard mutant child of the two. The voice message doesn’t do voice, or do message good. Is this our destiny - to embrace the subpar out of ease, and carry the constant disappointment on our shoulders? Comrades, I say no. Unless you’re going to whisper sweet nothings, let’s cut down the voice notes and send hilarious emojis to each other like adults.
