If you send me a voice note, I won’t listen - here’s why
20 May 2025, 08:12
It’s time we talked about voice notes - or better yet, stopped sending them altogether.
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There’s a new menace in modern communication: voice notes are fast replacing bog-standard text messages.
It’s somewhere between texting and calling, a hybrid which manages to be worse than both.
They demand more attention and time than a simple text, even when you play them at double speed.
You can’t quickly glance at the message, you’re forced to listen in real time to rambling nonsense. I want short and sharp details over messages, not a lengthy sermon - even from my best friends.
You can’t skim them, you can’t mute them, and you certainly can’t escape them. Voice notes are the digital equivalent of someone cornering you at a party and refusing to shut up.
By their very nature, they can’t be a two-way exchange. Instead, they’re solo performances from people who think they’re the main character.
You might as well grab a megaphone and shout “me, me, me!”
There’s nothing more tragic than someone strutting down the street recording a voice note like it’s a podcast no one asked for.
Headphones in, awareness out - you’re not on the television. You’re on the 38 bus. Keep it down.
If you're broadcasting your personal life in public, you're not communicating - you're performing.
And if you’ve really got that much to say? Just call me. We can have an actual conversation.
But don’t even think about leaving a voicemail – that’s a relic that should’ve died with fax machines and landline phones.
If you send me a voice note, please know this: I will not listen to it. I don't care if it's 10 seconds or 10 minutes - it goes straight into the digital bin.
I treat voice notes like spam emails: instantly deleted, never opened, and silently judged.
You may think you’re sending me a message. What you’re really sending is homework.
We’ve reached peak voice note. It’s time we turned away from this narcissism in audio form - a TED Talk no one paid for.
Talking to me is fine. Talking at me? That’s where I hang up.
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