Please. No. Voice Messages. 🎙️🙅
You sent me a voice message. 2 minutes, 10 seconds. The content: "Call me back."
Pictured: The recipient of a voice message
Some quick math
Your voice message: Over 2 minutes of my lifetime. The same information as text: Under 8 seconds. That's an efficiency loss of over 90%! Even a printer driver installs faster. 🖨️💨
Not even 1.5x playback speed gives me my lifetime back.
Even worse: if you send voice messages to a group, you steal that lifetime from every single member! And all because you're too lazy to invest your own time.
And yet smartphones already come with a brilliant invention that solves this: the keyboard.
What actually happens in a voice message ⏱️
- 0:00 – 0:20 — "Um, yeah, hi, so…" 😴
- 0:20 – 1:05 — A story that has nothing to do with the topic
- 1:05 – 1:50 — Background noise. You're apparently in a supermarket. 🛒
- 1:50 – 2:05 — The actual information (15 seconds)
- 2:05 – 2:10 — "…but I'd rather tell you that in person." 🤐
Why text is better 💬
- I can skim it. On the train, in a meeting, with a full head at 11 pm
- I can search it when I need to find the important info again. Forgot the address? No problem, just search. 🔍
- Nobody in the office, train, or waiting room finds out about your diarrhea
- In groups, the time burden isn't dumped on every member, just on one person
Don't have your hands free?
You're driving. You're carrying three grocery bags. You're kneading dough or cutting onions. Then call! It's crazy, but you can still actually make phone calls with these so-called mobile phones.
Share this page with people who send you voice messages. Put it in your status and ignore voice messages from now on.