I cannot say how much I agree that with the author. I feel constant societal pressure because of this and I can't stress how happy I am to read there are more people angry on all these nowadays...
Exemplary
I cannot say how much I agree that with the author.
I hate modern chats. They presuppose we are always online, always available to chat.
I feel constant societal pressure because of this and I can't stress how happy I am to read there are more people angry on all these nowadays chats.
I've started switching almost everything almost similarly as the author. No more pings, pongs and other weird notification sounds for me. Switched off read receipts. Told some people that calling me has the highest probability of me answering immediately. Told people to write me an email in case there's something important I should read. And few other things I probably don't remember anymore.
My brain was so tired, my mind was so unable to concentrate on anything. Even just the feeling and awareness that I'm permanently connected made me very anxious. If I have to be connected (which is kind of mandatory these times) let me cut it by half, e.g. let me be connected only to calls, not chats. Adding chats to this will destroy my peace of mind.
I’ve been looking for the podcast where I learned this and can’t find it anymore, but the gist of it was that internally Slack uses Slack very differently from how most companies use Slack. The...
I’ve been looking for the podcast where I learned this and can’t find it anymore, but the gist of it was that internally Slack uses Slack very differently from how most companies use Slack. The culture at Slack is to mostly type out long messages, like paragraph-length or more. All business talk happens in dedicated channels for that team or topic. Ad hoc group chats and DMs are rare the whole thing is policed communally to make sure channels remain on topic and discussions happen in the appropriate places to facilitate being able to find the discussion is the future.
And then the host asked “why does it seem like nobody else uses it that way?” and the guy responded “Millennials and text boxes.” If you give people a one-line input box, it encourages them to write one-line responses and that’s how all new adoptees learned to use it.
Group chats have the same problem. Everything designed for mobile first (which is to say just about everything) has a one-line input box which signals to people that you put very short phrases here, not long paragraphs of text. Meanwhile, Tildes has an input box of about six lines (with my browser settings) and it encourages us to word a lot of words. And this leads to second order effects around immediacy of communication and frequency of notifications.
This is a UX/UI design issue, then, not a "Millenial" problem. If users consistently encounter their product and use it "wrong" then maybe they designed their product poorly for the types of use...
“Millennials and text boxes.” If you give people a one-line input box, it encourages them to write one-line responses and that’s how all new adoptees learned to use it.
This is a UX/UI design issue, then, not a "Millenial" problem. If users consistently encounter their product and use it "wrong" then maybe they designed their product poorly for the types of use cases they wanted. This whole trend of blaming Millenials or gen Z or whoever is really getting old and tired. Much like Millennials
It is sort of a millennial thing because older generations still tended to write out long-form regardless of the size of the text boxes. Many aspects of UI are a communication between the designer...
It is sort of a millennial thing because older generations still tended to write out long-form regardless of the size of the text boxes. Many aspects of UI are a communication between the designer and the user as to what the intended usage pattern is supposed to be, but not everyone is fluent in that language. Millennials were because of growing up with direct and informal text messaging while elders tended to format all text based communication like they’re writing a formal letter regardless of the interface.
I'm not sure I see that trend anecdotally - the company I work for has been using various messengers as one of the primary communication tools for at least 15 years or so and I don't really see...
I'm not sure I see that trend anecdotally - the company I work for has been using various messengers as one of the primary communication tools for at least 15 years or so and I don't really see much difference in the way the old-heads use them and the younger folks. Maaaaaybe the one or two Gen Z folks that we have are more likely to send multiple short messages, but overall nobody really does that - except for one or two people that always send something like "Hey" or "Good Morning" and wait for you to reply before they type whatever message they want to send, which is a whole different can of worms. But I've not noticed a particular age for folks who do that.
I think the norm has universalized now, but when we were first rolling out Slack in my old company ~10 years ago there was a definitely pattern in how olds wrote and how the youngs did. For the...
I think the norm has universalized now, but when we were first rolling out Slack in my old company ~10 years ago there was a definitely pattern in how olds wrote and how the youngs did. For the most part older people seemed to mostly use it as like a post-it note to leave on someone’s desk to call them. But the ones that did get to using it tended to be like:
Hey Naravara,
I need you to blah blah the blah blah blah.
[- Name]
So basically stuff that would have been an email but where they expected faster responses than if they had sent an email.
Letters predate postal services and formal street addresses, so the format would have evolved from just telling a servant or a local kid to go find so-and-so at such-and-such a place and give them...
Letters predate postal services and formal street addresses, so the format would have evolved from just telling a servant or a local kid to go find so-and-so at such-and-such a place and give them this.
Sure but then you have the name you're known by and your corpo name. Some places demand your legal name so everything comes from "Samuelson, Markus, Jr" so you sign even short form stuff 'Sam'...
Sure but then you have the name you're known by and your corpo name. Some places demand your legal name so everything comes from "Samuelson, Markus, Jr" so you sign even short form stuff 'Sam' because that's what you go by.
Yes, it's moronic, no, I haven't gotten them to implement better rules but maybe one day the CEO will be called 'James' instead of JP and suddenly the rules around allowed fields will loosen.
I'm a young millennial who barely missed the cut-off for being considered older Gen z. I still write in paragraphs and my wife will tease me about it. Some of my friends fall in the one sentence a...
I'm a young millennial who barely missed the cut-off for being considered older Gen z. I still write in paragraphs and my wife will tease me about it.
Some of my friends fall in the one sentence a thought/short messages spam when sending messages, but I tend to reply in paragraphs back to them as it lets me get my thoughts ordered, and I also feel like its more polite to the other person where you can respond with a complete thought and not barrage them with notifications. I personally can find it pretty annoying and if I have people who spam messages like that to me, I'll drop a temp mute on the chat and come back later once they're done, but I've grown more used to it over the years and just accepted that is how some people I interact with communicate
I send some shorter messages to my wife since she prefers that, and I've also used it as a challenge to say more with fewer words to get my meaning across. I did make an exception for a previous friend of mine who had pretty bad ADHD and told me he found it hard parsing through my longer messages, so I just got used to hitting send with each sentence I typed to him
Chat doesn't scale, period. I'm in a small, closely knit business unit, and the Slack chats work pretty much exactly as you described for Slack's use of its own product. When each team has no more...
Chat doesn't scale, period. I'm in a small, closely knit business unit, and the Slack chats work pretty much exactly as you described for Slack's use of its own product.
When each team has no more than 10 people, it's easy to stay focused. My typical day doesn't involve more than 5 - 6 posts (some paragraph-length or longer), though at least one screen-sharing huddle will happen to quickly clarify something that requires synchronous communication.
There's a single "#random" channel for social noise.
Topical posts like "how do I" or "have you ever had this happen" get threaded, or else.
Important or recurringly useful posts get pinned in the channel.
Project-based channels are created for the project team and duration of the project, and are archived at the end.
[Yes, Slack supports search, seeing when someone is typing, attachments and images, etc.]
It's work, not "social media", nor a vast public cesspool (which I've seen with big Telegram and Discord groups), there are no single-line drive-by posts from trolls or noobs.
Great news! Of course the problem of the barrage of all these alerts and chats has been identified, and is being worked on by Silicon Valley. Their solution: an AI summary of your chats! Now you...
Great news! Of course the problem of the barrage of all these alerts and chats has been identified, and is being worked on by Silicon Valley. Their solution: an AI summary of your chats! Now you can stop interacting with humans and let an algorithm bother you all day. I noticed my phone started doing these summaries recently and I wanted to throw the thing out a window.
Is this why my phone keeps asking me to use Google gemini? I only got a phone this nice because I wanted to emulate GC and ps2 games while traveling. Otherwise it is just used for text, calls, and...
Is this why my phone keeps asking me to use Google gemini? I only got a phone this nice because I wanted to emulate GC and ps2 games while traveling. Otherwise it is just used for text, calls, and email. I get constantly alerted by it to all these new 'features' I don't care about and would love to be able to tell it I'm not interested. Gemini is basically being advertised to me above my emails every morning.
Did your phone ask you? Mine made the unilateral decision to switch me without my agreeing to anything. It was super obvious, too, the voice switched genders. Gemini doesn’t do any better a job of...
Did your phone ask you? Mine made the unilateral decision to switch me without my agreeing to anything. It was super obvious, too, the voice switched genders. Gemini doesn’t do any better a job of setting a timer than Google assistant does.
Makes me even more sad that Mycroft went under and my old one broke. I have high hopes for the voice control that Home Assistant has been working on, I just haven’t had the time to mess with it much.
I did finally figure it that I could switch it back , but man, was I mad. (Apps-> General:Assistant->All settings: Digital assistants from Google)
And neither of these services should be setting a timer for you in the first place. Your phone has a clock app, and that clock app has a timer. No internet, bots, or "AI" required.
Gemini doesn’t do any better a job of setting a timer than Google assistant does.
And neither of these services should be setting a timer for you in the first place. Your phone has a clock app, and that clock app has a timer. No internet, bots, or "AI" required.
Why? Sometimes your hands are occupied. Notably when cooking. Sometimes it’s just easier to say “set a timer for 30 minutes” than unlock your phone, open the app, scroll the minute wheel....
Why? Sometimes your hands are occupied. Notably when cooking. Sometimes it’s just easier to say “set a timer for 30 minutes” than unlock your phone, open the app, scroll the minute wheel. Sometimes it’s not safe to do that with your phone.
When I'm cooking it's far easier to verbally ask for a timer or to set a reminder for six months in the future on my calendar. I want that feature. It just doesn't need to be Gemini.
When I'm cooking it's far easier to verbally ask for a timer or to set a reminder for six months in the future on my calendar. I want that feature. It just doesn't need to be Gemini.
I wish there was an offline open source voice assistant. I decided not to use any proprietary assistant because of privacy and not wanting to give corporations my data so it can't be used against...
I wish there was an offline open source voice assistant. I decided not to use any proprietary assistant because of privacy and not wanting to give cybercountries corporations my data so it can't be used against humanity. However I wish there was something I could use. I imagine it can be very handy in everyday life.
The hardware in even budget phones these days is easily capable of it, so yeah I agree it’s a bit disappointing that there hasn’t been something like that offered yet
The hardware in even budget phones these days is easily capable of it, so yeah I agree it’s a bit disappointing that there hasn’t been something like that offered yet
I 100% agree, this thing is really stupid. I explicitly tell my online (& real-life) friends to reply whenever they [want && have time && have the mood] to reply to my messages. Regardless of...
I 100% agree, this thing is really stupid.
I explicitly tell my online (& real-life) friends to reply whenever they [want && have time && have the mood] to reply to my messages. Regardless of whether it takes hours, days, or even weeks. They're under no obligation to be on top of their phone to answer any of my messages and they should not be expected to do so.
Exactly. I sometimes read a response „sorry I couldn't reply earlier...” and I always write back that there's no obligation or deadline for a reply :P Do it whenever you want. I'm not angry for...
Exactly. I sometimes read a response „sorry I couldn't reply earlier...” and I always write back that there's no obligation or deadline for a reply :P Do it whenever you want. I'm not angry for your „delay” because there is no delay.
I've been saying this forever: read receipts and typing indicators are anti-features. The thing that made instant messenger services in the 90s so appealing was that they freed you from social...
I've been saying this forever: read receipts and typing indicators are anti-features. The thing that made instant messenger services in the 90s so appealing was that they freed you from social norms and simplified communication. But those two features are designed to enforce social norms and complicate communication. Instead of seeing a message and responding to it when you can, you now have the expectation to respond to it. We took a means of communication designed to be stress-free as much as possible, and made it to be stressful.
They probably don't deserve it, but I blame the current messaging economy as largely Google's fault. Google had a great chat system; it used XMPP so you could use any client to connect to it and you could even message people outside of Google's services because of the open design of the protocol. Then they discontinued it because they wanted to replace it with something proprietary. They did it about a hundred times before they decided to get in bed with the cell phone networks to capture the market more efficiently. But of course, Google is not the only company to do this. It's honestly astonishing how much money companies have invested into creating their own redundant messaging services.
I’m struck by what a different existence the author has from me. I use slack a lot because I like it, but also because I’m obligated to because of a support contract that I am fulfilling. If I...
I’m struck by what a different existence the author has from me.
People who really wanted to reach me quickly understood that it was better to use Signal.
I use slack a lot because I like it, but also because I’m obligated to because of a support contract that I am fulfilling. If I wanted to leave slack, I think demanding that they switch chat providers along with me would be a non-starter.
I use signal because my gym uses signal. It is the single place that all gym information is disseminated. It is how I know if classes are cancelled, when events are happening, and what’s going on in general. I also have a bunch of friends on signal, who I suppose I could just cut off contact from in the way the author did. It would be socially difficult but I accept that the author is basically choosing to be socially difficult.
I’m also on WhatsApp. This is mandatory for two reasons: this is also the exclusive communication channel for my other gym, with all the same reasons. The other is that I have children — WhatsApp is how school functions are organized and how parents communicate with other parents. I have an obligation to my children to communicate with the school, but also to not subject my children to being the kids with the weird parent that makes you install this weird encrypted messaging app if you want to reach them.
I’m on LINE because I have friends in Japan and that’s … how people talk. It’s like having a telephone number there.
I’m on discord for a number of reasons, but one which sticks out is it’s how moderation is coordinated for a few subreddits I’m on. I could, of course, stop being a moderator, but so long as I’m interested in that, it’s required as a condition of doing so.
It seems like I have a lot of communication requirements where I’m not really very important to the other participants, in that if I don’t subscribe to their preferred chat system, they won’t separately reach out to me. I’ll simply be left uninformed.
Yeah, what he's proposing is really unrealistic. Yes, I could in theory say to everyone I know "I'm deleting Whatsapp and will no longer look at SMS, if you want to reach me install signal". Some...
Yeah, what he's proposing is really unrealistic. Yes, I could in theory say to everyone I know "I'm deleting Whatsapp and will no longer look at SMS, if you want to reach me install signal".
Some of them probably would. Most wouldn't. The most likely outcome is that I just stop hearing from certain people who don't want to install yet another application to contact a single person, just like if someone I knew insisted I contact them on matrix or something, I just... wouldn't.
I had this fear when I was leaving Facebook & Whatsapp. I no longer have it. To be honest, I think I'm very happy afterwards because I realized I don't need so much information noise in my life....
I had this fear when I was leaving Facebook & Whatsapp. I no longer have it. To be honest, I think I'm very happy afterwards because I realized I don't need so much information noise in my life. Have I lost contact with anyone? Of course I have. But I have other people around me (and more energy for them) and if I really need something from that person I will be able to contact them through friends.
Of course there are some contacts I have no idea how to reach. But at the same time I didn't have need for it. Neither have I time or energy to be up-to-date with everybody and keep in contact with everybody.
I had been trying for a long while to get friends to switch off of Facebook Messenger with me. I eventually made the plunge and just got rid of my Facebook account. People who wanted/needed to get...
I had been trying for a long while to get friends to switch off of Facebook Messenger with me. I eventually made the plunge and just got rid of my Facebook account. People who wanted/needed to get in contact with me did and since that was the only social media I had (if you don't count Reddit/Tildes) I now have a lot more fun catching up with people as I have no idea what is happening in their life.
I had someone say "oh I posted pictures of my trip to Instagram" and I instead got them to take out their phone and show me as I don't have an account would rather have them explain it to me here and now because I wasn't going to make an account just to look at their private page.
I feel mostly like you do... I use certain apps to get info that I've decided that I want. I think the point of the linked article is that (as you put it): Isn't that horrible (according to the...
I feel mostly like you do... I use certain apps to get info that I've decided that I want.
I think the point of the linked article is that (as you put it):
I’ll simply be left uninformed.
Isn't that horrible (according to the writer).
I agree with them, in principle, but also fomo....
It really amazes me how much people are paralyzed by FOMO. If you miss out on something, it's no big deal. There have been plenty of times when talking to my friends about what I missed were very...
It really amazes me how much people are paralyzed by FOMO. If you miss out on something, it's no big deal. There have been plenty of times when talking to my friends about what I missed were very obviously better than the experience I would have had if I had actually been part of it. A life ruled by FOMO is a life of inanity, IMHO.
Honestly, how do you find time for all that? I have some friends and family I constantly struggle to find time for calling/visiting them. I'm also engaged in few things, e.g. local hackerspace,...
Honestly, how do you find time for all that? I have some friends and family I constantly struggle to find time for calling/visiting them. I'm also engaged in few things, e.g. local hackerspace, RoR group, food not bombs, full time job and I feel like ditching as much services as I could was the key to have time and energy for things I've just mentioned. I kind of don't want to be involved in anything more, be it next new friend or next initiative, or next group chat, because I simply don't have means for anything more.
I suppose I’m the only one who periodically backs up my phone messages to my pc where ctrl f exists. Its a habit I formed as soon as I got a smart phone that kept a chat history. I dont even know...
I suppose I’m the only one who periodically backs up my phone messages to my pc where ctrl f exists.
Its a habit I formed as soon as I got a smart phone that kept a chat history. I dont even know why I do it, I also still have the chat logs from when I used AIM in high school. My only gap is the flip phone period because those had no concept of chat history.
I disagree with almost the entire thing. Well, there’s your problem. I can’t think of any reason a normal person should be sitting in hundreds of group chats. I know people like this. They join a...
I disagree with almost the entire thing.
Suddenly, I was out of tenths [sic] or hundreds of group chats.
Well, there’s your problem. I can’t think of any reason a normal person should be sitting in hundreds of group chats. I know people like this. They join a group chat / social media group for everything, never leave any of them, and feel swamped by irrelevant notifications. You can leave that newborn baby stuff group; your kid is a toddler now!
One part of my brain told me not to open the message because, if I did, the sender would see a "read receipt". He would see that I had read the message but would not receive any answer.
For him, that would probably translate in "he doesn’t care".
Assumptions of interpretations aside, if you’re ok forcing everyone you know to use Signal or call you, why aren’t you ok with the much less disruptive task of establishing that you read messages without immediate responses? I rarely respond right away unless it’s time sensitive, and I’m glad read receipts let the sender know I’ve at least seen it. Most people I’ve communicated with don’t have a problem with that, and I just let the permanently-online know what’s up in the beginning.
I don’t know what they mean by no search in chat. Sure, long term archival in a more structured form is best, but I’ve found plenty of things with search in WhatsApp, slack, etc. Maybe it’s harder when you’re in hundreds of irrelevant groups.
Also, you can turn on iCloud back ups for Messages and WhatsApp and I’m sure others.
Reminds me of a time at work where someone raised an issue at some company meeting with being overloaded with slack notifications. Turned out they had notifications enabled for every message in I...
Well, there’s your problem. I can’t think of any reason a normal person should be sitting in hundreds of group chats. I know people like this. They join a group chat / social media group for everything, never leave any of them, and feel swamped by irrelevant notifications. You can leave that newborn baby stuff group; your kid is a toddler now!
Reminds me of a time at work where someone raised an issue at some company meeting with being overloaded with slack notifications. Turned out they had notifications enabled for every message in I believe every channel, and just hadn't turned it off (or hadn't known they could). Meanwhile I'm turning off every non-mention notification and sound effect as soon as possible and never have a problem with being overwhelmed by slack messages (which I do read all of anyway).
I have done many of the things suggested in the article but that is not enough for me. My addiction is too strong. I use Lock Me Out on Android to block WhatsApp from myself. First I will check if...
I have done many of the things suggested in the article but that is not enough for me. My addiction is too strong.
I use Lock Me Out on Android to block WhatsApp from myself. First I will check if there's anything I need from WhatsApp that day. Lots of companies and even government services use WhatsApp in Brazil. And then I block it. I am currently on a 15 hour block. I also turned my phone off and put it in a place that is annoying to reach. It feels so good. I am aware that not everyone has the privilege of being able to turn off their phones, though.
One thing that I've observed is that the longer I'm alone, the more often I check messaging apps. And it was also very helpful to observe it because I've started to try to spend more time with...
One thing that I've observed is that the longer I'm alone, the more often I check messaging apps. And it was also very helpful to observe it because I've started to try to spend more time with people and I clearly see that I need my messages less while spending time with others. However it's very difficult when you're e.g. working remotely and all your closest workmates are distributed all over the country.
I am fortunate that I don't have a need to be online as a virtue of my profession. If I had to be on my phone for work, it would be very difficult for me to reduce my screen time. That is...
I am fortunate that I don't have a need to be online as a virtue of my profession. If I had to be on my phone for work, it would be very difficult for me to reduce my screen time.
That is tangential to your comment, but I found that turning off my phone for anything below 4 hours doesn't do much for me. That is still enough time that I will be thinking about it, obsessing about what I am gonna do once I have it.
Ideally, 6 waking hours without my phone is the minimum for a complete "reboot". 12 to 24 hours is ideal. I really think my brain needs a reboot so I can fully appreciate nature, conversations, books, movies, TV shows, videogames, etc The smartphone, to me, is no longer a source of pleasure. It is an enemy I carry in my pocket. A portable energy vampire.
I keep thinking about the great times I had before I had a smartphone, how my mental life was richer and more fulfilling. I used to love taking long walks. Not because of the act of walking, but because my mind went to interesting places. I am trying to get that feeling again.
I was about to write something about this when I saw your post.
It sounds like your system is working for you already, and also my advice is iPhone-specific since that’s what I have experience with, so I’ll just add this comment here for passers-by: I’ve...
It sounds like your system is working for you already, and also my advice is iPhone-specific since that’s what I have experience with, so I’ll just add this comment here for passers-by:
I’ve recently been tinkering with putting my entire phone into “assistive access” mode, which I believe is primarily designed for elderly (reduced eyesight, reduced fine-motor control, simpler choices and pre-determined permissions) but it means I can put my phone into a specific mode which reduces a lot of the default apps down to much simpler versions of themselves, and also asks you to set individual apps and app permissions when you first set up the mode, and you can’t easily change them on the fly.
This means that with some initial setup work, I can turn my phone into a simple device which can sent and receive SMS and calls, access music, the camera, and photos... and that’s it. Nothing else. All other apps are not just hidden but are completely inaccessible in this mode.
When setting up, you individually add each app, and when you do the phone prompts you to individually set each app’s permission (eg “yes the Maps app is allowed to access my location but not allowed to access my contacts”) one by one until you’ve set it up how you want.
I think it’s quite powerful and while I haven’t fully committed to it myself, my brother has his phone completely locked down in this way (even asked me to set the assistive access passcode so he can’t make changes himself) and sure, there are some initial difficulties like not having a generic web browser, but his job is physical rather than information-based, so there’s nothing that his phone needs to be able to do other than SMS and calls when his manager is offering him extra shifts outside his usual schedule.
Cool! Something like also exists for Android. Maybe it is possible to add a password but I am not sure. I already have Lock Me Out that does that and more so I'm not inclined to investigate. Lock...
Cool!
Something like also exists for Android. Maybe it is possible to add a password but I am not sure. I already have Lock Me Out that does that and more so I'm not inclined to investigate.
Lock Me Out has Pomodoros. It will reguarly unlock every X minutes, and it will give me X minutes of unlocked access to whatever set. The distinguishing feature is that the unlock time can stay there waiting for me if I want, it won't run unless I start it. So after my lockout I know I have 5 minutes to use the phone even I am not looking at it when the lockout ends. That reduces my stress.
I cannot say how much I agree that with the author.
I feel constant societal pressure because of this and I can't stress how happy I am to read there are more people angry on all these nowadays chats.
I've started switching almost everything almost similarly as the author. No more pings, pongs and other weird notification sounds for me. Switched off read receipts. Told some people that calling me has the highest probability of me answering immediately. Told people to write me an email in case there's something important I should read. And few other things I probably don't remember anymore.
My brain was so tired, my mind was so unable to concentrate on anything. Even just the feeling and awareness that I'm permanently connected made me very anxious. If I have to be connected (which is kind of mandatory these times) let me cut it by half, e.g. let me be connected only to calls, not chats. Adding chats to this will destroy my peace of mind.
[edit]
typos
I’ve been looking for the podcast where I learned this and can’t find it anymore, but the gist of it was that internally Slack uses Slack very differently from how most companies use Slack. The culture at Slack is to mostly type out long messages, like paragraph-length or more. All business talk happens in dedicated channels for that team or topic. Ad hoc group chats and DMs are rare the whole thing is policed communally to make sure channels remain on topic and discussions happen in the appropriate places to facilitate being able to find the discussion is the future.
And then the host asked “why does it seem like nobody else uses it that way?” and the guy responded “Millennials and text boxes.” If you give people a one-line input box, it encourages them to write one-line responses and that’s how all new adoptees learned to use it.
Group chats have the same problem. Everything designed for mobile first (which is to say just about everything) has a one-line input box which signals to people that you put very short phrases here, not long paragraphs of text. Meanwhile, Tildes has an input box of about six lines (with my browser settings) and it encourages us to word a lot of words. And this leads to second order effects around immediacy of communication and frequency of notifications.
This is a UX/UI design issue, then, not a "Millenial" problem. If users consistently encounter their product and use it "wrong" then maybe they designed their product poorly for the types of use cases they wanted. This whole trend of blaming Millenials or gen Z or whoever is really getting old and tired. Much like Millennials
It is sort of a millennial thing because older generations still tended to write out long-form regardless of the size of the text boxes. Many aspects of UI are a communication between the designer and the user as to what the intended usage pattern is supposed to be, but not everyone is fluent in that language. Millennials were because of growing up with direct and informal text messaging while elders tended to format all text based communication like they’re writing a formal letter regardless of the interface.
I'm not sure I see that trend anecdotally - the company I work for has been using various messengers as one of the primary communication tools for at least 15 years or so and I don't really see much difference in the way the old-heads use them and the younger folks. Maaaaaybe the one or two Gen Z folks that we have are more likely to send multiple short messages, but overall nobody really does that - except for one or two people that always send something like "Hey" or "Good Morning" and wait for you to reply before they type whatever message they want to send, which is a whole different can of worms. But I've not noticed a particular age for folks who do that.
I think the norm has universalized now, but when we were first rolling out Slack in my old company ~10 years ago there was a definitely pattern in how olds wrote and how the youngs did. For the most part older people seemed to mostly use it as like a post-it note to leave on someone’s desk to call them. But the ones that did get to using it tended to be like:
Hey Naravara,
I need you to blah blah the blah blah blah.
[- Name]
So basically stuff that would have been an email but where they expected faster responses than if they had sent an email.
You could say the same about letters, where the sender's name is right there in the return address.
Letters predate postal services and formal street addresses, so the format would have evolved from just telling a servant or a local kid to go find so-and-so at such-and-such a place and give them this.
Sure but then you have the name you're known by and your corpo name. Some places demand your legal name so everything comes from "Samuelson, Markus, Jr" so you sign even short form stuff 'Sam' because that's what you go by.
Yes, it's moronic, no, I haven't gotten them to implement better rules but maybe one day the CEO will be called 'James' instead of JP and suddenly the rules around allowed fields will loosen.
I extremely doubt this is or was the case without some form of evidence that this is an actual trend.
I not only write long messages on instant messaging I also write formal messages. That is partly because I am old and partly because I am just weird.
I'm a young millennial who barely missed the cut-off for being considered older Gen z. I still write in paragraphs and my wife will tease me about it.
Some of my friends fall in the one sentence a thought/short messages spam when sending messages, but I tend to reply in paragraphs back to them as it lets me get my thoughts ordered, and I also feel like its more polite to the other person where you can respond with a complete thought and not barrage them with notifications. I personally can find it pretty annoying and if I have people who spam messages like that to me, I'll drop a temp mute on the chat and come back later once they're done, but I've grown more used to it over the years and just accepted that is how some people I interact with communicate
I send some shorter messages to my wife since she prefers that, and I've also used it as a challenge to say more with fewer words to get my meaning across. I did make an exception for a previous friend of mine who had pretty bad ADHD and told me he found it hard parsing through my longer messages, so I just got used to hitting send with each sentence I typed to him
I feel that. Or maybe it's my back.
Chat doesn't scale, period. I'm in a small, closely knit business unit, and the Slack chats work pretty much exactly as you described for Slack's use of its own product.
When each team has no more than 10 people, it's easy to stay focused. My typical day doesn't involve more than 5 - 6 posts (some paragraph-length or longer), though at least one screen-sharing huddle will happen to quickly clarify something that requires synchronous communication.
There's a single "#random" channel for social noise.
Topical posts like "how do I" or "have you ever had this happen" get threaded, or else.
Important or recurringly useful posts get pinned in the channel.
Project-based channels are created for the project team and duration of the project, and are archived at the end.
[Yes, Slack supports search, seeing when someone is typing, attachments and images, etc.]
It's work, not "social media", nor a vast public cesspool (which I've seen with big Telegram and Discord groups), there are no single-line drive-by posts from trolls or noobs.
Great news! Of course the problem of the barrage of all these alerts and chats has been identified, and is being worked on by Silicon Valley. Their solution: an AI summary of your chats! Now you can stop interacting with humans and let an algorithm bother you all day. I noticed my phone started doing these summaries recently and I wanted to throw the thing out a window.
Is this why my phone keeps asking me to use Google gemini? I only got a phone this nice because I wanted to emulate GC and ps2 games while traveling. Otherwise it is just used for text, calls, and email. I get constantly alerted by it to all these new 'features' I don't care about and would love to be able to tell it I'm not interested. Gemini is basically being advertised to me above my emails every morning.
Did your phone ask you? Mine made the unilateral decision to switch me without my agreeing to anything. It was super obvious, too, the voice switched genders. Gemini doesn’t do any better a job of setting a timer than Google assistant does.
Makes me even more sad that Mycroft went under and my old one broke. I have high hopes for the voice control that Home Assistant has been working on, I just haven’t had the time to mess with it much.
I did finally figure it that I could switch it back , but man, was I mad. (Apps-> General:Assistant->All settings: Digital assistants from Google)
And neither of these services should be setting a timer for you in the first place. Your phone has a clock app, and that clock app has a timer. No internet, bots, or "AI" required.
Why? Sometimes your hands are occupied. Notably when cooking. Sometimes it’s just easier to say “set a timer for 30 minutes” than unlock your phone, open the app, scroll the minute wheel. Sometimes it’s not safe to do that with your phone.
When I'm cooking it's far easier to verbally ask for a timer or to set a reminder for six months in the future on my calendar. I want that feature. It just doesn't need to be Gemini.
I wish there was an offline open source voice assistant. I decided not to use any proprietary assistant because of privacy and not wanting to give
cybercountriescorporations my data so it can't be used against humanity. However I wish there was something I could use. I imagine it can be very handy in everyday life.The hardware in even budget phones these days is easily capable of it, so yeah I agree it’s a bit disappointing that there hasn’t been something like that offered yet
Making it so that my phone is no longer a platform for "use our AI" ads is probably the thing I've been enjoying most about Graphene.
I 100% agree, this thing is really stupid.
I explicitly tell my online (& real-life) friends to reply whenever they [want && have time && have the mood] to reply to my messages. Regardless of whether it takes hours, days, or even weeks. They're under no obligation to be on top of their phone to answer any of my messages and they should not be expected to do so.
Exactly. I sometimes read a response „sorry I couldn't reply earlier...” and I always write back that there's no obligation or deadline for a reply :P Do it whenever you want. I'm not angry for your „delay” because there is no delay.
I've been saying this forever: read receipts and typing indicators are anti-features. The thing that made instant messenger services in the 90s so appealing was that they freed you from social norms and simplified communication. But those two features are designed to enforce social norms and complicate communication. Instead of seeing a message and responding to it when you can, you now have the expectation to respond to it. We took a means of communication designed to be stress-free as much as possible, and made it to be stressful.
They probably don't deserve it, but I blame the current messaging economy as largely Google's fault. Google had a great chat system; it used XMPP so you could use any client to connect to it and you could even message people outside of Google's services because of the open design of the protocol. Then they discontinued it because they wanted to replace it with something proprietary. They did it about a hundred times before they decided to get in bed with the cell phone networks to capture the market more efficiently. But of course, Google is not the only company to do this. It's honestly astonishing how much money companies have invested into creating their own redundant messaging services.
I’m struck by what a different existence the author has from me.
I use slack a lot because I like it, but also because I’m obligated to because of a support contract that I am fulfilling. If I wanted to leave slack, I think demanding that they switch chat providers along with me would be a non-starter.
I use signal because my gym uses signal. It is the single place that all gym information is disseminated. It is how I know if classes are cancelled, when events are happening, and what’s going on in general. I also have a bunch of friends on signal, who I suppose I could just cut off contact from in the way the author did. It would be socially difficult but I accept that the author is basically choosing to be socially difficult.
I’m also on WhatsApp. This is mandatory for two reasons: this is also the exclusive communication channel for my other gym, with all the same reasons. The other is that I have children — WhatsApp is how school functions are organized and how parents communicate with other parents. I have an obligation to my children to communicate with the school, but also to not subject my children to being the kids with the weird parent that makes you install this weird encrypted messaging app if you want to reach them.
I’m on LINE because I have friends in Japan and that’s … how people talk. It’s like having a telephone number there.
I’m on discord for a number of reasons, but one which sticks out is it’s how moderation is coordinated for a few subreddits I’m on. I could, of course, stop being a moderator, but so long as I’m interested in that, it’s required as a condition of doing so.
It seems like I have a lot of communication requirements where I’m not really very important to the other participants, in that if I don’t subscribe to their preferred chat system, they won’t separately reach out to me. I’ll simply be left uninformed.
Yeah, what he's proposing is really unrealistic. Yes, I could in theory say to everyone I know "I'm deleting Whatsapp and will no longer look at SMS, if you want to reach me install signal".
Some of them probably would. Most wouldn't. The most likely outcome is that I just stop hearing from certain people who don't want to install yet another application to contact a single person, just like if someone I knew insisted I contact them on matrix or something, I just... wouldn't.
I had this fear when I was leaving Facebook & Whatsapp. I no longer have it. To be honest, I think I'm very happy afterwards because I realized I don't need so much information noise in my life. Have I lost contact with anyone? Of course I have. But I have other people around me (and more energy for them) and if I really need something from that person I will be able to contact them through friends.
Of course there are some contacts I have no idea how to reach. But at the same time I didn't have need for it. Neither have I time or energy to be up-to-date with everybody and keep in contact with everybody.
I had been trying for a long while to get friends to switch off of Facebook Messenger with me. I eventually made the plunge and just got rid of my Facebook account. People who wanted/needed to get in contact with me did and since that was the only social media I had (if you don't count Reddit/Tildes) I now have a lot more fun catching up with people as I have no idea what is happening in their life.
I had someone say "oh I posted pictures of my trip to Instagram" and I instead got them to take out their phone and show me as I don't have an account would rather have them explain it to me here and now because I wasn't going to make an account just to look at their private page.
I feel mostly like you do... I use certain apps to get info that I've decided that I want.
I think the point of the linked article is that (as you put it):
Isn't that horrible (according to the writer).
I agree with them, in principle, but also fomo....
It really amazes me how much people are paralyzed by FOMO. If you miss out on something, it's no big deal. There have been plenty of times when talking to my friends about what I missed were very obviously better than the experience I would have had if I had actually been part of it. A life ruled by FOMO is a life of inanity, IMHO.
Honestly, how do you find time for all that? I have some friends and family I constantly struggle to find time for calling/visiting them. I'm also engaged in few things, e.g. local hackerspace, RoR group, food not bombs, full time job and I feel like ditching as much services as I could was the key to have time and energy for things I've just mentioned. I kind of don't want to be involved in anything more, be it next new friend or next initiative, or next group chat, because I simply don't have means for anything more.
Well, I don’t have a standard sort of full time job which affords me a lot of flexibility in my schedule.
I suppose I’m the only one who periodically backs up my phone messages to my pc where ctrl f exists.
Its a habit I formed as soon as I got a smart phone that kept a chat history. I dont even know why I do it, I also still have the chat logs from when I used AIM in high school. My only gap is the flip phone period because those had no concept of chat history.
Data hoarding habits I guess.
I disagree with almost the entire thing.
Well, there’s your problem. I can’t think of any reason a normal person should be sitting in hundreds of group chats. I know people like this. They join a group chat / social media group for everything, never leave any of them, and feel swamped by irrelevant notifications. You can leave that newborn baby stuff group; your kid is a toddler now!
Assumptions of interpretations aside, if you’re ok forcing everyone you know to use Signal or call you, why aren’t you ok with the much less disruptive task of establishing that you read messages without immediate responses? I rarely respond right away unless it’s time sensitive, and I’m glad read receipts let the sender know I’ve at least seen it. Most people I’ve communicated with don’t have a problem with that, and I just let the permanently-online know what’s up in the beginning.
I don’t know what they mean by no search in chat. Sure, long term archival in a more structured form is best, but I’ve found plenty of things with search in WhatsApp, slack, etc. Maybe it’s harder when you’re in hundreds of irrelevant groups.
Also, you can turn on iCloud back ups for Messages and WhatsApp and I’m sure others.
Reminds me of a time at work where someone raised an issue at some company meeting with being overloaded with slack notifications. Turned out they had notifications enabled for every message in I believe every channel, and just hadn't turned it off (or hadn't known they could). Meanwhile I'm turning off every non-mention notification and sound effect as soon as possible and never have a problem with being overwhelmed by slack messages (which I do read all of anyway).
It's kind of a systemic failure that we need to disable so much to get a sane app, when the ideal (or the sane path) should be the default.
I have done many of the things suggested in the article but that is not enough for me. My addiction is too strong.
I use Lock Me Out on Android to block WhatsApp from myself. First I will check if there's anything I need from WhatsApp that day. Lots of companies and even government services use WhatsApp in Brazil. And then I block it. I am currently on a 15 hour block. I also turned my phone off and put it in a place that is annoying to reach. It feels so good. I am aware that not everyone has the privilege of being able to turn off their phones, though.
One thing that I've observed is that the longer I'm alone, the more often I check messaging apps. And it was also very helpful to observe it because I've started to try to spend more time with people and I clearly see that I need my messages less while spending time with others. However it's very difficult when you're e.g. working remotely and all your closest workmates are distributed all over the country.
I am fortunate that I don't have a need to be online as a virtue of my profession. If I had to be on my phone for work, it would be very difficult for me to reduce my screen time.
That is tangential to your comment, but I found that turning off my phone for anything below 4 hours doesn't do much for me. That is still enough time that I will be thinking about it, obsessing about what I am gonna do once I have it.
Ideally, 6 waking hours without my phone is the minimum for a complete "reboot". 12 to 24 hours is ideal. I really think my brain needs a reboot so I can fully appreciate nature, conversations, books, movies, TV shows, videogames, etc The smartphone, to me, is no longer a source of pleasure. It is an enemy I carry in my pocket. A portable energy vampire.
I keep thinking about the great times I had before I had a smartphone, how my mental life was richer and more fulfilling. I used to love taking long walks. Not because of the act of walking, but because my mind went to interesting places. I am trying to get that feeling again.
I was about to write something about this when I saw your post.
It sounds like your system is working for you already, and also my advice is iPhone-specific since that’s what I have experience with, so I’ll just add this comment here for passers-by:
I’ve recently been tinkering with putting my entire phone into “assistive access” mode, which I believe is primarily designed for elderly (reduced eyesight, reduced fine-motor control, simpler choices and pre-determined permissions) but it means I can put my phone into a specific mode which reduces a lot of the default apps down to much simpler versions of themselves, and also asks you to set individual apps and app permissions when you first set up the mode, and you can’t easily change them on the fly.
This means that with some initial setup work, I can turn my phone into a simple device which can sent and receive SMS and calls, access music, the camera, and photos... and that’s it. Nothing else. All other apps are not just hidden but are completely inaccessible in this mode.
When setting up, you individually add each app, and when you do the phone prompts you to individually set each app’s permission (eg “yes the Maps app is allowed to access my location but not allowed to access my contacts”) one by one until you’ve set it up how you want.
I think it’s quite powerful and while I haven’t fully committed to it myself, my brother has his phone completely locked down in this way (even asked me to set the assistive access passcode so he can’t make changes himself) and sure, there are some initial difficulties like not having a generic web browser, but his job is physical rather than information-based, so there’s nothing that his phone needs to be able to do other than SMS and calls when his manager is offering him extra shifts outside his usual schedule.
Cool!
Something like also exists for Android. Maybe it is possible to add a password but I am not sure. I already have Lock Me Out that does that and more so I'm not inclined to investigate.
Lock Me Out has Pomodoros. It will reguarly unlock every X minutes, and it will give me X minutes of unlocked access to whatever set. The distinguishing feature is that the unlock time can stay there waiting for me if I want, it won't run unless I start it. So after my lockout I know I have 5 minutes to use the phone even I am not looking at it when the lockout ends. That reduces my stress.