Why I hate texting, and why I love voice memos.

Texting is this weird form of communication that leads people to believe that it’s okay to reach out or ignore me whenever you want to.

When instant messaging first came about, people used it as intended. You’d see who was active in a chat room and you’d message them. The crazy part is that they would most likely instantly respond. Partially because they didn’t want to be rude, but also because instant messaging was still considered innovative. You didn’t have to call and have a formal conversation. 

Now it’s changed. People don’t want to text you back instantaneously. Most people don’t respond right away unless it’s urgent.

Sometimes people will read your message, decide that they just don’t want to think about it and ignore you. Other times people respond to your message in their head — but for whatever reason still don’t text you back.

This has become the accepted culture. Many see it as lame to text back right away. Some people don’t want you to think that they’re constantly on their phones. They have a life and that’s why they’re not texting you back. 

The other side to texting is that texts are usually messages of unimportance. They’re usually simple little indulgences that shouldn’t bother me, and that I should respond to easily. But I should be allowed to ignore the outside world, including any text messages. Sometimes, I want to spend a night by myself not talking to anyone.

I mean, if you needed to talk to me, you’d call me, right?

Wrong. Texting is the primary form of communication for most people of our generation. I’ve had some friends talk to me constantly over text, and when we got together we had nothing to talk about. This is also partly because texting has taken away some of our in-person social skills.

For this reason, I’ve started ignoring texts. I’ll get an invitation to hang out with someone and because I can foresee all the awkward lulls in conversation, I choose to ignore it. Because I know I can. I can just make some excuse about how I didn’t see your text or I was busy.

But how do we solve this problem? It’s not fair to just ignore everyone, but it’s also not fair to make yourself constantly available to people.

Enter voice memos. 

They’re the perfect bridge between texting and calling. It’s instantaneous in the way text messaging is, but it doesn’t force you to talk to me right at this very moment. 

I can tell you about my day or I can make a plan with you, and all while speaking instead of having to text out a long and awkward paragraph where I only use commas because I fear you’ll think I’m being rude if I use a period. 

There’s also no need to continue the conversation when you use voice memos. Nobody says “I’ll talk to you later” when they’re texting because it’s awkward but in a voice memo a simple “that’s it for now” at the end can finalize the message. 

I like voice memos because it brings us back to a more normal flow of communication. I’ll send a memo to a distant friend to catch her up on my life and hear about hers without having to sit down and type out text messages for half an hour.

Regardless of the subject matter, voice memos are easier, less overwhelming and are the superior form of communication.