Ping! My phone vibrates with a message from a new friend. A mild spike of dopamine dissipates on seeing she’s left me a WhatsApp voice note. However, it’s short and, hopefully, it’s a one-off.
I reply with a text message, hoping she’ll register the switch in communications. Ping! Oh no. She’s a voice-noter. She’s a bloody voice-noter. And this one is well over two minutes long and I don’t know her very well, so I’m going to have to listen to the whole thing without speeding it up. It’s an invitation to dinner, but this does nothing to quell my mounting frustration and irrational thoughts of disengaging myself from this nascent friendship.
‘Yes great thanks,’ I reply by text, without – pointedly – an ‘X’.
Miles Davis declared ‘the greatest sound in the world is the human voice’ – but then he never had to wade through ten minutes of rambling internal monologue in response to a text enquiring: ‘And what would my godson like for his birthday?’
Since WhatsApp introduced the voice note in 2013, allowing users to send short audio messages, their use has grown exponentially. Around 200 million voice notes are sent every month on the platform. Twitter and Messenger have introduced voice note features, as have dating apps Hinge, Bumble and Happn.
Voice notes are quick and convenient – for the sender. For the recipient, unless the note adheres to a few strict rules, they are ghastly things to negotiate
Adopted by twenty-something Gen Z-ers and millennials who loathe phone calls, apparently finding them time-consuming and awkward, their use has spread, regrettably, to older generations. In a worrying development, I have even received one from a PR.
Voice notes are quick and convenient – for the sender. For the recipient, unless the note adheres to a few strict rules, they are ghastly things to negotiate. Less a voice note, more an unedited podcast. If a phone ringing represents a microaggression to a millennial, then a voice note is a hate crime to xennials like me.
I confess to sending a few myself in the early days. Then a waspish friend replied (by voice note), exclaiming: ‘DARLING, how EXCITING! For a moment I felt just like DOLLY ALDERTON, or someone young and cool!’ I got the message. Others haven’t.
My new friend’s husband leaves a sermon of several minutes. I ignore it, hoping he’ll get the message and send a pithy and succinct follow-up text, or even call. He doesn’t. It sits there, festering in my inbox like a dog turd on the drawing room carpet.
As I am coming out of the food hall with a decent bottle of burgundy and some potted paperwhites to take to dinner, I crumble and listen to it. He’s cancelling; they’ve all gone down with suspected Covid.
I’ve read that leaving voice notes is a sign of narcissism. I’m not sure that’s always true – some of my closest friends and some jolly decent coves have been seduced by the ease of the voice note. But what voice notes do convey is: ‘My time is more valuable than yours.’ To think that anyone has the time or inclination to listen to several minutes of wittering about how they were going to catch such-and-such a train, but then realised it would be easier to drive, only to find that the A47 was closed… well, that does seem indicative of an ego issue or two.
Where we live there is scant 4G, so away from the house wifi, there is the double irritation of struggling to download a voice note that you didn’t want, didn’t solicit and don’t even want to listen to.
A straw poll of like-minded friends has established the only circumstances in which voice notes are acceptable:
1) If you’re driving or rushing and can’t text but the message is time-critical. (However the worst offender in my contacts now leaves me voice notes starting with: ‘I’m driving, so it’s okay!’ NB: the voice note must not last for the entirety of your drive.)
2) If you’re going on a date and want to elicit a voice note from a guy to check that he doesn’t have a funny voice before you meet him.
3) If you are doing an impression of someone and an accent is vital.
4) None should ever be longer than a minute and ideally 25 seconds max and contain either point (3), some bitchy gossip or a great gag.
How to deal with inveterate voice-noters is another matter. I have changed my WhatsApp status to ‘Never leave me voice notes’, but to no avail. You can try ignoring them, but then risk missing out on vital information – like the tarts and vicars theme for the party being called off.
There is one solution. I’ve flirted with abandoning my smartphone for a while. Quite apart from the hours I’ll gain without scrolling through Instagram and Facebook, it will ensure that I never need to engage – or not – with another voice note. Top of my 2023 wishlist is a shiny Nokia brick. It’s time to take back control.
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