NEW YORK: Nothing makes me more acutely aware of the pain of an open-plan office than receiving a voice note. I stop everything and pick apart my morass of tangled headphone cords to listen. Perhaps the most transformational innovation in telecoms since texting, they are also the most controversial, both reviled and loved. “People who send voice notes are poison,” one thinkpiece argued.
While leaving a voice note is as simple as tapping the microphone where you’d normally type with the keyboard into WhatsApp or iMessage, listening to them can be awkward.
If you simply press play, anyone within earshot will hear. They make demands on your time and attention in a way a text message – readable anywhere, scannable in seconds – does not. “There’s an arrogance to them,” a friend said.
CAPTURING DRAMATIC STORIES IN WAYS THAT TEXTS CAN’T CONVEY
Yet like most new things I initially hate because they seem unnecessary when really they are just different, I’m a convert. Now when I walk to the shop, I can be heard building tension in a dramatic retelling of a horrendous date directly into my phone.
I am not alone. Since their launch in 2013, voice messages have steadily gained momentum. In March, WhatsApp said its two billion users sent seven billion voice messages a day, 7 per cent of all messages sent on the app.
There is an etiquette to voice texts, though not everyone has mastered the rules. They are inappropriate for dinner plans or sharing WiFi passwords. They can quickly resemble podcasts in their duration.
At first, I resented the self-indulgence, the lack of discipline. Yet there is more scope for storytelling when you don’t have to structure a perfect narrative arc with your thumbs. Parents in my Brooklyn neighbourhood record them while pushing prams, pressing rice crackers into their toddler’s palms. A voice note requires just one hand and no eyes for the busy and overburdened.
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