5d ago

I’m not ignoring your message – I’m overwhelmed by the tyranny of being reachable

www.theguardian.com I’m not ignoring your message – I’m overwhelmed by the tyranny of being reachable | Miski Omar

In today’s culture, responsiveness is a proxy for care. But being in constant rotation, always logging into another version of myself? I’m tired

A friend messaged me the other day. I saw it. I didn’t reply. A week later, I finally responded with the classic: Sorry for the late reply, just got to this.
She called me out. You didn’t just get to this, she said. I saw the double ticks.
Damn. She was right. I’d opened it. I’d registered it. But I’d also shelved it. It needed a proper reply, and at that moment, I wasn’t equipped.
Maybe it got lost between revisiting pictures from 2016 and the reminder I set to cancel my Nibble app 7-day trial on day 6. Maybe I got a call? Perhaps I’d wanted to sink back into that Substack article about reclaiming attention, ironically while still on social media. Maybe I was working one of the four jobs I need to survive under capitalism’s boot heel. Maybe I was doing nothing?
Does free time now equal availability?
I get a ping from the family group chat, which doubles as an IT helpdesk for my mum. My best friend just FaceTimed me about a White Lotus episode, and another left a voice note crying about a possible diagnosis. All this, lodged between videos of cats and genocide.
The boundaries between reception and response have collapsed.

43 comments

In general, I disable the ability of getting a 'read receipt' if at all possible. In the case of some rare platforms that don't allow this; I also warn people that "Seeing a 'read receipt' indicator does not mean I was available to reply.
In general; people who hang on to this little indicator are also committing a larger social faux pas, and you should { [(yellow/red) flag] / address / handle } it accordingly based on your relationship to that person, your goals and the situation.
Whether that means 'calling them out' or kindly explaining what it actually means or explaining your approach to communications; the behavior of expecting something to happen on the receipt of a read receipt needs to be discouraged in my personal opinion.

I recently disabled any and all notifications on my phone except calls, SMS, and emergency alerts. No more social media bullshit telling me I got a new like, no more useless groupchats blowing up my phone, no more ad emails with deceptively important sounding subjects. Unless I'm checking manually of course - which I do once or twice a day. Other than that it's pure bliss all day every day. If you can I urge you to try it too.

You didn’t just get to this, she said. I saw the double ticks. Damn. She was right.
Not to take away from the general message but that's exactly why I never enable read receipts.

The key lesson to learn from this:
Be kind and understanding when you feel ignored, it's difficult but it's important to have the self confidence to truly accept that it's not you, they're probably just busy with a million life things.
- What about if you're kind, but don't have the self confidence to think it's not you? What then?
  
  Then you need to work on your self confidence.

I let everyone know:
Text messages are for asynchronous communication. That’s literally what they’re designed for. I will not communicate over texts synchronously.
I will respond to texts within 2 days usually. Do not expect an immediate response.
If you need me immediately or within short order, call me.
If you call me for non-urgent matters that could have been handled over text, I might not pick up the phone right away. The boy who cried wolf, and all that.
I do not always have my phone on me 24/7. Sometimes I am untethered. I return calls far more quickly than I respond to texts, because I assume a call is more important than a text. It had better be.
If you call and I don’t pick up, leave a voicemail. If you don’t leave a voicemail, I assume it wasn’t important.
- If you don’t leave a voicemail, I assume it wasn’t important.
  I get asked sometimes when I don't leave a voicemail why I didn't. It's because I don't really care if you call back. I called because of something urgent, but not important. Just text me instead.
- If you call and I don’t pick up, leave a voicemail. If you don’t leave a voicemail, I assume it wasn’t important
  this a thousand times. IDK when people decided to not use the voicemail anymore.
  But to be honest I make it more radical and not even return all calls. because. priority 1 - call, not answered but with a voicemail
  priority 2 - unanswered call but a message sent afterwards.
  priority 3 - message only.
  an unanswered call on my side and no further information is for me simply to forget about it.
  
  Voicemail is annoying. Please never leave me a voicemail. Just text me.
- Ew, calling? No thanks.
- I tell people I have a 24 hour response window. Barring exceptional circumstances, I'll get back to a message within 24 hours. Often faster, but that's not guaranteed.

If the technical boundary collapsed, put a human-made boundary in its place. You have the right to have some peace of mind and quiet; make yourself unavailable for at least a good chunk of the day, and make sure your folks know you're unavailable. And why.
That's how I remain sane.
- Ooooo, look at mr. "I'm sane" over here!
  jk. good advice.
  
  Ooooo, look at mr. “I’m sane” over here!
  I am sane. I SWEAR I AM SANE! /me grabs the kitchen knife CAN'T YOU SEE IT? I'M SANER THAN EVERYONE ELSE HERE!!!!
  [I couldn't help but play along with the joke, sorry.]

This is so relatable.... The one good thing about pre-internet is that you can really just be away and don't need to respond to anyone.
- Someone didn't grow up with MSN and other messengers, and 'away' statuses.

I pay for cell service so I can reach you, not so you can reach me.
- nice take on this

In addition to the great tips here, I say, turn off as many notifications as possible. The only thing I get immediately are calls, SMS, and Slack+work email during office hours. Like many others said, if it's important, people will call me. Did I miss the message my brother sent the family group chat about his wife being pregnant? Yes, for two days, until he called me. I still found out months before the due date, and my family had a laugh about it. I feel like a fear of missing out is also a big part of these issues, and I think we should try to tell ourselves more that it's okay, important even, to not keep up with everything all the time.

My partner is my emergency contact point. If you don't have their number, it means that there's no case in which your emergency is my problem. Everything else is on an "I'll get to it if and when I get to it" basis.
On an unrelated note, I don't have a large circle of friends. :P

When you don't have a smartphone this is not much of an issue.
- It's 2025; if you're gonna make a comment like that, descend from thy perch and guide us down the beaten-off path. Do I go to Samsung and ask for a flip phone? I know they have one they would l🤑ve to sell me. Are you also someone who thinks I should avoid 5G? Do you have a dumb phone make/model you recommend? Is disconnecting from society the only way? Do you only talk via pigeon or smoke during solstice or blót?
  
  KT-TOT is close. I actually do have a smartphone that I only use for work stuff since companies now usually do bring your own device with phones. it only has work stuff and I keep it off mostly unless im working in an on call position and am on call. I use voip on it with textnow as a backup. Otherwise I use my laptop with voip. Having any type of phone all the time that someone can text or call you at any time leaves you with the issue the OP has. Have to turn it off and actually be unreachable at times. Considering how often im on my laptop im still reachable pretty darn often. I also have a brother who lets me and my other brother know if extended family stuff shows up on facebook. Like weddings and funerals and such. I do try and check facebook once a week as my condo has a group and the aforementioned family stuff but like funerals are tricky as they can happen in less than a week of death with my family.
  
  Idk maybe they just use their laptop/desktop for a lot of stuff and leave portable instant communication for important things?

Sigh Guardian doesn't let me sign up for their newsletter on a mailbox.org account, shame, was a nice article.
- What!? Why on earth would that matter?
  
  Not the first time for me. For example, on the mobilism (apk piracy) forum, only known mail providers are accepted (e.g. gmail)

It would be helpful if my phone had a built in snooze function. Sometimes I get a text and I want to snooze it for an hour. Just dismiss the notification and remind me later.
mostly I avoid a lot of the big drains (social media, other than lemmy) and tell people I'll get back to them within 24 hours.
- My Galaxy S21 has that, there's a button to dismiss a notification and show it again in X minutes/hours.
- If you have an iPhone, you can use the “scheduled summary” feature to delay notification delivery
- My pixel lets me snooze notifications up to 2 hours if I expand them. Maybe yours has something like that?
  
  I found a setting that alleged to enable snoozing, but it doesn't seem to work. This is an older android phone though.
- You know you can just turn off notifications for apps you don't want spamming you.
  
  Yes, I am very aggressive about turning off notifications. The use case I had in mind is texts from friends, and I don't want to turn those off. Like someone texts me something that requires thought or online connectivity, but I'm on the subway or at a concert. I want to snooze the message so it'll remind me in a couple hours.
  Sometimes for really important stuff I'll set a timer myself, but that's more steps than if the OS just had a "remind me later" built in.

Zucc hates this one simple trick: switch to Signal and quit WhatsApp. I ain't done so, but if I did, I sure would have way less messages. Not by a lot, given I barely maintain regular chats in WhatsApp. But the chances would be slimmer, given barely anyone's on Signal

It’s still your fault for lying in the first place.
- While you are correct, and the author deserves to be called out on their behavior, the context of the entire article is around how they are struggling with being bombarded with things taking up their attention and time. This response is seriously lacking in any compassion for the author's struggle and more or less ignores the entire point of the article in order. Beehaw isn't the place for one-liner gotchas. Please try to engage with the content if you're going to comment.
- "Just got to this" doesn't really seem like a lie to me. If they said "just read this", that would be a lie, but "just got to this" implies they didn't have time to reply/think about it, without commenting on whether they read it. Honestly to me "just got to this" implies it's been on their to-do list but they didn't get around to it until now. If they hadn't read it at all saying "just got this" or "just read this" would make more sense.
- No one is entitled to anyone one else’s time or energy. If you message me, I’ll respond when it’s convenient for me.

43 comments