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Comment by aosaigh | Hacker News Reader

I find this response baffling (as well as some of the replies) and it illustrates to me how people treat their devices differently.

I see my phone as a way to connect with people rather than a way to simply communicate with people. The fact that I might have to listen to people pause and form their thoughts is a positive of voice notes, not a negative. I don't ask my friends to provide transcripts before I meet with them in-person to make sure my time isn't wasted when we speak.

I understand that if you are receiving work-related voice notes that are better suited for text then that would be frustrating, but hearing my friends speak is so much more preferable to just reading their words on the page.

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To each their own, I guess. I usually chat with multiple friends and do other things at the same time, so to have to stop everything to listen to a voice note of someone pausing and trying to figure out what to say feels like they're intentionally making me wait for their convenience.

Not familiar with Signal, does it require you to hold something down as it plays?

No, but if you leave the screen to read another message it stops (plus my brain can't process more speech if it's already listening, so I have to stop all speech-related tasks until your note is done).

> they're intentionally making me wait for their convenience

Lol, it's definitely possible to do this with text too "typing..."

I agree with the sentiment that hearing someone's voice creates a connection. However, I do not understand why people use voice messages instead of calling so you can actually talk to each other.

Why is that?

Asynchronous communication is easier for busy people, typically

Personally, I think that asynchronous communication is more efficient is a fallacy. In a verbal, synchronous conversation (a phone call), you can communicate extremely efficiently. Misunderstandings or doubts are detected and clarified instantly. On the other hand, finding a moment to listen to a voice message, listening to it, responding later etc. seems to take _much_ more time in total.

This is of course highly subjective. You might prefer the ability to choose the most suitable moments for communicating over communicating efficiently. My impression is, however, that the asynchronous type of conversation just stresses people out because the initial illusion of "just a quick message" turns into an endless back and forth of clarifications. I cannot imagine a meaningful communication on any level that does not require any kind of clarifying question, queries etc.; be it even just for expressing empathy or confirmation.

I wonder if there is any linguistic research on verbal asynchronous communication to make the matter less subjective.

> In a verbal, synchronous conversation (a phone call), you can communicate extremely efficiently. Misunderstandings or doubts are detected and clarified instantly.

My anxious brain might just work differently here, but I’ve found that I communicate way more efficiently if I have a minute or two to turn something over in my head before I need to respond.

Even if I don’t grok it immediately, my clarifying questions will usually be much better because my mind has had time to work through the possible second-order effects of whatever we’re discussing without - and this is key - the social pressure of making someone sit and wait while you think.

> asynchronous communication is more efficient is a fallacy

Nobody said it is efficient. It's good for certain situations. People are doing various things throughout the day and they don't always have time to hop on a call.

But of course, when both parties are completely free and asynchronous communication hits a bottleneck, you can easily switch to synchronous.

True.

I didn't answer three phone calls and ignored like 10 messages from a co-worker from different department since yesterday afternoon.

Today afternoon I finally received an email from him where he told me that he'll do exactly that I suggested in Jira ticket comment two days ago, and that my further involvement is not needed.

I guess if I answered any of these communication attempts, we would still be discussing the solution to a problem that is already known for more than two days now.

I saw a stat from meta saying that 7B audio messages are sent daily via whatsapp. Is this a big internationally? How is this used? Naive me thinks its how old people use chat.

I believe it's region-specific. In Italy, in my experience, most teens communicate through voice messages (citation needed :-) ).

For me it's the asynchronous nature. You can essentially have a conversation throughout the day (or over the course of a few days) without the pressure of having to organise a call at a particular time that works for both.

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