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Comment by biztos | Hacker News Reader

The WhatsApp voice message is very common in Spain. I always find it jarring when I'm there, mostly because I'm not used to it, but also because it seems to defeat the purpose of the messaging app: I can't listen to your voice message on the bus, for instance.

It's so normalized there that I wonder whether this is a particularly Spanish habit. Maybe there are a bunch of countries where people routinely leave each other voice recordings on WhatsApp/Messenger/etc, and I just haven't been to them yet.

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I used to answer this with "I'm not listening to that, not even my parents send me voice messages" but it was called uncivil by some people, so now I just say "I can't listen to that right now" and never listen, eventually ppl send a text message.

Modern problems require modern solutions.

Same here in Uruguay but only for certain interactions (like contractors). Thankfully there’s a transcription feature that catches 90% of the message generally.

Maybe it's a cultural thing in the Spanish speaking world? Had the same experience in Colombia.

The way I handle those, especially with the people who leave me 8 minute long voice notes, is to have WhatsApp transcribe the voice note for me. Or, if that’s not possible, either ignore the voice note or listen to it at 2x speed.

I was surprised WhatsApp didn't give me a "transcribe" button (as recently as yesterday). Seems like it'd be pretty easy to implement that.

I don’t have a transcribe button in the Windows app, but my Android phone has a transcribe button.

I can't understand why whatsapp does not provide tgat out of the box. Telegram has it on the paid plan, which is nit ideal but at least somewhat out of the box solution.

No thanks. If the sender wants to avoid typing then he should use the transcribe function and take responsibility for any errors in it.

Are the messages in Spanish or English?

Both: English messages sent to me, and I also see my friends do it in Spanish for messages sent to other people.

It's a habit in specific countries, China is one in my experience.

It’s funny to me how I judge some cultural aspects as being worse. Of course it’s my own cultural bias, but I think the following things are “bad” for cultures to do:

1) long voice memos over succinctly typed notes

2) not forming lines/queues and just mobbing the train/shop/etc

3) habitually late or not on time

> 2) not forming lines/queues and just mobbing the train/shop/etc

Also even queueing can have different norms. Here people rush to a newly opened supermarket checkout like their life depended on it. I feel that should be a lot less sociably acceptable than it is, especially for those with overfilled carts that will add huge delays for anyone behind them.

Was just in south America, everyone uses it.

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