Hit record, start talking

Long audio messages as a way to grow human connections

I get in my car for the drive into town. My friend David has kindly given me a phone holder so that I can mount my phone in the unused CD port of my stereo.

I was thinking about Jen so I pulled her up on Signal. To the right of the chat entry box is a microphone. I pushed and slid upwards and it started to record .

Hey Jen. How’s your day? I am going out to some shade tree mechanic that is going to put on those tires I bought online. I hope this works out. Not sure if it is worth the hundred bucks I saved or not. Thanks for that article about the political strategists. I sent you a quote from that I liked. Did you get that? What worked for you in that article? Man the sunrise right now. I expect you are not up but it is something else. Hope you and your hubby are comfy this morning. Starting to feel a chill coming on.

I read Leo’s wonderful account of Coffee Klatch last week. His husband is putting a lot of effort into establishing in person social time for their community. I was thinking about that as I sent Jen that message. We need those deep, in person opportunities, but they are not always available. Our hand held, highly networked tech has brought long audio messages into how I maintain and build relationships. I am finding these audio messages to be another path to personal connections.

Coffee Klatch

For one thing, they are convenient to create and keep conversations going. I have always over-tasked myself and feel a need to do two things at once whenever possible. The high friction technology of our world has aggravated my bad habit for multi-tasking. Now, when I am cleaning the kitchen as the kettle heats up while the large scale cloud service process is running that I kicked off for work and the dogs are eating their breakfast, I can also occupy myself by making a recording to someone. They are generally three minutes long, though my friend in the remote woods and I can ramble for half an hour or more about poets and elemental forces.

When they get the notification, my friend can wait until they have windshield time or coffee-making time or some other moment to listen. Its an optimal laundry folding accompaniment.

These are relationships that have developed the habit of the audio recording, often because we adopted the non-profit Signal as our communications platform.

I favor Signal because it is confidential and cross platform. It is not owned by the manufacturer of one phone or another and works pretty seamlessly. I can send high quality photo and video to anyone also using Signal. And, it is not owned by an oligarch or a highly leveraged start-up who is looking for ways to make money off what they know about me, which dooms every application¹ to enshittification.²

But now, with RCS deployed to many phone providers, the audio message capability is available to people using their default texting application, regardless of whether the recipient is holding an Apple or Android device.

Maybe a little video, too

My friend David and I talk just about every day. Sometimes several times a day. We live a couple hundred miles apart and both have very busy lives, but I get to stay caught up on his life.

We don’t talk at the same time, though.

David and I use Marco Polo, which includes video. Most of the time though, the video is just our talking heads. Sometimes a sunset or one of our dogs’ goofy faces. He probably gave me that car phone holder because he was tired of watching video of me where the phone tumbled to the floorboards from some precarious perch.

David and I have supported each other through hard times, challenged each other, and even had pretty rough arguments. Mostly, though, we are letting each other know what is going on in our day-to-day lives.

In the world we find ourselves, technology keeps pointing out ways that it isolates us. One of the things David and I “talk” about is how to engage with people we disagree with. We have compared notes about how online “debates” go. We agree that it feels like a waste of time to try to engage in the chat threads of a social media post, regardless of how right you are and how wrong the other person’s statement is.

The statement quickly gets collapsed into the very person. Their statements are read with the most negative connotation. Anger spirals. You have all experienced this, I don’t need to go into the tragedy of it. The only question is to what extent is it responsible for all these divides that should be interchanges.

Text, we are surprised to realize, dehumanizes us when deployed poorly. When our vocal nuance is stripped away, we seem to lose some of those keys to relating that is arguably the massive evolutionary advantage that homo sapiens developed; holding together cooperative social groups. Text has its place and power, but it is not the human voice.

I was thinking about writing this piece and asked my sweetheart what works for her about audio messages. She pointed out that we don’t feel rushed or expect to be interrupted. We can let our thoughts naturally unfold. The non-textual communications include pauses. Sometimes when I am struggling my audio messages those pauses are excruciatingly long. That is a part of the message; that I am struggling to bring my thoughts to words.

Bringing more of your humanity to our outreach

Perhaps this habit will spread.

My social media posts (do feel free to look me up on Facebook, Instagram, or BlueSky. Prod me to be on Mastodon rarely spread widely. I try hard to take the algorithm’s lack of interest in me personally. But recently a politically-inspired video I made got a larger reach.

yolerbarker

A post shared by @yolerbarker

A friendly conservative guy, frustrated like I am with the divides in our nation, reached out. Now he and I are using the audio feature in our shared social media platform to learn about each other’s lives and beliefs. I have come to really treasure conversations with him and look forward to where it will take us.

1. Most recently this very platform Substack which I am using to reach you]

2. I don’t should on people much, but here I will: You should stop using WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger. Just tell all those people to get a hold of you on Signal.