> Actively processing voice on someone else's tempo over a crappy mic often leads to mistakes
On the flipside, text-only conversation often simply doesn't include that nuance at all. I can't count the number of times I've completely misunderstood someone's tone over text when it would have been blindingly obvious over voice. Key and Peele even did a skit about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naleynXS7yo
Voice and text have different strengths and weaknesses as communications media. Both are appropriate in different situations. I will admit, however, to being somewhat "allergic" (as another commenter put it) to voice, probably to an unreasonable extent, because I selfishly value my ability to focus on what I'm doing right now instead of giving it to someone else for a couple of minutes.
But at the same time, I've often found that someone older who didn't grow up with easy text-based communication will use a phone call when a text would have been more than sufficient, and this can be quite irritating at times. I suspect it's in reaction to this that younger people tend to avoid voice communication even when it would probably be a better choice.
> I suspect it's in reaction to this that younger people tend to avoid voice communication even when it would probably be a better choice.
The other problem is that "voice" is social interaction--text isn't.
So many people are stunned when I can call up someone professionally and ask for a favor and they're happy to oblige. To which my response is generally: "When was the last time you spent friendly time talking to your people?"
People are normally starved for interaction with people who give them friendliness and even a modicum of respect (Generation Text in particular is really bad about snark--newsflash: once you become 25 years old, only your buds think snark is funny--a lot of professionals just find it annoying. Funnily enough, if you're really good at returning snark, Generation Text finds it equally annoying.). Covid has made that hellaciously worse--people desperately want to bend my ear for an hour or more when I have a 5 minute request. And I'm normally happy to let them.
I don't regard this as a "waste of time" as so many in Generation Text do.
On the flipside, text-only conversation often simply doesn't include that nuance at all. I can't count the number of times I've completely misunderstood someone's tone over text when it would have been blindingly obvious over voice. Key and Peele even did a skit about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naleynXS7yo
Voice and text have different strengths and weaknesses as communications media. Both are appropriate in different situations. I will admit, however, to being somewhat "allergic" (as another commenter put it) to voice, probably to an unreasonable extent, because I selfishly value my ability to focus on what I'm doing right now instead of giving it to someone else for a couple of minutes.
But at the same time, I've often found that someone older who didn't grow up with easy text-based communication will use a phone call when a text would have been more than sufficient, and this can be quite irritating at times. I suspect it's in reaction to this that younger people tend to avoid voice communication even when it would probably be a better choice.