OPINION
GUEST ESSAY

By Erica Dhawan

It was a Tuesday night. In my apartment, I was doing three things at
once -- packing for a short business trip, trying to get dinner on the
table for my family and taking turns with my husband to calm a crying
baby. Behind me, one work Slack alert after another dinged from my
laptop. I ignored them all. During dinner, a text popped up on my
phone. "Where are u????" asked my colleague.

I wanted to scream. Instead, I didn't reply to the text. This wasn't
the first time I'd ignored a digital summons, and it wouldn't be the
last. I didn't mean to be disrespectful or malicious -- but at the
same time I knew what I wanted my silence to communicate: This is not
a priority for me right now. You are not my priority.

Ignoring messages is frowned upon in these always-on times. At its
most egregious, dropping out of communication is condemned as
"ghosting," which, in the years since the term became widespread, has
become a deadly sin of digital communications.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/21/opinion/culture/ghosting-work-digital-overload.html

***** Commentary *****

My son and his friends long ago stopped answering voice-mail messages:
having grown up with the always-on cellular world, they have made a
choice to take a step back, It isn't magic, or mysterious, or
otherwise special to him: it's just another PITA.

My Brother-In-Law's voice mail greeting warns callers that he checks
messages only once or twice a week, and it reminds callers that
they've alredy left the most important info (their phone number and
the time of their call), and he asks them to just hang up and wait for
him to call them back.

We Baby Boomers have been early adapters of many technologies: color
TV, direct dial long-distance, fast-food restaurants, CLASS features,
24-hour news and weather broadcasts, and then the Internet, and cell
phones, and a presumed obligation to use them whenever they need our
attention.

Television producers, for years now, have been making immense sums of
money by having the actors on TV *ALWAYS* answer every cellphone call,
as soon as the phone rings. This shilling became so obvious that it
was breaking the dramatic continuity of the shows, so now the quick
hand jerk reactions when a cellphone rings are being parenthesized by
glances at the phone and "gotta take this" excuses. None over the
actors ever says "I can ignore this," or "I don't know who that is,"
or "He's a jerk, I'll ignore this." They *ALWAYS* answer every call,
no matter what their producers put in the script to try to maintain
dramatic continuity. This is not "product placement" advertising -
this "Lifestyle Leadership" propaganda. Think about it: important,
decisive, well-liked, and pretty people *ALWAYS* answer their cell
calls. The Tall White Guy on TV told me so.

WE are coming to the nth inflection point in the history of electronic
communication: I don't know how many times the graph hit a knee before
now, but I hope the latest bend is the last, as ordinary people decide
that they will take back the most important part of their lives: the
right that they gave away as children, sold too cheaply as
adolescents, and now have come to value: the right to be left alone.

Bill Horne

--
(Please remove QRM from my email address to write to me directly)