A bit of a deviation from politics today, which I hope you’ll indulge. Our regular programming will resume this weekend.
An old friend messaged me on Facebook yesterday to follow-up on a message he sent me on LinkedIn last week (which I didn’t see, and thus never replied to). My LinkedIn is probably the most neglected of the social media apps I use: I log in every couple of months to accept whatever connection requests are there and then forget about it. (Why I still have an account, I have no idea).
Facebook Messenger is a better way to get in touch with me, but only slightly. I get messages from strangers and unsolicited invitations to groups which make me less inclined to keep checking the inbox. This invariably means I miss out on messages from friends and family.
Earlier this week, another acquaintance sent me a Twitter direct message and a text message to follow-up on an email sent to me a day prior, which I hadn’t gotten around to yet.
Suffice to say, I’m feeling a platform overload as of late. It’s hard enough to stay on top of the volume of messages with which we’re bombarded on a given day. It is downright exhausting to do it on so many different platforms.
It’s embarrassing to count up how many messaging channels there are in my life.
My personal Facebook page, my work Facebook page, Twitter and Instagram direct messages, my neglected LinkedIn, texts, email, Signal, WhatsApp, and Slack – it’s a wonder I get anything done at all.
Oh, I have six email addresses and am in seven Slack groups, by the way.
If I had it my way, all correspondence would come by email, where I have developed an imperfect, but reliable, system for triaging and replying. Instead, messages come in from pretty much everywhere. In general, I think people presume others rely on the same platforms they do. I don’t use Instagram for anything work-related, but I still get regular DMs there from people pitching stories or commenting on things I’ve posted elsewhere.
I’m guilty of this too. My preference for email means I use it as my go-to when reaching out to others. For some people, however, email is a blackhole and I’d have been better off sending a text or a Twitter DM.
I’ve spoken to other young professionals about this and the multiplication of inboxes seems to be a common problem for which there is no easy solution.
The obvious solution – just not using all the platforms – isn’t as easy as it sounds.
As an independent journalist, I use social media not only to share my work, but also to keep my finger on the pulse of the issues about which I write. I’m a member of a couple of groups that use Signal to communicate. WhatsApp is the primary platform for a client of mine. Another client of mine operates almost entirely on Slack.
Platform fluidity is an inevitable byproduct of the gig economy, in which people must adapt to others’ workflows rather than creating one for themselves.
Thirteen years ago, Google piloted a product called Google Wave, which included among its features something of a unified inbox for different platforms. For some reason, it never caught on. I wonder if the company would have better luck today with the proliferation of more and more platforms.
By necessity, I just don’t check some platforms as often as others. If you send me a Facebook message or a Twitter DM I may or may not see it in a timely manner. If you send me a text message, I’ll probably see it immediately, but if I can’t respond right away I may not remember to revisit it.
This problem is no doubt exacerbated by the public-facing nature of my work. I love hearing from people. I receive invaluable information and feedback in my inbox – erm, inboxes.
But corresponding is a part of my job, not the totality of it.
Novelist Neal Stephenson penned a great piece a while back about why he’s a “bad correspondent.”
“There is little to nothing that I can offer readers above and beyond what appears in my published writings,” Stephenson wrote. “It follows that I should devote all my efforts to writing more material for publication, rather than spending a few minutes here, a day there, answering e-mails or going to conferences.”
Stephenson and I are not exactly in the same line of work – I don’t think I could be all that effective in what I do I treated communication as only a one-way street. Moreover, I wouldn’t enjoy it as much.
Even so, the sentiment resonates.
The problem is not people trying to get in touch. It’s that there are just too many ways to do so.
If I haven’t gotten back to you, I might be in a different inbox – it’s not personal.
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Oh how I sympathize. I am retired, don’t Tic Toc, SnapChat or Signal. Just text, Messenger and Facebook with a few friends. Still overwhelmed with birthday notices, ads for diet plans and invitations to perfect a golf game I gave up 5 years ago when my back gave out and my usual crappy scores were getting worse, I am leaning towards radio silence and reading this wonderful new book by a local writer on the truckers’ convoy.