Instant messaging peeves
In a bit of a mood today so here’s my chat annoyance list.
When status says “not available” or “do not disturb.” I have never understood this. If you are using a chat application but not accepting messages what’s the point? Log off.
“I just e-mailed you.” Yes, thank you I see your note sitting right here in my inbox. This is only slightly less annoying than people who call you to let you know that they’ve e-mailed you right after clicking send. E-mail is asynchronous, people. Look it up.
“On the phone” or, worse, “otp.” Yes, that’s why I chose to ping you instead of ring you. And if you can’t do two things at once, why are you on chat? IM isn’t for uni-taskers.
When people treat IM like an e-mail. “Dear John, I am writing you to follow up on the matter we discussed … [18 lines later] … Sincerely, Mary.” Nice selection of medium there, Mary.
“Are you using [insert app here]?” This would be like asking people if they are using Outlook before sending an e-mail. Who cares?
12:51 PM | Mary: you there? | |
12:51 PM | John: yes | |
1:47 PM | Mary: just seeing if you are around |
And the obverse:
2:15 PM | Mary: there john? | |
2:15 PM | Mary: hello?????? |
When you know someone is typing (“Mary is typing …”) and it takes forever. People, put down the Strunk and White and hit return. Chat. Not oration.
OK, all done. Damn you, Mary.
2 Responses to “Instant messaging peeves”
Hi, I’m John Tolva!
The Ampcamper
Views From The Tank
Gravid With Decay
Short recommendations, reviews, and cautionary tales about horror in fiction (mostly movies). Read through the archives and subscribe here.
Marginalia
-
Ring the bell to let the fish pass through the boat lock in Utrecht. This is what the Internet was made for.
-
"It seems to me that there is a fundamental discrepancy between the way readers interact with books and the way the hack-your-brain tech community does."
-
I'd watch a modern day Western flick based on this.
-
This fossil is 100 yards from my old house. A welcome friend on the walk to/from the L. (But it's a squirrel impression!)
-
How do you make sense of a world sloshing around in AI-generated content? The liberal arts.
-
Estimating the size of YouTube by "drunk dialing" URL strings.
-
Is it urban form itself that makes ghosts or the lack of community?
-
If they can pull this off in Phoenix, it can be done anywhere.
-
"Our universe's history, fossilized in light."
-
Thinking like Africa is a solution.
-
The hack that made my summer camper trip possible.
-
Live air traffic audio from the world's airports overlaid on ambient tunes.
-
See where any living thing exists in a beautiful interactive taxonomy visualization.
-
Flipping between channels of my childhood.
-
More impressive than tool-usage.
-
Type at work in the real world.
-
You're probably not prepared for how enthralling this is.
-
Anti-bird spikes as nest material, keeping other birds out!
-
B♭ C A♭ 8vb A♭ E♭.
-
Trains, automobiles, and rocket ships, basically.
-
"The act of simplifying reality for a machine results in a great deal of complexity for the human."
-
Sara Benincasa on the beauty of The Bear.
-
Two writers facing one Turing test: A dialog in honor of HAL between Richard Powers and Bruno LatourPrescience for our current world from 1998.
-
"History is the long process of outsourcing human ability in order to leverage more of it. We will concede this trivia game (after a very long run as champions), and find another in which, aided by our compounding prosthetics, we can excel in more powerful and ever more terrifying ways."
-
AI neologisms. Could just link #termsfromtoday to this and never manually post again.
-
Science fiction becomes reality for fossil literature.
-
So much worse than the passive voice.
-
AI-generated imagery in the service of mythopoeic storytelling on a small town scale. (Follow via Instagram.)
-
"Dark magic box": The unique design opportunity of designing a marine ecosystem experience for visitors.
-
"A book with feedback"
-
Matt Kirschenbaum writes his own words about the "ongoing planetary spam event."
-
Meaning isn't 100% transitive.
-
A one-shot music video performed using only the reel-to-reel tape recorders.
-
Just because it was inevitable doesn't mean it isn't glorious.
-
Dan makes me nostalgic for Twitter 2007-2013.
-
Incredible instrument made from two Commodore 64s, floppy disks, tape and a giant dose of nerdery.
-
‘Oh, that’s tennis for non-athletes.'
-
Answer: barely, with a few modifications.
-
Some behind-the-scenes of my work life.
-
The All Iowa Lawn Tennis Club!
-
"Hell's Aquarium"
-
"Before we rolled out through the gate, I’d tell myself that I didn’t need to worry, because I was already dead. The only thing that mattered was that I did my best to make sure everyone else came back alive."
-
"The problem wasn’t that Sisyphus had to roll his boulder up a hill forever; it’s that he had to roll it alone."
-
Same with me, clowns, same with me.
-
I'm here for the needless politicization of tennis versus pickeball.
-
Biomimicry meet reclaimed waste product.
-
"Cities are where we see each other. People who don’t want to see hate that."
-
How much do you know about lines?
-
Documentary on Minnesota's failed attempt at a city of the future in the late 1960's.
-
"Humanity, how are you doing on this beautiful Monday?"
-
Amazing visualization of European lighthouses showing light color, actual pattern, and radius of visibility.
-
An interesting data point, for sure, but this metric may be the best part: Stool Hardness and Transit (SHAT) score.
-
The exact time of day, pulled from books.
-
Einstein confirms.
-
Mapping magnetic fields to the audio spectrum.
-
So pretty you often don't stop to listen.
-
The greatest tribute ever penned by a child for a parent.
-
Humans walking through a city don't take the shortest route but the one that physically points them at their destination most consistently.
-
Placing this here to remind future me.
-
LIght pollution of course ruins this.
-
Clever. Would be even better using LEGO's bioplastic bricks.
-
It doesn’t solve the problem to buy a hybrid and retrofit your house if all of that takes place 20 miles from your job.
-
Eno on urban design is masterful.
-
Railroad marketing ploy. But it's still quite nice here.
-
Particularly proud of this project from the Colorado Smart Cities Alliance.
-
"'There is an Italian phrase,' said Marco after we ordered our food. '"Li ti avvelenano", which translates to "there they will poison you." This is my prediction for the night.'"
-
Bringing together a few things I'm working on.
-
The condiutions and accomplishments that this story described laid the foundation for the beginning of my career.
-
“And so those fish are then left with less information about when it's safe to go out and eat and control these algae. And this feedback has these ecosystem-level consequences.”
-
"It’s not Columbus’ fault that industry promises about the imminent arrival of self-driving cars were way overblown." ← Actually, it is Columbus' fault.
What if you are chatting with 2 or 3 other people and don’t want to start another chat? I use the “do not disturb” in that case sometimes.
If you seriously can’t take the interruption of a second chat window should you really be using chat in the first place? Ignore it.