“Give me a vocal to tell me about your evening yesterday”, “it’s a long time to explain, I’ll give you a vocal”, “you won’t believe what happened to me, I’ll summarize you in vocal” … Well, we could go on for a long time, but we’ll stop there, you probably understood the idea. Upon receipt of these messages, a strange feeling invades us: if we can’t wait for Claire to tell us about her Thursday evening – and there are things to say -, we already have some cold sweats at the idea of listening this vocal of 4 minutes 17, punctuated by silence, “euuuuuh”, “I resume”, “I got lost”, “finally, you understood what”.
And this is where all the ambivalence of voice messages: we love them as much as we hate them. Because if this feature, which appeared in 2013 on WhatsApp and in 2018 on Instagram, irritates the whole world (no exaggeration, I promise), it has spread like wildfire in our exchanges. But the hell, why does Claire send an arm-length voicemail instead of texting or just calling?
Halfway between SMS and call
First, we’re not going to lie to each other, it’s still very practical. A simple thumb placed on the microphone symbol of your smartphone keyboard, and hop, here you are unfolding your life, podcast style of France Culture (which we love). Because the voice message is a bit of a hybrid solution halfway between the SMS and the phone call. “When we call someone, if that person doesn’t pick up, we leave a voice message on their answering machine. The voice note is between the two”, explains Alexandre Eyries, HDR teacher-researcher in information and communication science at the University of Lorraine. “It allows you to have an exchange without being in direct interaction,” adds the specialist.
Especially since unlike texting, for Claire, making an audio is a bit like making us live her evening, as if we were there, “one women show” style: there is the tone, the laughter or emotions that can hardly be conveyed in writing, despite the multitude of emojis that exist. And if her vocals are clear as spring water, it’s probably because Claire (do you have it?) didn’t maybe take it several times to record it, one of the advantages of this functionality.
Not because his finger slipped, stopping the recording (top 10 most annoying things in the world), but because a vocal can eliminate any doubt of the famous passive-aggressive that one can have with a written message: “An SMS can lead to misunderstandings, even misunderstandings. With the voice note, there is a more lively, even intimate side, of an almost physical proximity, it gives the impression of a conversation which is not really one”, estimates the researcher.
A certain freedom for the receiver
By recording her story of 4 minutes 17, Claire will also have allowed us not to bleed from the eyes when reading her spelling and her sometimes dubious syntax (we all have a Claire in our lives, don’t lie). But Pierre, one of our readers, disagrees: “I really hate voice messages. For me it is a sign that the person does not master spelling, syntax and grammar and that she is too lazy to make an effort. Encouraging this practice contributes to the general lowering of French, people were already no longer making an effort with automatic correctors, but with vocals, they don’t even pretend anymore, ”laments the 24-year-old young man.
But without the invention of the voice note, Claire would have had two choices: write an SMS probably as long as the text of the pension reform or give us a phone call that will force us to ask an RTT. But the call can be considered an intrusive process, an injunction to respond: “It’s sometimes difficult to end a telephone conversation, it can drag on, it can be embarrassing to cut it short”, believes Alexander Eyries.
Fortunately, Silicon Valley can be thanked for inventing voice. Because, absolutely nothing obliges you to listen to Claire’s monologue now (apart from your sense of friendship, but that’s your choice), and even less to answer her in stride. “There is an asynchronous side, that is to say a temporality shifted between the moment when the voice is emitted and when it is consulted and where it is answered”, analyzes the teacher-researcher. “The sender leaves a certain freedom to the receiver. There is a form of rationalization of social time, we let the person choose their temporality, ”he adds.
Narcissism and egocentrism
Now let’s be honest for a few minutes. Of the 4 minutes 17 of Claire’s recording, how much really contains useful information? This is where the anti and pro voicemails tear each other apart (always without any exaggeration, it’s not our style). As we told you in the preamble, the authors of audios have the unfortunate tendency to get carried away in an endless monologue, punctuated by digressions, silences and endless “euuuuuuuh”. “The voice message actually has a very annoying side, it is often very long to say very little. It feels like wasting time where an SMS could have been quicker and more concise. We block time with our interlocutor”, recognizes Alexandre Eyries.
Especially since listening to a voice note requires all the same to put oneself in certain dispositions: “You have to find calm to listen to it, to concentrate. The worst thing is that more often than not, we have to go through a concentration of useless information to access information, ”says Zinedine, 28. By sending us her monologue, is Claire really in the sharing? Not so sure. “There is a small egocentric, even narcissistic side, when you leave a voicemail. I take advantage of the audios to tell you about my life, but I won’t let you tell me about yours. It’s a selfish pleasure, because it’s the assurance of not being interrupted”, considers the teacher-researcher. An opinion shared by Paul, 24: “A voice message is clearly selfish, it’s comfortable for the sender but the opposite for the receiver”.
In other words, voice messages are a bit like the vacation photos in the Seychelles sent by your aunt Suzanne on the WhatsApp family group. You didn’t ask for anything, you didn’t particularly want to see them, but you receive them anyway and you’re going to answer them out of politeness, at the risk of putting a chill on the next Christmas meal.
We’re going to take a risk and maybe make enemies, but 20 Minutes, we like the truth, even if it hurts: no, no one wants to hear you record or listen to a voice message in the subway early in the morning, or in the doctor’s waiting room. Yes, you could have summed up this two-minute voicemail in one sentence. And no, a voice note longer than 30 seconds is not socially accepted.