Do you use long voice notes to keep in touch?

[SilverandSage]

Random question! 😂 Do any of you regularly use voice notes to keep in touch with friends or family? I mean proper long ones, not just “I’m running late” type messages 😂. I’m interested in whether other people have the same thing I do where you and a friend can end up sending each other 10–20 minute voice notes because you don’t have time to actually speak on the phone.
If you do, I’d love to know what you like/dislike about it.

But reading the transcription of anything longer than 5 seconds is torturous as well! At least with a message you have to be more concise, and with a phone call, you can actually have a conversation.

No I hate them

Sexy voicenotes account for the vast majority of voicenotes I've received! From the same person, not a load of randoms

It has never occured to me that I have to be concise when sending messages to loved ones- I will happily send a big long message, or several shorter ones, I assume they'll read it when they can!

I hate voice notes. Whilst it may be more convenient for the person leaving the note, it’s bloody incovenient for me having to find the time to listen to it. I spend a lot of time in meetings (virtual and face to face) and it’s a LOT easier/quicker for me to read a WhatsApp/text and respond than to find a convenient time to listen to someone’s self-indulgent voice note. I have ADHD and seeing it written down also means I am much more likely to remember the content, and if not, I can go back and quickly check.

I use these with my very best friend but everyone else I get the ick over how I sound. Our record is 14 mins but at double speed it’s obv 7. We live in different countries and don’t always get the chance to call. If there’s a lot to say and respond to, it can somehow get that long very quickly and i hate typing.

I am so pleased that I appear to be in the majority of finding voice notes one of the most awful inventions known to humanity. I thought I was in the minority.

The only saving grace is that there is an app that takes out all the white space, and speeds them up, so someone else's 20 minute ramblings can be got through in 2 minutes. That said, if anyone sent me a voice note of longer than 90 seconds, I would just delete it.

Yep, me and my best friend routinely do this. Very hard to both be free at same time for a phone chat nowadays and we talk about a lot of stuff that would be way too tricky to distil into a text message. Unsolicited definitely not but I love sitting down with a cup of tea and listening to her VNs!

No. I only ever send one if I am unable to type for some reason and then I keep them very short. Even if you speed them up long voice notes are annoying, particularly if there is some nugget of information within them that you do need to refer back to. On a wvritten message you can scroll down and find what you need in a few seconds whereas with a voice note it can take ages to find a specific point.

None of my friends and family send me voice notes. We either communicate via WhatsApp or have a telephone conversation.

DD (26) and her friends exchange voice notes. I think it is a generational thing. So many young people seem to have forgotten how to have a telephone conversation.

I do not wish to subscribe to anyone’s podcast monologue.

It's a one person rant not a conversation. I HATE them with the heat of a thousand suns.

And generally ignore them.

This is me! Let me read read instructions first then if struggling I can get watch the part of the video I need to.

no voice notes for me either. Hate them and don't see the point in them

I hate them so much. I don't process audio well so will have forgotten anything important and find them very intrusive. Text me, email me, call me, drop by, anything else is better.

A 20 minute VN is totally excessive. I have a few friends with whom we send nonsense update voice notes back and forth, but a few seconds/minutes max. Although I rely increasingly frequently on the "transcribe" function these days to get the gist

Not that length, but my best friend and I send voice notes quite frequently. 3/4 minutes. Like a disjointed phone call.

We both have a child with the same life limiting condition so we have a deal where messages about that are voice notes so the other can open and listen when they’ve got the capacity for it. Stops general messaging being full of health stuff.

Also I can voice note while changing tubes or while drying myself after a post-vomit or post-explosive nappy shower easier than messaging.

Hell no

I don't mind a voice note, my daughter sends them and I love hearing her voice when she's not at home. 10 minutes worth would be a bit tedious though, it's generally only a minute or two.

I dont have the attention span to listen to a 20 minute VN. A few seconds is fine.

I only talk to 3 or 4 people on the phone, because they phone me. Textual relationships are preferred.

A quick google indicates that a 20 minute voicenote would be between 2 and 3,000 words long - or 26 to 35 'phone screens full. No one is going to wade through 30 plus pages of garbled, poorly transcribed waffle!!

Walking my energetic dog, watering the garden, driving the 30 min to work and back.

No. I never bother to listen to them. Sent by narcissists.

What happened to the art of conversation? Where two people talk AND LISTEN to each other? Leaving a voice note is like one of those Christmas round robins - telling someone all the things you want to say about yourself without caring if they’re losing interest, have something more important they’d like to discuss, or anything else. It smacks of self importance and not actually being interested in anyone else’s life. Friendship reduced to the transmission of information to each other with no curiosity, no offering or receiving of advice, no ability to express sympathy or empathy or ask additional questions, or any of the other things which bring people close to each other. Ridiculous.

No I fucking don’t, I usually make it about 10 seconds into a voice note before hanging up.

The only person I do this with is my adult DD. We started when she lived in a different time zone but have kept it up now she’s back in the UK. We talk on FaceTime regularly but use voice notes for banal shit. I love her voice messages and she’s naturally quite funny so it brightens my day!!