Ode To Slack

Glory to the Slack in the highest, but folks — I am old. That is to say, I have adopted the following child-of-the-70's profile of message-check-frequency protocol by medium:

• Text Messages: immediate, if my phone is next to me, else within a few days

• Email: every 2 hours during the week, indeterminate on weekends

• Signal / Whatsapp: every few hours

• Slack: a few times a week (channels), if I look at them at all; DMs within an hour

• Online social messages: every 3-4 weeks, if I look at them at all

• Skype messages: every 3-5 years

Use Slack for semi-synchronous messages that can be safely ignored, and for timely content the value of a response to which decreases rapidly over time.

Some guidelines, by Slack mode:

DMs: Synchronous, small, perhaps personal, and often frivolous comms. Don’t be offended if I don’t respond — I may not be at my desk (or I may be under it, futzing with a tangled nest of power cables and wires roughly resembling the size and complexity of the brain’s neural network).

Don’t use slack for emergencies of any kind.

Unless this is meant metaphorically (is the motorcycle an icon for the insane pace of modern life? Is the absent rider a ghostly representation of our collective moments of unconsciousness? And what are the patties?!), please just take the patties out of the toaster oven.

Also…

No long philosophical conversations on slack DMs please, unless you see me responding with multiple emojis, in which case I’ve jumped the shark on productivity for the day, having made the inevitable mid-afternoon transition to wading through the existential angst associated with the recognition of a life spent placing bits (the sum total of which would easily fit onto a small USB key) in a very particular order, in full knowledge that this brilliant arrangement itself will suffer an inevitable collapse under the weight of creeping entropy.

In this case, bloviate away, but remember to treat my responses with suspicion, as one would the transient ramblings of a last-screw-loose madman, expounding with a cryptographically random level of contextual applicability, at best.

Please don’t start with “Hey” or “Hey I’ve got something to ask you” and then spend the next 30 seconds typing while I gaze at your pulsing ellipsis with hot anticipation, my limited attention and life force flowing out like a molten precious metal into a sad, dark, unending chasm. Just type the whole thing in and press enter.

Channels: I’ll read through Slack channels when I’m at a loose end, which is usually when I’m stuck in the terminal of a remote tropical airport, flailing about like a phone-toting statue of liberty radar station desperately attempting to intercept thousands of limp, directionless, and ultimately disappointing wi-fi packets. Even if it makes its way onto my phone, neither will Slack history be “combed over” nor subsumed into my long-term consciousness via deep analysis; more often than not, I’ll choose “esc” to get that relieved, caught-up feeling without having to spend any energy or focus whatsoever.

Channel Mentions: OK so you @mentioned me publicly, making it approximately 1000x more likely I will look at your message, because of its lyrically mellifluous qualities inside my reptile brain. My expansive interpretation of your @intentions include respect, love, adoration, and the pressing need to spotlight my obvious value or relevance to our (admittedly) small corner of humanity. My response is almost guaranteed, owing to a deep-seated need to service and maintain a fictional avatar brimming with the abstract qualities of a person you’d love to get to know, all the while papering over the fact that I’m clearly boring as hell. If you need me to do something I may find unpleasant, this is probably the way to go.