Basic B*tch
Bring back the voicemail
In 2013, an ‘etiquette expert’ for The New
York Times declared voicemails the height of time-wasting impoliteness. Bizarrely — for a job-title that is usually only seen in connection with spluttering complaints about Meghan Markle’s sneezes; how millennials are destroying interpersonal relationships; and the postal service — the piece turned out to be era-defining. It marked open season on The Voicemail.
For a few years, it was a safe bonding topic that 26-year-olds could drop into awkward silences on first Tinder dates for immediate common ground — like Beyonce, or anti-depressants. “Voicemails,” said average male stand-ups in T-shirts, “Am I right?”
Today, it’s not even a punchline. The voicemail is dead. Like any right-minded person, I haven’t checked my voicemail in years — since Jess stopped ringing daily to narrate, in real time, her lunch trips to M&S, my voicemail has been obsolete.
However, with voicenotes — voicemail’s slutty and insouciant cousin — rapidly gaining ground, the time has come to reappraise The Voicemail. Consider this: in a world of read receipts and online statuses, is there not something necessarily thrilling about the mystery of a voicemail? Once thrown into the world, one may never know when or if their message is being listened to. VMs cannot be deleted, reviewed or edited. You can leave it and forget all about it; it does not squat there on your chat history, demanding to be acknowledged, growing big flappy ears and a trunk and tail. A voicemail might never have happened; a freebie.
They capture people at their best. When everyone, save Granny, views speaking on the phone as some manner of cruel and unusual punishment, picking up the phone just for a chat suggests the best of moods. A long, rambling, “Hi, I’m not ringing for anything in particular, don’t worry. I’m just walking home and was thinking about...” is a person at their most open, effusive, vulnerable, thoughtful, rare. It’s balm. And you’d never get it in a text.
Bring Back VM 2019 starts today. Jess — call me, I won’t pick up.