Age of No Response

19 November 2007

Do you ever feel beyond irritated, as in extremely pissed off, when you send an email or make a call that requires a reply but the recipient neglects to respond?

It’s a phenomenon of the 24/7-communication age it seems, the no-response response to communiqués.  

Presumably the recipient considers that not responding is a response in itself with an implicit message along lines of, “Sorry, haven’t got time, too busy.” 

I wish I didn’t let it get to me, but I do!  I’m forever disappointed by the pervasive lack of personal and business etiquette. 

I mean, jeez, I’d even settle for a one-liner to the tune of ”Can’t respond, too busy.”  At least I’d know where I stood.

So when did it become okay to simply ignore personal or business communications?  I can hear the collective, “When life became sooo busy, that’s when!” 

Oh please, don’t be so trite bloggers; besides, I already implied (facetiously) that busyness is the root cause.  I say trite because “busyness” has become the excuse d’jour, as if it is fair and reasonable justification for behavior that once upon a time was considered bloody rude!

And before you roll your eyes and trill “Gawd are you an old fashioned fuddy-duddy or what?” keep in mind that I’m not old and I’m not exactly conservative! 

However, I am considerate and perhaps naively, I imagine every human being deserves to be treated with consideration and respect and has the capacity to treat others likewise. 

That being said, what then do I perceive to be the real reason behind the no-response response phenomena? 

Well, I think it’s a complex by-product of living during the dawn of an era when we’re constantly switched on electronically and thus always accessible to others. 

In other words, I think we’ve yet to learn how to manage time-efficiently our daily incoming communiqués in a responsible and civil manner. 

For now, apparently the accepted coping mode is to turn a blind eye or ear to messages that require a response (if I pretend it’s not there, eventually it will go away) rather than designating time to answering our messages.   

Having said my bit … I have a friend who calls a lot.  She gets irritated because I don’t always respond.  We talked; I let her know that it was unrealistic to expect that I was always available.  I know she appreciated the response, and my honesty.

Posted in Best Girlfriend Wisdom

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2 Responses to “Age of No Response”

  1. Dazza Says:
    November 19th, 2007 at 7:29 pm

    What we are experiencing is a situation where technology has intruded upon our culture. Why else are people too busy to reply? They are watching TV shows from a choice of 500 channels, watching DVD’s, listening to CD’s, instant messaging, and on and on. It is possible that technology will step in to rectify this problem and restore the common courtesy of a reply. Hence:

    Some day soon our computers will be able to do one of two things, automatically send a receipt so you know that the recipient got your message and if you don’t get a response the answer is “No,” or there will be a key on your keyboard which will embody a whole sentence that you can just send with the push of that key alone, e.g., “Sorry, busy, bye.” There is a story to this quote, dear Tildy, but I will save that for your buddy.

    On the other hand, people may become so further involved in the virtual world, and technology may continue to have a depersonalizing, even dehumanizing, effect, that the “no reply” may not only be common but also acceptable, even preferable. The effect in my view of a culture in which each person is the whole focus of one’s life and can get what he or she wants rather quickly and easily by pushing buttons, i.e., there is always another purveyor of what is needed on another website and there is no loyalty between customer and vendor (so not receiving a reply is tolerable and certainly preferable to having to give a reply in order to get one), is that we will all become less human and certainly less emotionally interdependent. This should make for one great war.


  2. Cat Says:
    November 20th, 2007 at 1:25 pm

    I think you’re right, Tildy — the excitement of speed communication sure is handy, but it’s a burden at times, giving everyone the expectation that recipients will respond quickly and everyone feeling pressure to reply quickly.

    Some times people just sort of say WHEW — I’ve had it!

    Not that we want to go back to pennning longhanded letters on parchment. . .


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