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I’m not ignoring your message – I’m overwhelmed by the tyranny of being reachable (www.theguardian.com)

submitted 2 days ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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A friend messaged me the other day. I saw it. I didn’t reply. A week later, I finally responded with the classic: Sorry for the late reply, just got to this.

She called me out. You didn’t just get to this, she said. I saw the double ticks.

Damn. She was right. I’d opened it. I’d registered it. But I’d also shelved it. It needed a proper reply, and at that moment, I wasn’t equipped.

Maybe it got lost between revisiting pictures from 2016 and the reminder I set to cancel my Nibble app 7-day trial on day 6. Maybe I got a call? Perhaps I’d wanted to sink back into that Substack article about reclaiming attention, ironically while still on social media. Maybe I was working one of the four jobs I need to survive under capitalism’s boot heel. Maybe I was doing nothing?

Does free time now equal availability?

I get a ping from the family group chat, which doubles as an IT helpdesk for my mum. My best friend just FaceTimed me about a White Lotus episode, and another left a voice note crying about a possible diagnosis. All this, lodged between videos of cats and genocide.

The boundaries between reception and response have collapsed.

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[-] [email protected] 1 points 10 hours ago

KT-TOT is close. I actually do have a smartphone that I only use for work stuff since companies now usually do bring your own device with phones. it only has work stuff and I keep it off mostly unless im working in an on call position and am on call. I use voip on it with textnow as a backup. Otherwise I use my laptop with voip. Having any type of phone all the time that someone can text or call you at any time leaves you with the issue the OP has. Have to turn it off and actually be unreachable at times. Considering how often im on my laptop im still reachable pretty darn often. I also have a brother who lets me and my other brother know if extended family stuff shows up on facebook. Like weddings and funerals and such. I do try and check facebook once a week as my condo has a group and the aforementioned family stuff but like funerals are tricky as they can happen in less than a week of death with my family.

this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2025

187 points (99.5% liked)

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