So, there you are at home, TV on and laptop open. Maybe you’re working or maybe you’re just aimlessly using the internet. It doesn’t matter. Then, out of nowhere, you hear the dreaded Slack notification sound. Immediately, your heart sinks and anxiety rises. Nothing good ever comes from those wood blocks clacking.
The most likely scenario is someone asking you to do something that is not your job. It could also be a co-worker chiming in with a question that you have already answered multiple times through multiple channels, probably even in that same Slack chat. Whatever the case may be, it is never news you want to receive.
Then, after that one second pause of silence, some jabroni starts talking and you realize it is just an annoying TV commercial for Slack. It takes a few minutes to decompress. You also have to open the app to make sure it was the advert.
For all the talk Slack does about making work easier, it can start by muting the notification sound on its dumb TV commercials. It’s not just me. The noise annoys a ton of people. Now, before you Slack lovers begin moaning, I know I can turn the sound off or exit the program altogether. We shouldn’t have to take action, though. Besides, we’re all trained to respond to the clacking regardless of the app’s status.
Let’s be real. Most people didn’t choose to use Slack. The tech-trend following asshole at the company we work for somehow convinced our boss to implement it by citing a bunch of features that literally no one has ever used.
Straight talk, Slack is a lesser MSN Messenger. O.G. instant messengers understood what they were and what you needed. But since Slack has been foisted upon most of us, the least it could do is stop being so goddamned annoying.
That starts with muting the notification sound on your dumb TV commercials. That, and not the inclusion of more pointless features, is how Slack can make life easier.
Also Interesting: Pizza for Dinner and other ridiculous PSAs from the 1990s
Does Slack really need a TV commercials to promote message editing?
Speaking of those dumb Slack TV commercials, what’s up with the company needing to promote message editing? They are spending money during NFL Playoff games to advertise this as some powerful feature. It’s not.
Editing only matters if a person hasn’t read the message. And if that is the case, you might as well delete it and resend it. However, if someone has already read the message, they aren’t going back to check it. Unless you message them to say you updated the original message. Of course, that defeats the feature’s purpose.
At the end of the day, I don’t know how those Silicon Valley types leverage Slack and I don’t really care. In the real world, we use it as an instant messenger and all of us would appreciate it if your company stopped pretending it’s anything more than that.
