Who am I when I’m behind a screen?
It’s a question we face more and more as the pandemic minimizes face-to-face contact, forcing even more workplace communication to take place over email and messaging apps.
On the bright side, this offers a golden opportunity for us to create new personalities. Would you like to be the snarky colleague with the biting wit? The warm workplace buddy oozing with mutual support? Or perhaps the no-nonsense pragmatist whose two-sentence emails inspire a mixture of fear and admiration?
Of course, you might not have the time to hone this new persona. The good news is there’s an array of apps and extensions ready to create an identity for you with a few clicks of a mouse. We dug up a few of the most intriguing.
Emotional Labor
Rectifying the global exclamation-point shortage
Perhaps you fear you sound like an automaton with your insistence on straightforward, declarative statements. Maybe it’s time to lighten the mood – and how better than with gushing affection and out-of-control punctuation?
This browser extension will transform your “hello” to “hey lovey!” and add triple-exclamation points to the end of your sentences. It was probably intended as a joke, but it’s worth taking seriously: it could really warm the atmosphere of the average office. As a case in point, here’s how it would have gussied up the US supreme court justice Stephen Breyer’s resignation letter on Thursday:
Original
Dear Mr President,
I am writing to tell you that I have decided to retire from regular active judicial service as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and to serve under the provisions of 28 USC § 371(b).
Yours sincerely,
Stephen Breyer
Improved
Hey lovey! I’ve been thinking of you :) Dear Mr President. :)
I am writing to tell you that I have decided to retire from regular active judicial service as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, and to serve under the provisions of 28 USC § 371(b)!!!
Yours love,
Stephen Breyer
Just Not Sorry
Because work is no place for your humanity
On the opposite end of the spectrum, Just Not Sorry is a browser extension that reviews your emails for words and phrases that might show weakness, such as “sorry” and “I think”. It flags these words and, if you hover over them, offers tips – for instance: “Using sorry frequently undermines your gravitas and makes you appear unfit for leadership,” and “‘I think’ undermines your idea and displays an overall lack of self-confidence.”
The laudable goal is to help you communicate without fearing your own assertions, especially given misogynistic perceptions of language in the office. But writers including Jessica Grose and Harriet Minter have pointed out that the service frames female speech patterns – or what we assume those patterns to be – as an inherent problem. “Politeness is more strategic than demeaning,” wrote the linguist Debbie Cameron in response to the extension.
The sarcasm converter
Skewer them with your withering wit
Sarcasm, being entirely dependent on tone, is among the most difficult attitudes to convey in text. Workarounds have been developed – there’s the addition of “/s” to the end of a comment, but that ham-fisted gesture destroys all subtlety. Others use the Mocking SpongeBob approach, based on a meme of the square-trousered marine creature in what might be described as an ironic pose, accompanied by text written in a blend of upper- and lowercase letters. It gets your message across – and it’s NoT a PaIn To TyPe OuT aT AlL!
That, as Vice points out, is where the converter comes in. The Twitter user @BenSummerf has developed a small box that automatically transforms your text from this kind of thing to ThIs KiNd of ThInG without the painstaking operation of the shift key.
Built a sarcasm converter for your keyboard. Plug in a regular keyboard in, flip the switch and let the world know how you really feel about things pic.twitter.com/J3cAOfCAvw
— Ben S (@BenSommerf) January 26, 2022
Unfortunately, unless you’re in touch with Ben, it might be difficult to get your hands on the physical device. The good news is there’s a web-based version – though it’ll require a bit of copy-and-pasting to transfer your biting commentary to your email account.
Ilys
Erasing writing anxiety by erasing writing
This web-based service seeks to put you in a flow state by preventing you from seeing what you’ve already written. Craft your emails and Slack posts in here and you’ll stop worrying about whether you’ve offended anyone because you’ll immediately forget about it. Ilys only shows you the latest letter you’ve typed, or, if you’re in “ninja mode”, no letters at all.
Once you’ve written a certain number of words (set by you), the site finally allows you to edit your work. The idea is that you shouldn’t be burdened by editing as you go; that’s a separate process. I believe in that distinction and did find Ilys freeing to use, but I’m not sure I’d want to spend $11 a month for a service I could also achieve by closing my eyes.
Emoji Translate
Because it’s where we’re headed anyway
Then again, does writing even matter any more? The kids these days prefer to communicate via tiny pictures, and there’s no reason you can’t do the same. Just visit EmojiTranslate.com, which turns your words into easy-to-digest images, creating a fun rebus for your line manager to decipher. For instance:
👋, 🙇 I ❌️ ➡️ to the 🤝. I’m 🧑💼 at that ⏱️.
… which, of course, says “Hi, sorry, I can’t go to the meeting. I’m busy at that time.” Your boss will understand.
