Not long ago, my department at work sent out emails for people to sign up for the departmental Slack channel. Prior to starting working here, I’d never even heard of Slack. I figured out quickly that it was a chat client, but the most substantial use for it that I’d heard of it prior to receiving my own invitation to join was that people on campus had a specific channel that sent notifications if there were any free leftover food up for grabs anywhere on site.
I didn’t feel that a chat client was remotely conducive to work productivity, so I ignored the invitation and didn’t have any intention of signing up. Frankly, in my career, I’d been admonished in the past and conditioned to think that chat clients were counterproductive in the workplace. Seeing as how I like my job these days, I decided to not join in on something that I thought would be counterproductive, so I just let the invitation go ignored.
And then I got a follow-up email a few days later from management, that was sent directly to only the individuals who had not yet signed up for the departmental Slack channel, imploring them to do so.
This was my reaction to being told that I was supposed to join Slack.
Upon logging into the client, I started toggling around the work-sanctioned channels to see what all the fuss was all about.
I saw more gifs than I did human-written words.
I logged off Slack, and haven’t opened it since. I do not feel at all that I’ve missed out in any capacity of essential information or anything pertinent for me to do my job.
The thing is, Slack has grown and permeated the workplace industry to where I’m seeing television commercials and hearing radio spots advertising the client to the masses. As I’ve said before, chat clients are something that I’ve personally faced repercussions for using in the workplace before. I’ve been conditioned to think they’re counterproductive in the workplace, and I’ve been smart enough to do any external text communication through my personal cell phone instead.
But the advertising for Slack cracks me up: where work happens. It’s a chat client. Where the vast majority of users use it as a place to vomit gifs and/or memes, or use the direct message function to gossip amongst one another instead of actually being productive. The tagline should be more appropriately:
- where “work” happens
- where work “happens”
But I don’t think anyone is going to ever convince me that the presence of Slack is ever going to lead to anything other than passive-aggressive swiping, gif sharing, or people being quick to criticize and judge others while doing their best to not ever have to put themselves out there themselves. It’s a chat client, and it’s going to always be a hard sell to me that a chat client will ever have an appropriate presence in the professional workplace.
A little while ago, we had a speaker at work who came to talk about the future of the world of advertising. Aside from basically telling 80% of the room that our jobs as visual artists were doomed, this person discussed the future of advertising as being what they referred to as “screen-less advertisement.”
Screen-less. So something that is not visual; and because the vast majority of modern advertising has arrogantly deemed printed physical advertising as obsolete, screen-less advertisement is basically defined as an audio advertisement.
Audio advertisement… so a radio spot. As in a commercial.
You know, those things people these days absolutely abhor and hate with a fucking passion on 364 days and 21 hours of the year, with the exception of during the Super Bowl where they’re the most must-see things on the planet? Yeah, commercials. Or as this talking head was trying to convey to us, screen-less advertisements.
Screen-less advertisements are why shit like Pandora Plus and Premium exist. Hulu Plus. Spotify. Sirius XM. And the list goes on, for pay services where for a fee, advertisements are reduced or outright avoided.
People are willing to pay additional money to avoid being bombarded by commercials.
Does this talking head really believe that changing the name of commercials to screen-less advertisements is really going to get people to suddenly find them acceptable? Fuck no! But good on the moxie by these smarmy advertising agencies for trying to change the perception.
Sorry but no. Not that I’m really interested in an Echo or most smart home devices in the first place, but I have to imagine if that I’m sitting around and listening to music, and then suddenly Alexa starts reading off a commercial, no a screen-less advertisement, for a product that is eerily related to a conversation that I had which was digitally eavesdropped on in order to target? Yeah no, fuck off Alexa
Slack might be able to spin some shade to hide its bullshit, but trying to sell screen-less advertisement to a company whose customer base typically tend to need and want to see the products that they’re going to spend their hard-earned money on? Yeah, not going to happen.
I feel like the reason why people tend to become jaded and grumpy as they get older is that they’ve lived lives hearing generations upon generations of bullshit being presented to them, and it gets to points where it just becomes kind of repetitive and obnoxious. Or maybe it’s just me, because I’ve been a bitter old man since I was like 17. Either way, changing the terminology of antiquated concepts in order to make them more acceptable and/or appealing is bullshit, and I hope that people remain smart enough to sniff it out, although considering the widespread acceptance of Slack, I guess I shouldn’t hold my breath.
