Just Use Email

It’s come to my attention that many text-heavy text message users default to assuming received texts sound “pissy”. They almost can’t believe other people are very busy and aren’t carefully choosing every word of their text messages as if it’s the next Magna Carta. 

These text-heavy users appear to lack empathy for others, imagining that the other, like them, is on their phone 24/7, jumping at every ping, fully locked-in and engaged in long back-and-forth diatribes over text (the lowest form of communication except smoke signals).

Worse, these users also need to be instructed on how to interpret every message. They need, emoticons, to let them know if someone is sad or the message is supposed to be funny. Of course, there really is no emoticon for flatly-delivered messages. Maybe 😑?

Without such instruction or hints (or superfluous leading, such as “Don’t take this the wrong way, but…”), they fall back to their operative condition that such a text is likely to be hostile. One wonders why that appears to be a default. Is it because they do so much “life” via text, including starting and getting involved in disputes – all over text?

These users are ready to scrap at a moment’s notice. Are they largely disempowered people? Like the anonymous keyboard warriors on Reddit and 4Chan, they are brave on text, but not so much in real life. They will text what they would rarely say.

Like the entitled karens who demand baristas make their concoctions exactly, despite it being off-menu, these text-heavy users are ready and armed, waiting for even the slightest hint of disagreement or provocation. They get loud – and quickly – with no requests for clarifications, no secondary readings to see if the message could be interpreted differently. And even if they did a second or third reading, it’s a challenge for them to adopt an alternative voice for the sender.

In fact, there is almost no situation in which text-heavy users will not attempt to use text messaging. For them, grappling with life via text message is a fun daily challenge.

Banks, e-Commerce platforms, and schools – among many others – now let their customers and prospects manage some of their concerns and business needs via text, perpetuating the issue. They merely feed the beast, emboldening text-heavy users to further embroil their chosen comms method into more aspects of life. 

So, what’s the solution? Text messaging isn’t going away. We all know some people in our life that we have to tiptoe around when using text. They’ve demonstrated so often that they can misinterpret a single sentence so badly that we wish we didn’t have to text at all with them. But some are family or closely-related to our home life. 

Can we be honest for a moment? Most of these text-heavy users who drum up strife off a text message are women.

Why bring that up? It’s my view that text messaging caters to the “top of mind” scattered thinking more common to the feminine mind. See Spaghetti Brain vs Waffle Brain.

Text messaging avoids long-form analytical thinking more common to the masculine mind. (Someone will cry tears if I don’t footnote here that these are generalities and there are exceptions, so here’s your disclaimer. Pat yourself on the back now and let’s get back to the issue).

I can’t claim 100% success with the below approaches, but here’s a few that have worked for me more often than not.

1. I use a short cut (otu) on my phone which expands to “Okay, thank you.” Note the period, not an exclamation mark. You don’t want to express emotion at all, else accusations fly. Grey rock, if you know the term. This reply of “Okay, thank you.” can be used far more often than I originally thought when I first created it ten years ago. In fact, I usually kick myself for not using it more often. The best fight is the one you avoid. (I also find this works better than ‘liking’ the message, as it provides text they love. The thumbs-up like on their message itself is something they tend to take as avoidance).
2. Delayed replies – by a lot (day or so). “Sorry, busy, let me think about this”. Once they start realizing you’re not as available as they are, you get put in their outer radar of thought. Still, some messages are just for you so they come anyway. But this helps slow things down. 
3. Since this is JustUseEmail, you might be wondering why we’re discussing text messages. Well, wonder no more. You reply instead by email. And you do not text message them to say you emailed them (that feeds the beast). You simply cut/paste their message into an email and formulate a reply, ideally the next day. In most cases, this moves the conversation to email. (Not that we wanted to type our conversations in 2026, but here we are). One thing I enjoy doing is cutting/pasting large swaths of quotes and other documents in my email replies. “As I think about this, I’m reminded of that part of C.S. Lewis’s book The Four Loves:” and then go on to quote 4-5 paragraphs of something that is only tangentially related to the topic. It’s a warning for them to think twice about forcing conversations via keyboard, but even if not taken that way, I’ve forced them to read a piece of important literature and there’s some satisfaction in that, too. 

I’ve alluded to this feminine and masculine approaches to communication above. I’ll get into it more soon.

But if text messaging is a platform that caters to the female mind, I believe email is a platform that caters to the masculine mind.

Even a quick perusal of Email’s Superpowers sounds like the mindset of a man: organized, permanent, transparent (unencrypted), on topic (subject lines), limitless with no finger-wagging.

For now though, let’s agree that communication is best in-person, but if it must be done via digital methods, that email is best. Do what you can to move away from text messaging.