Last week I got an email from my boss about a recent piece I’d written on Donald Trump’s penis (just out here doing the family name proud). Surprisingly, it was a kind email as opposed to a notification of the termination of my employment for besmirching the paper of CP Scott with wisecracks about Trump’s junk, but, kind or otherwise, I’ve never known how to respond to messages from my editors.
The informality of the email form clashes with my natural instinct, which is – as New Yorker writer Anthony Lane once wrote of his former editor Tina Brown – to stand to attention every time they call me on the phone. Is email the internet equivalent of going out for drinks with someone after work? Are you expected to be casual with each other in a way you aren’t in the office? Or should I express myself in a way that reflects my true feelings? “Dear Boss, I humbly thank you. Really sorry about all the dick jokes. Respectfully yours, Hadley K Freeman.” After more than 20 years of using email, I have not figured this out.
Unexpectedly, at the bottom of this email, Google itself stepped in to help me. Beneath my boss’s message were three suggested responses: “Love it!” “Haha that’s awesome!” “That’s a good one!” Turns out “respectfully yours” is just not very Silicon Valley 2018.
Once I’d recovered from the hernia caused by laughing for 72 hours at Google’s noble effort to make me sound like a fembot (“Haha, that’s a good one, Hadley!”), I investigated what was going on here. It turned out that my Gmail had updated itself, which is kind of creepy in itself, though not nearly as creepy as its suggested responses, a feature Google has dubbed “Smart Reply” and what I dub “Hell”. Smart Reply is conclusive proof that Google does, as we already kinda knew, read our emails; now it has decided it can answer them better than we do. No need to read any sci-fi books about the dystopian future, kids, because we’re already here. Love it!
I could talk about how furious I am about this bizarrely open disregard of privacy (though in today’s world, the only thing that marks one out as more of an oldster than starting an email with “Dear” are concerns about privacy) because, sure, of course I am. But I have to be honest: I enjoy the banality of these automated answers, so much so that I’ve started reading them before the actual emails. When my mother wrote to ask if we were meeting up over the weekend, the suggested responses were “Let me get back to you on that!” “Amazing!” and “No way!” For the record, Google, if I ever replied “Let me get back to you on that!” to my mother, she would call the police to say my body had been possessed by an alien.
These responses confirm something anyone who’s ever been on social media already knows: online, there is no middle ground. Everything is either “Amazing!” or “No way!” Meanwhile the exclamation mark continues its deadening march to become as ubiquitous as the “x” for kiss: a once almost ironic stylistic extra that was strictly reserved for close friends is now the downright, earnest norm.
I think what tickles me most about these suggested replies is the way they lay bare some of the most irksome elements of our age. Most of us have become inured to the point of obliviousness to those jarring, algorithm-driven adverts, all faux chumminess mixed with creepy surveillance, topped off with spectacularly unhelpful help: “Hey! We noticed you once bought a red coat! Here are some other red coats! To add to your red coat collection! We’re just being helpful!” (...)
And there is something of this soulless mentality in Gmail’s Smart Responses. On the one hand, email is supposed to make it easier for all of us to keep in touch. On the other, we are now being urged to outsource that correspondence to an exclamation-happy bot that makes us sound more robot than human.
by Hadley Freeman, The Guardian | Read more:
The informality of the email form clashes with my natural instinct, which is – as New Yorker writer Anthony Lane once wrote of his former editor Tina Brown – to stand to attention every time they call me on the phone. Is email the internet equivalent of going out for drinks with someone after work? Are you expected to be casual with each other in a way you aren’t in the office? Or should I express myself in a way that reflects my true feelings? “Dear Boss, I humbly thank you. Really sorry about all the dick jokes. Respectfully yours, Hadley K Freeman.” After more than 20 years of using email, I have not figured this out.
Unexpectedly, at the bottom of this email, Google itself stepped in to help me. Beneath my boss’s message were three suggested responses: “Love it!” “Haha that’s awesome!” “That’s a good one!” Turns out “respectfully yours” is just not very Silicon Valley 2018.Once I’d recovered from the hernia caused by laughing for 72 hours at Google’s noble effort to make me sound like a fembot (“Haha, that’s a good one, Hadley!”), I investigated what was going on here. It turned out that my Gmail had updated itself, which is kind of creepy in itself, though not nearly as creepy as its suggested responses, a feature Google has dubbed “Smart Reply” and what I dub “Hell”. Smart Reply is conclusive proof that Google does, as we already kinda knew, read our emails; now it has decided it can answer them better than we do. No need to read any sci-fi books about the dystopian future, kids, because we’re already here. Love it!
I could talk about how furious I am about this bizarrely open disregard of privacy (though in today’s world, the only thing that marks one out as more of an oldster than starting an email with “Dear” are concerns about privacy) because, sure, of course I am. But I have to be honest: I enjoy the banality of these automated answers, so much so that I’ve started reading them before the actual emails. When my mother wrote to ask if we were meeting up over the weekend, the suggested responses were “Let me get back to you on that!” “Amazing!” and “No way!” For the record, Google, if I ever replied “Let me get back to you on that!” to my mother, she would call the police to say my body had been possessed by an alien.
These responses confirm something anyone who’s ever been on social media already knows: online, there is no middle ground. Everything is either “Amazing!” or “No way!” Meanwhile the exclamation mark continues its deadening march to become as ubiquitous as the “x” for kiss: a once almost ironic stylistic extra that was strictly reserved for close friends is now the downright, earnest norm.
I think what tickles me most about these suggested replies is the way they lay bare some of the most irksome elements of our age. Most of us have become inured to the point of obliviousness to those jarring, algorithm-driven adverts, all faux chumminess mixed with creepy surveillance, topped off with spectacularly unhelpful help: “Hey! We noticed you once bought a red coat! Here are some other red coats! To add to your red coat collection! We’re just being helpful!” (...)
And there is something of this soulless mentality in Gmail’s Smart Responses. On the one hand, email is supposed to make it easier for all of us to keep in touch. On the other, we are now being urged to outsource that correspondence to an exclamation-happy bot that makes us sound more robot than human.
by Hadley Freeman, The Guardian | Read more:
Image: The Project Twins/Synergy
