>My colleagues and friends know that I prefer to communicate with them via email rather than chat messaging.
For some co-workers and especially for friends & family, the chat UI is much more ergonomic than email. Email usage has extra friction:
- compose new email UI has extra SUBJECT: field you have to fill with junk (like "hey" or "question...") or skip over
- email client UI for multiple messages from the same person in a listview repeats the same metadata headers which is visually redundant pollution. UI settings such as "organize by thread" or "organize by conversation" help but don't fully solve it.
With chat apps, the back & forth conversation is visually cleaner without all the metadata clutter.
But that “subject” header makes it paletable.
I would argue if you really can’t come up with a subject then you probably shouldn’t be asking at all.
I got used to Zulip at my previous job and people made the same argument about “Topics” (which are basically subjects); but they forget that the messages are read more often than they are written. A little friction in writing for an easier time reading and skimming is absolutely worth it.
> But that “subject” header makes it paletable.
That's true for some forms of communication, but for social chitchat in an ongoing conversation there isn't much relevance.
Subject becomes especially ridiculous when Mail clients are localized and you get some "Re: AW: RE: Re: AW: fun stuff" as subject.
At work subject tis key. Allows me to ignore 90% of the mails immediately.