Hey friends,

Since 2018, my business partner Jon and I have built our company remotely. We've never lived in the same city. To communicate, we rely mostly on Slack.

This past year, we had some disagreements that steadily built up over months. This tension created a gulf between us and set off a vicious cycle: every interaction left us more frustrated, which made us more withdrawn. Eventually, our wives encouraged us to do our annual founder retreat. We flew to Mexico. On the first day, we went to a cafe, sat across from each other, and talked. By the time we'd finished our coffee, we'd reached a mutual understanding.

What we'd been arguing about in Slack for months was essentially solved in 30 minutes.

I'm convinced that many of society's problems come from how we communicate online. Social media is a big part of this, but so are the text-based chat tools we use with friends, family, and coworkers.

We've traded in-person interaction for text on a screen:

• Co-workers collaborate on Slack.
• We argue with strangers on Reddit.
• Friends catch up in WhatsApp groups.
• Couples text back and forth all day.

Growing up as a self-conscious nerd in the 80s and 90s, I initially embraced the text chat paradigm. I loved writing messages on FidoNet, commenting in Usenet threads, and using ICQ and AIM.

And there were advantages! I loved words, writing, and the ability to express my thoughts fully without feeling self-conscious.

But now I'm seeing the other side. I don't think all of this text-based communication is good for us.

There's a joke in the corporate world that "this meeting could have been an email." Increasingly, I'm feeling the other way: "This email thread should have been a meeting."

I was recently having a discussion on an open-source thread on GitHub. A group of us had previously spoken about the issue at a meetup in London. It was striking how different the in-person interaction was compared to the online discussion. When we were in-person, there was pushback, but it was civil. And, while we were face-to-face, we were able to resolve misunderstandings quickly. But online, there's no nuance, context, or body language. People came into the thread with knee-jerk reactions, bad assumptions, and hot takes. It was difficult to get everyone on the same page, much less actually dig into the idea.

​A 2017 study by Juliana Schroeder echoes my experience. She and her colleagues had people take in an opinion they disagreed with; some heard it spoken aloud, others read it as text. When people heard the argument, they judged the person as more thoughtful and reasonable. But when they read the same words, they were quicker to write the person off.

In person, it's easier to grok where someone's coming from. It's simpler to see how they're feeling. You look them in the eyes; you feel their humanity. That doesn't make it easy. Coming to a shared understanding with another human is exceptionally hard.

But by continually defaulting to what's easy (texting), we're making communication worse.

It's easier to hide behind a screen. It's easier to shoot off a text than to confront someone in person. Meeting people in the real world is harder than spending time on a dating app. It's easier to hang out in our own bubble online than it is to hang out in spaces and encounter a diversity of perspectives.

It's no surprise that our society is increasingly polarized. In his piece, Democracy Needs a Barstool, Daniel Lazar talks about the importance of the neighborhood pub:

Sometimes when I visit a pub or coffee shop, I'll sit at the bar. Eight times out of ten, I'll get pulled into a chat with other patrons. They're often people I'd never meet online, with viewpoints I don't normally hear.

I've also felt the benefits of proximity in my work life. Despite being a remote company, I have two employees who live in the same town as me. We've all been coming into a coworking office together. And I'm seeing the benefits of being in close proximity to each other.

In person, there's all this interstitial tissue of communication. So much more is felt and perceived than is expressed with words: little moments, pauses, and facial expressions. We also share all these small moments: grabbing a coffee, a quick check-in, running into each other in the kitchen. None of this stuff really happens in Slack, but it builds rapport and trust.

I'm conflicted. Because I started remote work when I really needed the flexibility, as a dad with four young kids. It allowed me to eliminate my 2-hour commute every day. It enabled us to move to a community that was a better fit for our family.

There are benefits to text-based chat. But as someone who initially cheered this transition (in 2008, I begged my boss to get us HipChat), I can now see the downsides.

My business partner and I have made some changes. We've committed to seeing each other in person 3-4 times a year, and we now do a weekly phone call called "partnership, strategy, vision, planning, friendship." The idea is that we need to approximate how we might catch up in an office with a cup of coffee if we were working in person. I think it's improved our relationship and how we lead the company.

Our society has important work to do. We have important things to discuss. But I don't think the answer is to write more text into more text boxes.

What do you think?

Cheers,
Justin Jackson

PS: If you submit this to Hacker News, let me know so I can answer the comments.