The Do-Not-Disturb (DnD) function is like the fine print of commercials.
Before diving into its relevance as a ready-to-use, albeit hidden widget, here’s how I came to that conclusion.
When headed home from work, I turn on the DnD because I live separate lives. At work, I’m a doctor. After work, I write. When I write, I prefer letting the dam break, flooding the white document with my thoughts and ideas.
The DnD button helps.
Before, I never considered this option. I barely get calls, let alone make them. After a series of events in my life, I started getting numerous notifications. Distracting notifications. Sometimes, annoying notifications. They can affect your balance and focus.
Before, I’d use airplane mode. It was a blessing. After giving my day hours at work, I would dedicate my night hours to my online library of articles. I would also take time to read.
What’s more, I would play the DnD card until the following day. My sleep would be uninterrupted. Peaceful. After doing this for several days, I was unable to return to my previous ways. That’s when I discovered the usefulness of the DnD button.
Once I included a list of favourite contacts, they could bypass this wall.
The more I continued using it, the more I wondered why phones have this option. Beer commercials made it obvious.
Usually, when such drinks advertise their products, they quickly rush over the warnings at the tail end. Alcohol is harmful to your health and is restricted to persons over the age of 18. Please drink responsibly. They would chime.
But how, pray tell, can you drink responsibly?
The person who walks in is more responsible than the person who staggers out. After the first drink, glass, or bottle, your level of responsibility goes down a notch. But it’s not proportional. It’s non-linear.
Since they have already made it ‘clear’ in their commercials and in the fine print, the producers are not responsible for your misdeeds. The disclaimer absolves them of responsibility.
That’s what the DnD does.
Notifications, notifications, notifications
My life is centered ‘round competition and currency
— Drake
Notifications will inundate your day and disrupt your night. Let’s start with emails.
Emails, because you are unemployed and want to know which agency expressed interest in your CV. Emails, because you are employed and wouldn’t want to miss an important memo from your bosses. Emails, because as the boss, you need to communicate.
Recently, LinkedIn has gotten into the same bandwagon. They tell you what someone in your connection list has done. If not that, then someone from the same list who liked a post or commented on one.
Why would you do that? Who said I wanted to know what they did? I’m not a stalker. I did not hire the platform to tell me every other person’s activity.
Then again, these are slight, imperceptible, and gradual steps to create a self, personified through you, for them to control.
Initially, my problem with LinkedIn was the platform. Every person is an achiever with several projects on the side. The colours blue and white give the hint that everything is going well.
As soon as someone makes an update, LinkedIn, like Telegram, after someone has downloaded the app, it makes an announcement:
Congratulate person X on their new achievement.
I’m not against achievements, but do you know the effect that can have on individual account owners? Let’s say you have 1000 connections. From these, a hundred share their achievements. These are 100 people telling the innocent onlooker that they are not progressing in their lives.
You may think that it should challenge them to also progress, but it only perpetuates the cycle. You will never have more achievements than the number of your ever-increasing LinkedIn connections. The parade of achievers will remind you that you have a mountain to climb, but one you will never summit.
Moreover, the platform hardly has insightful content. They show up once, and like the Avatar, when they are needed the most, they vanish. LinkedIn is a stage to mask the struggles people go through, but it amplifies personal stressors, one post after another.
Now they have resorted to sending emails about posts from people you hardly know. Who told them I needed it?
Like Drake said, they centre your life around competition and currency. You’re not making progress, so you’re not making currency. Your competitors are doing the most. And since it’s those who have made a step forward who will post, you will never get to hear about those who don’t. This bias has obvious effects — you’re not growing.
So what do you do? You make a premium subscription. They have made you miserable and promise that a subscription will eliminate your problems. But will they? Increased reach does not mean your problems wither.
Objectively, it means you pay them a cut of your income every month, whether you get the job or not. So you will continue jumping at your phone when an email locks in, because you have begun your investment.
You were not a slave to notifications. Now you are. They saved a seat for you.
What about TikTok?
Well, here’s what Drake has to say:
Wakin’ up to public statements about my private life
I can never sleep ’til mornin’ on all my quiet nights
But you can rest assured that my mind is right
Every night before I sleep, my TikTok Lite app sends me a goodnight message.
It’s not about wishing me a good night. It’s to make me click that link. When I downloaded the app, just so I could increase my reach for the festival I intend to build, I noticed a pattern. In the morning, and when darkness settles. Unnecessarily, but intentionally.
Have you ever wondered why the notifications pop up at the top and not the bottom? Our eyes are often on the upper half of the phone. The lower half, which typically gets covered by our fingers, is hardly scanned.
Even the keyboard is committed to memory, so we punch the buttons while seeing the immediate output on the upper half of the screen. And while we type, another notification pings.
X has recently been adding notifications of people I don’t know. Only when I log in to share content with the members in my community, Alternative Viewers, do I see these notifications. Who told them I wanted it?
Is it a notification if it does not involve me?
No, it’s a stunt. And here’s my hypothesis.
They don’t need to send you content you are familiar with. They just need to send you what they have already mastered. They have known the metrics, the virality, the audience the person (account) has, and want to see if you will click that link.
Once you do, they will continue sending similar content.
Now they’ve hooked you. Basically, the Gruen transfer, but stretched out to online users.
Instagram will also send you notifications of people you follow who have posted a story or reel. Why? What makes you think I want to know that now?
Oh, and if my pic or video gets fifty likes, I get a notification. I should be pleased. Why not? I would then automatically click the link to confirm the obvious. Or maybe it’s not too obvious. Maybe it’s 51 likes. Or 67.
Robert Cialdini already gave us one reason why we remain hooked — the fear of missing out. FOMO. Missing out can be painful.
When you lack the funds to pay for a trip all your friends will be attending, then you know you will miss out. But when it’s free and up to date, missing out is optional. Well, not strictly optional. The notifications make it feel like missing out is you getting out of touch with reality, with the common happenings of your agemates, of your friends, upcoming events, and most importantly, people you don’t know and might never meet.
All this plays into distraction.
A notification is bound to notify. And indeed, they do notify. But if we’re to summon the wisdom of Garrett Hardin, it helps to remember that words do not just convey thought, they prevent it.
It will be called a notification. Operationally, it will serve to distract. Sometimes the distraction may be welcoming. I have a hunch that it hardly ever is. Mostly, it just consumes your attention.
Here’s how Drake describes notifications:
Get lil’ updates, texts in my inboxes have been poppin’
And the fine print is hidden in a little button called the Do-Not-Disturb.
On my phone, it’s right there at the top, activated by a single touch. It occupies the upper part of the screen, where all notifications pop up. But if I don’t activate it, I implicitly welcome it.
The responsibility has been absolved. They can continue to flood your phone. You have the power to shield them out, but it’s an opt-out decision. I fail to find how that is not manipulative. Modern-day vampires don’t have fangs.
What I’m trying to say is…
Your device is like your house.
Modern-day vampires do not fear the sunlight or garlic. They feed off attention.
But you don’t need a gym subscription to stop their endless tyranny. You just need to close your door and prevent them from getting in.
Drake further reminds you:
Distractions will do you in, in the truest sense.
You may not be able to unplug from social media, but you can control the inflow.
So, please, use that DnD button often.
This song inspired some of the lines used in this article. Source — YouTube