Are we communicating or performing? A very interesting article on how tech has changed the way we 'talk'

Mindful Discussions
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I came across a recent article in The Atlantic that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about, and I felt like it belonged here.

You might find the article behind a paywall- but the Internet Archive has is there in full:
https://archive.fo/20260222124530/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/social-media-literacy-crisis/686076/

This article discusses something called the “orality theory,” the idea that modern digital communication is slowly pulling us away from deep, reflective, written thinking and back toward a more oral, reactive, and performative way of communicating. Not just speaking more, but communicating as if we are always on stage.

One part that really stuck with me is the idea that so much of our communication these days is no longer about connection, but about performance. Texts, comments, and posts are carefully curated, edited, unsent, rewritten, and filtered through the awareness that screenshots exist and that anything can be taken out of context later.

I remember that I mentioned that one of my New Year’s revolutions is to TALK MORE (whether on the phone or in person) and text less. Not because texting is bad, but because I’ve noticed how much nuance disappears when everything is reduced to back-and-forth messages. Tone gets lost. Intent gets misread. Conversations stretch on far longer than they need to, often taking up more time and mental energy than a five-minute call ever would.

There’s something very different about spoken conversation. It’s imperfect, spontaneous, and human. You can correct yourself in real time. You can hear hesitation, warmth, humor, or care in someone’s voice. It doesn’t feel performative in the same way, and it doesn’t demand the same level of self-censorship.

This article helped me connect that feeling to a bigger picture. Why so many of us feel digitally exhausted. Why communication can feel draining instead of connecting. And why there’s a growing desire to slow things down, be more intentional, and choose tools that support presence rather than constant performance.

I’d genuinely love to hear your thoughts on this.
Do you guys feel that communication today has become more performative than personal? OR maybe you noticed differences between texting and talking in how connected you feel?
Perhaps there are ways you’ve changed your tech habits to make communication feel more human again, like with Mudita Kompakt?

Looking forward to the discussion.

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Social media has turned too many people into narcissists who feel the need to present themselves as if they were celebrities. I see it with my neighbours who are total nobodies, but act entitled as if they were the creme de la creme. You see it with Trump who thinks he is king. You see it on TV, you see it in people on the streets. It has taken over and robbed people of their humanity. There is no compassion anymore.

“The narcissist doesn’t speak WITH you, he speaks AT you.”
(quote by Prof. Sam Vaknin, the world’s leading expert on narcissism)

Doesn’t it feel exactly like that ?
I’m so glad I never joined the smartphone hype. Still using my ancient phone and turning it off after every call.

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I am in a Mcdonalds reading this post right now. I see 2 old people with coffees actually having a conversation, no phones on the table. Everyone else around me is staring at their phones consuming media. I envy these older gentleman. Conversation and reading are a dying breed. A few of us will keep it alive try to pass it along to our children but I don’t think it will ever survive big tech. Very sad.

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There is a guy in my town who walks randomly for hours, wearing a backpack and sunglasses, but ALWAYS staring at his phone, even when he crosses a street. No clue how he has been able to survive until now. He literally never looks up :confused:

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Little Thumbs of Fury

You may recall “Fist of Fury” as the title of a Bruce Lee movie.

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51D67UsNwaL174×250 16.6 KB

I thought of that title while on a recent flight, in which I watched a young woman using her two thumbs in a furious manner. She was using them to type LONG messages on her iPhone to various contacts, but pausing along the way to switch among the messages so that she – I am guessing – wrote just the right message to each contact.

Meanwhile, she also was switching between those messages and what appeared to be social media while keeping an ear open for the pilot to announce that all cellphones must be put in airplane mode.

I kept thinking, “Why does she not call each of these contacts for a brief chat? Those calls would be less time-consuming and more meaningful.”

Meaningless or Ephemeral vs. Meaningful & Memorable

My fellow runners and I often use email to plan our get-togethers for long runs, and we often use group texting via MMS to share photos from races and to congratulate one another.

The email messages are “just the facts” style and become meaningless after a get-together, and the group text-messages, with their way-to-go’s and race-day photos, are nice but ephemeral.

In contrast, when we dine together after a race or long run, the in-person conversations are meaningful and memorable.

Birthday Greetings

It can be tempting to text-message a birthday greeting to a friend or relative. Realizing how easy this is for me to do but how shallow this can be for the recipient, I recently switched to calling friends and relatives on their birthdays – calling three in one week.

I also made a call to the mother of a birthday celebrant, and we had short but fun conversation about the day that she gave birth to the celebrant.

Telephone-call birthday greetings and giving-birth reminiscences are much more meaningful and memorable than text-messaged ones.

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Love that movie!

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Brainworm of Fury ? :wink:
(You know who… :stuck_out_tongue: )

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I think people might be slowly waking up :slight_smile:

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I had to step away from social media because of this. As I mentioned in a previous comment, I’m a writer and for years I followed several fellow authors on Facebook and Instagram. I was really interested in niche novels. But in the last years it was all about me-me-me, look at me, look at my accomplishments, look at what I did. It was no more about the stories at all. I couldn’t tolerate it anymore and at the end of 2025 I deleted all my social media accounts. I also stopped writing, because I’m still trying to find my true voice.

In the real life, I find so difficult having a real conversation with someone because the other person is constantly checking notifications on their smartphone and smartwatch. Even if they’re interested in what you’re saying, they’re too easily distracted. I was one of them too, as I used to spend like 5 hours a day on my smartphone, so I don’t judge them. I just find this really sad.

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The youngest person in my running group will put his Google Android cellphone on the dining table when we gather at a restaurant after a run or race. He is interested in what the rest of us are saying, but he is too easily distracted by the lure of being able to look up something on his smartphone. If someone mentions a park or another restaurant while we are sharing good conversation, then he will unlock his smartphone and research the topic – at which point the smartphone is distracting him from our conversation. I find it sad.

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Oh I totally see that :frowning: I’ve been there: I too used to put the smartphone on the table and checking stuff from time to time. Smartphones are design to constantly attract our attention, this is why I think no app and no other stuff can really help us stay away from our devices. At this point, it’s no more a matter of self-control, it’s about realising how much we’re sacrificing on the “smartphone altar” and stop buying them. We don’t really have the need to have a little computer with us every day, every our, even when we gather with friends. I wish people will open their eyes in the near future.

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Thank You

Thank you again, @urszula, for posting this. An experience today made me appreciate this in a behavior-changing way.

An Experience Today

Check out this sequence of events:

  1. Someone famous in the USA running community died yesterday.
  2. Someone in my running group this morning announced it by group text, sharing a URL to a news story about the man.
  3. Saddened by the news, but given that my cellphone has no browser, I considered typing the URL into a browser on my computer.
  4. Instead, I called the friend who started the group-text thread and had a delightful five-minute chat – reminiscing about the man who had died, discussing how she was feeling after a recent illness, and confirming our next running-group gathering.
  5. After I hung up, I saw a response in the group-text thread from another friend, who wrote that she never had heard of the man, which surprised me, given that our training groups had overlapped for ten+ years.
  6. I immediately called her and had a nice chat – discussing how she had not heard of him and how I once had seen him speak as well as run (well ahead of me!) in a marathon.
  7. After I hung up from that second call, I noticed several more posts to that group-text thread – from more members of our running group.

It was at THAT point – seeing several more posts – that the word (your word) “performative” came to mind! Oh my goodness! I saw that group texting can cause us to craft our words with so much care that we are CURATING exactly what to say so that we look good in front of everyone else on the group-text thread.

Realization

That’s when I realized:

  • Group texting can be as performative as social-media posting!

My New Approach to Group Texting

Whenever possible and appropriate, I now plan to continue this approach that I started today of immediately calling a friend or relative who contacts me as part of a group-text message.

Why It’s Easy

It is easy to follow this plan for two reasons:

  1. A brief call is faster and more enjoyable than trying to craft the perfect text-messaged response.
  2. Each of the two friends whom I called this morning answered my call within one to five rings. Why? Each friend had just used her cellphone to start or continue the group-text thread and therefore had to be near her cellphone to answer my call! Calling immediately nearly guarantees reaching someone directly instead of my call rolling over to his or her voicemail.

The Kompakt Discourages Performative Behavior

Although my Sunbeam Wireless flip-phone makes it super-easy to dictate a text message, there is a downside. It can lure me into wasting time crafting just the right text instead of calling someone.

In contrast, when I had a Kompakt last year, still at MuditaOS K v1.2, I was able to sideload FUTO Keyboard to give me a similar voice-to-text feature. But, because I needed full group-texting functionality, I sold the Kompakt.

Now at v1.4, though, the Kompakt seems to have full group-texting functionality. But, the FUTO Keyboard’s voice-to-text feature will never be as fast and accurate as what Sunbeam makes possible through its Premium Service. ← THIS, in my opinion, is good news for Kompakt owners, as it encourages them to call instead of text – by typing or dictation!

Sunbeam’s flip-phones seem at first glance to be less likely than the Mudita Kompakt to encourage performative behavior. The opposite is true, when you consider how you can combine Sunbeam’s super-fast, super-accurate voice-to-text service with group texting.

Once MuditaOS K supports full voicemail functionality and I have more clarity about its operating system’s features and limitations, I look forward to switching back to the Kompakt!

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YES! 100% You know everyone else is reading it & you want to look good in front of others.

I know people do it because I’ve caught myself doing it too. I’m in a group chat on WhatsApp with a group of girlfriends. One time, one of them sent the group chat a picture of her baby. There was nothing particularly remarkable about the baby. Just a shot of her sitting there being a baby. Right after, there was an avalanche of “oooohs” & “aaaahs” and “OMG how adorable” - all the stuff people THINK they SHOULD say about a any baby.
So, there I was, the only one from a group not commenting about the baby.
Therefore, I felt like I had no choice…I had to comment about the baby & make it nice :slight_smile:

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Nice! You opened my eyes to this:

  • Group texting can be performative not only for those who carefully craft messages in a thread but also for those who feel compelled to join the APPLAUSE that others are adding to the thread!
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Yeah this was my issue with the Sunbeam, I did like it, but the speech to text was so damn good I was wasting too much time messaging people. With the Kompakt I use the stock keyboard , with no voice to text of course and I have to slowly type things out so it discourages me from typing long messages. I spend very little time on it which is the whole point. I find as someone with ADHD having the full black kompakt is also best because the pebble grey is so nice I just kept picking it up all the time lol. Now I have it in the dumbwireless wallet case so its just a big black block now thats not enticing at all, its just a tool I use when I need it

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I am happier for three reasons when I respond to a text message with a telephone call instead of with my own text message:

  1. I don’t waste time composing and re-composing and re-composing a text message, which the voice-to-text feature of Sunbeam’s Premium Service makes it easy to do.
  2. I feel more connected with the sender of the original text message.
  3. Every text-message sender who gets a call from me seems happy to talk!

^ Found it:

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