The Cons of Voice Texting

I keep seeing a commercial for a phone (whose carrier I can’t remember; I thin it’s T-Mobile?), and the main selling point is voice texting. I.e. you say “Text Josh. Hey Josh you are super awesome. How do you do it?” Or…something like that. I’m not entirely familiar with how it works, but the IMPORTANT part you need to remember is that you say your text messages.

Now, there’s more than one phone with this capability. And I think you can get apps for the Droid and maybe iPhone to allow this feature. So I guess it’s becoming kind of popular or whatever. And I can see the convenience: Texting while driving is a problem, so voice texting could be really good. But, that’s not even how they advertise it. It’s two brothers, on two different boats, just using voice to text to text message each other.

Outside of driving, I can’t see WHY you would use voice to text AT ALL. It seems terribly inconvenient, since one of the plus sides to texting is that the people near you don’t know every single thing you’re communicating. Here is an example of how voice texting could go horribly wrong:

You: Text Joey. Hey dude I’m with this total asshole right now. What’s up with you?
Friend: Um, I’m right here. I can hear you.
You: Oh, no no no. I’m not talking about you. I have a tapeworm. I’m talking about my tapeworm. He’s an asshole. He eats all my food.
Friend: Oh…okay…I guess.
You: Yeah. Hold on, I got a text. Text Joey. Haha I just told him I have a tapeworm. He totally fell for it. What a stupid asshole. How stupid can you get?
Friend: Okay, you’re definitely talking about me!
You: NO! I’m uh…I was talking to the leech on my chest. I was telling him I have a tapeworm, which, I…don’t…um, yeah.

Etc. SEE? Do you see how easily that could have been avoided by texting with your FINGERS? Here is another example:

You: Text Jimmy. Dude, I got the cocaine and vodka. Our faces are gonna melt off tonight! It’s gonna be AWESOME!
Mom: Did you seriously just voice text someone about cocaine and vodka right in front of me?
You: Oh. No mom. Cocaine is powdered sugar and vodka is vegetable oil. We’re donuts tonight. And, the heated oil is going to melt our faces off.
Mom: Are you kidding me?

Once again, you could have easily avoided inadvertently telling your mom that you’re doing cocaine and drinking underage if you had just texted normally.

So remember kids. Unless you are driving, DON’T USE VOICE TO TEXT. It can have devastating effects!

Posted on: July 28, 2010

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2 Comments »


  1. Meg
    July 28th, 2010 at 9:37 pm

    Were the brothers busy rowing their boats or something? ‘Cause that would make a modicum of sense. Or maybe the brothers had just gotten the phone with that feature and were on their omg-new-technology honeymoon highs?

    But yeah, speaking of devastating effects, what if the text feature turns “How are you?” into “Who are you?” Or worse, what if “You looked so hot last night” turns into “You looked shot last night”? Or what if you say “I’m seeing Inception tonight” and your mom receives a text saying “I’m seeing Liam. Sex tonight”? I don’t know, are these even plausible examples?

    The drivesafe.ly app or whatever on Droid is cool, though. It’s funny when it reads your texts to you and mispronounces things.



  2. Sean
    August 10th, 2010 at 6:42 pm

    Have you ever used Google’s voicemail to text feature? Talk-texting is just as bad as that, so far it’s done Marion to Married and Rite Aid to Wife Eight as the ones that stick out in my mind, it’s a nice idea, but things really need to change before it can work the way it’s meant to.