I just ignore them completely. They don’t exist for me. Depending who it is, I can say “I didn’t have time to listen to it but next time if you text/message I can probably get back to it faster.”

I’m not a hater but I understand the sentiment. I only exchange audio with very few people I feel comfortable with we both want to listen to our shit for that long, and I never expect a quick reply.

Randoms or new acquaintances sending audios without asking permission first usually annoy me.

Someone does this in a group chat I’m in, it drives me crazy.

It’s so inconsiderate too. If you want to use your voice then use voice-to-text and send a text message.

put the phone to my ear

Clearly you would look more normal if you blast it on the speaker while holding the phone in front of you, like everyone else. /s

I’ll make one exception for audio messages: the other person being in a situation where they cannot easily type the message, but it’s not an emergency. Hands full, driving, inclement weather, etc. I take it as an implicit “this message is important, but not drop-everything-else critical.”

I had a boss who would send audio messages constantly. I’d be having a conversation with him, he’d get a text message on his phone, stop talking to me to mess with this phone, do a voice recording, mess it up cause he’d whisper it so others wouldn’t hear him (we still totally could), repeat it, rinse and repeat until he got it right, send it, then would ask me what we were talking about.

I’m convinced people who use voice messages have no situational awareness and are potentially psychopaths