Just like some of us have had to learn how to convey our genuine emotions in our posture and tone of voice, sometimes we have to be similarly purposeful and thoughtful in writing so that our genuine intention is more clearly represented in the written word. Whether in person or in writing, the soft-skills of personability doesn't always come naturally. It can take purposeful, thoughtful composition.
Of course, it is possible to use those same tools to deceive, so yes, they can lead to fake and artificial results, but it depends on the intent of the writer.
The first step to learning to be warm is to practice being warm so that it's eventually authentic.
That said, TFA's examples are particularly saccharine. They remind me of when you're talking in good company and someone keeps feeling the need to use preambles like "I totally know where you're coming from and what you said is completely valid, I don't want to step on your lived experience, but let me come at it from a different angle with [...]" and I'm thinking "my god, just fucking say it."
There's nothing wrong with thinking about what you're writing.
In fact, a lot of modern problems caused by social media are directly caused by the fact people aren't thinking about what they're spewing out into the text field.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9648664/?ref_=ttep_ep4
Until I'd watched this i wasn't entirely aware how much I used this too in correspondence to infer joviality or some such.
Use messaging, meetings, wikis, issue trackers, any specialised tool you need to use to improve communication.
Unfortunately, I'm sure in 5 years no one will care and we'll all live with the spam.
There's just so much content pushed out by using marketing automation tools that is nicely written, but totally generic. If your otherwise nice email falls into this category, then it might just get ignored.
There's nothing more infuriating to me than automated emails pretending to be friendly, interested, you name it… to get your attention and waste your time while obviously not being worth the sender's own time.
If you want to get attention and leave a good first impression, earn it by making your emails undoubtedly specific.
I couldn't help noticing that we both have Software in common, as well as Helping the world be a better place.
Since we have so much in common, surely you'd love to test out my new logs as a service that is like Splunk but without the overhead of words and reasons "
The identity and attept at affinity is only useful if it's genuine.
Dale Carnegie explains where the line is and how to make sure one is on the right side of it.
A mathematical formula will always have the same result, but a linguistic formula will not. It is unique to every single individual to have ever existed. The words each have a hidden iceberg of meaning which is compounded by the context, not just within the expression, but within the receiver's life.
Things such as relationship problems, election concerns, digestion, PTSD, and background music can all dramatically change how an email is received.
I hope you grow beyond your cynicism.
An excess of empathy gets in the way of clear communication, and recievers should accept that their context is not completely available to senders. They have some responsibility to interpret charitably, and if they don't they're failing to follow basic principles of cooperative social interactions.
A cruder way of putting it: you shouldn't expect everyone who talks to you to be minutely concerned with your personal shit.
