When did we ruin all forms of communication?

When was the time you answered a phone call from a number you didn’t recognise? How many of your text messages are you forced to immediately ignore or delete? How much of your email do you delete without reading?

Somewhere along the way, we managed to ruin almost all forms of communication with junk. I get calls, texts and emails all day, and I would probably estimate that I only engage with about 15% of all inbound communication, at best. The other 85% is truly garbage.

Scammers and phishers

What’s worse, it’s actually garbage that intends to do me harm. It’s filled with scammers and phishers and people trying to steal my money, identity and more.

I tend to be a very optimistic person, so I had to read my opening paragraphs a couple of times to make sure that I was not being an alarmist or a curmudgeon. But it still made sense when I read it all through. The world of communications is indeed out to get us, and there’s not too much we can do about it.

Being in advertising, I know why the volume of these unsolicited outreaches have increased. There’s a certain amount that I find acceptable — probably about half of what I get.

Lines of outreach

So, will these forms of communication ever get fixed? Or are we doomed to be poked and prodded by bad actors across all lines of outreach until we simply stop engaging with these formats altogether?

These are rather dystopian questions to ask. I don’t think phones are going away. Email is not going away.  Text messages are certainly not going away. We need these to be in contact with family, friends and colleagues.

Once again, the answer seems to sit with AI, which is quickly finding new ways to stay ahead of the bad actors. The platforms where these scammers operate are linear, simple logistical platforms. So AI can sort out scammers and spammers as quickly, if not quicker, than they can set up new numbers and an algorithm to test for phones.

Filtering out bad actors

There are also AI tools being launched to help the elderly stay out of the way of fraud, and  filter out the bad stuff altogether for the rest of us. Even Apple placed software on its newest iOS that reviews phone calls to filter out those bad actors.

I wish I could say that 2026 was going to be the year when consumers reclaim their primary forms of communication, but I think this is a slightly longer road. Sometime in 2027 or possibly 2028, communication lines are going to be freed up.

The trend toward the crapification of communication (yes, I have coined that term here) has to end. It simply cannot continue. Don’t you agree?