It's not "squeezing a drop of humanity". It's making the case that chat pretends to be a synchronous communication medium, but is actually asynchronous. Somebo

It's not "squeezing a drop of humanity". It's making the case that chat pretends to be a synchronous communication medium, but is actually asynchronous. Somebody just saying "Hi", without followup, is saying "I expect you have nothing else to do, except wait for me". That's not "humanity", that's entitlement. I do draw a distinction to "hey, available for a quick question", because that is stating a request - the person sending it asks for a chunk of our attention. It's a deliberate request to move to synchronous mode. And to forestall the "but isn't chat just like talking to each other" - no, no it isn't. Talking is 150 words per minute, and it's delivered as a continuous stream. Chatting is (if we're lucky) 50 wpm, and it's delivered bursty.