I very much agree that there is a balance to be struck, and messages designed for people to read should be composed with that fleshy audience in mind. However,

I very much agree that there is a balance to be struck, and messages designed for people to read should be composed with that fleshy audience in mind. However, if a polite message goes unread, the effort was in vain. And getting computer users who are not techies to actually read messages is very difficult. I've found brevity helps a lot. To your point, though, it may be the case that if all messages were a bit more empathetic, people would stop ignoring them so often.