Ode to the Slack Knock-Brush

Calla Norman

In 2021, I took on the first “office job” I’ve ever had, despite the fact I was largely working from my desk at home, surrounded by the sounds of children screaming at the playground around the corner. Sitting quietly, as I often forget to put on music when I go to work for the day, I’ve become accustomed to zoning in and out of it, lulled by the thrum of my refrigerator, the scuffling of the dog upstairs who gets the zoomies about a dozen times a day, and my coffee pot percolating.

My day is punctuated by what might be my current favorite sound: the Slack knock-brush. While the video linked here is subtitled “how stress sounds,” to me it has the opposite effect. I never thought a notification sound could be so soothing, but I personally love the knock-brush. It’s at the same time crisp and wispy, like a coworker brushing up against your table with a friendly request. I suppose that’s the intention. There’s just something about the clack-clack-clack shuffle sound that feels both distant yet warm, which to me might be my ideal work environment.

I began using Slack when I joined Soupbone, actually. I began associating the knock-brush with fun interaction—especially in May of 2020 when I joined, in the depths of one of the weirdest parts of the pandemic.  It was just getting warm again, but there was no one to see and nowhere to go. In the Soupbone Slack, people would send Mitski memes and notes on racial ecologies, reminders of a Zoom discussion next week and words of encouragement as many of us left undergrad and wondered how to even start to build a semblance of adulthood. The little knock-brush sometimes felt like neighborhood friends coming to my window and calling me out to play, like something out of an 80’s kid’s adventure movie.

When I work at home and hear the knock-brush, it’s an odd little burst of serotonin that pushes me out of my current task. Is serotonin the right word for it? I wouldn’t say it necessarily makes me feel happy to receive a Slack notification, though maybe I also like the sense that someone needs something from me, or has some tidbit of information I might find useful. Maybe the joy I get out of the knock-brush is merely some primordial scratch in the back of my head being itched, a weird sort of work ASMR.

Apparently I’m not the only one who feels this way. I found this… honestly quite adorable video of a team at a co-working space all impersonating the knock-brush with their bodies. By nature, the knock-brush does seem to bring people together. I love the idea of people trying to imitate the noise in a bodily way by slapping their puffed-out cheeks, clicking their tongues, or sipping tea and ignoring the assignment altogether. Maybe what I love about the knock-brush is that it’s so playful.

As I watch this YouTube video, I find it odd that I’m personally identifying with this team of millennial adults, wearing work lanyards and tech-uniform t-shirts. If you’d have told me a year ago that I’d be working in a tech start-up, in marketing no less, and that I was loving it, I’d have looked up from my Sedgwick at you like you were crazy. Before this year, the signals of my work day were filled with either lo-fi beats to study to, the spray of a hose at the farm I worked at, or the computerized “audio, ON” of my radio as I set up my earpiece before going in to work at the theater I basically lived in in college. All so physical, so grounded in the body. You hear the hose, and you know you need to move or you’ll get wet. The shorthand lingo you and your coworkers at the theater use becomes so second-nature you’re thinking in code during your walk home from an event. Now, I’m using words and phrases like “pinging” and “high level” on a daily basis.

I suppose the knock-brush has a way of pulling you outside of your body; it jars you out of procrastination or concentration and zaps your attention. Maybe it also gives you a visceral reaction, be it pleasant or stress-inducing. I personally love the Slack notification whenever I’m working alone, but it bugs the shit out of me when I go to work in the office. It’s like someone in public shouting a name that sounds just a bit like yours, so you whip around and find out it’s not for you.

The final thing about the knock-brush that I love is how it acts as a benchmark of my day, it signals to me that I’m being productive and affecting other people as I work. It feels sort of like scratching off a to-do list, which is ironic because usually receiving a Slack notification implies adding one more thing to that list. And weirdly, I like that! This contradicts so much of what I feel like I should want—to be independent, not work for anyone, be able to set my own rules and objectives. I should want to work freely, romantically, beholden to some higher set of standards than a Notion channel. But I’m beginning to realize that Slack ultimately signals interdependence, I think. It’s not some Outlook notification bursting in from the heavens with it’s jarring… I don’t even know what its sound is supposed to be. Slack is someone knocking on your door jamb, asking your help with something, or just coming in for a chat. And maybe, at this time, that’s all I really need, or want out of my day.