No, I will not "let that sink in"!

People online will regularly cap a supposedly clever point by saying "let that sink in". But thanks to how human brains work, this is often counterproductive. And ****ing annoying!

Image by Karolina Grabowska

Have you noticed how people online like to tell you things?

I’m not criticising the practice, just to be clear¹. We humans are an extremely social, communicative species. There are theories that the use of words and language to communicate is a big part of why we evolved such powerful brains in the first place. And the whole ‘sticks and stones’ adage is, and always has been, wrong. Words can have direct emotional impacts on us, which can be perceived as tantamount to actual pain.

Words matter to us, basically. That’s how humans work. And taking something you consider to be an important insight, observation, or viewpoint, and using words to share it with those around you? That’s something everybody should have the right to do.

Unless you then tell me to ‘let that sink in’. Then you can piss off.

Look, I get it; posting something you think is insightful and ending it by saying “let that sink in”, that’s a familiar rhetorical cliché, a common linguistic flourish, used to underline the importance of the point being made. Presumably nobody who tells others to ‘let that sink in’ is doing so with any malicious intent. It’s probably the opposite.

But the thing about that is… I don’t care! It’s still ‘effing annoying! And I’m reliably informed that I’m by no means the only one who thinks so.

So what is it about being told to “let that sink in” that makes it so off-putting? Because it is.

Let that mounted water receptacle enter.

Photo by ato de

People don’t like being told what to do

There are many ways to use words to emphasise how important the point your making is. You can say “This is important”. Or “I can’t believe that!” Or “Get a load of this!” Those who appreciate brevity may want to start the statement with straightforward “woah!” There are a lot of options for emphasis, is what I’m getting at.

But the difference between all these and “let that sink in”, is that the latter is an instruction. Or a command. Like a Victorian lord snapping his fingers at a downtrodden groundsman. “I say, you there, yokel: comprehend these words and appreciate their value, there’s a good lad”.

It’s… grating, you know?

Basically, people don’t like being told what to do. And someone saying “let that sink in” is exactly that.

And we especially don’t like being given commands by those with no obvious authority or status to justify doing so. Like, if the country’s chief medical officer during a pandemic gives us instructions to avoid catching the virus, I’m probably going to follow them without question. But if someone I know literally nothing about makes a banal point in a BlueSky post and declares I must “let that sink in”… I’m not going to.

Because our autonomy is important to us, and we tend to respond with instinctive negativity to anything that even hints at reducing it. Hence many pedestrian crossing lights on set timers still have buttons. We may even actively rebel against the thing denying us autonomy, even if it’s clearly beneficial to us. This is the psychological phenomenon of reactance.

Ultimately, if your goal is to convince people, many of whom are presumably strangers, of the importance of the insight you’ve shared, telling them to “let that sink in” is not the way to go about it.

Grant that dish-cleaning kitchen fixture ingress.

Photo by Gül Işık

How thick do you think I am?

That “let that sink in” is a command from a stranger, or at least someone lacking the authority to dispense instructions to you, is only part of the issue. After all, saying “Remember this!” or “You need to take this on board” after sharing something wouldn’t be ideal, but it wouldn’t be as off-putting.

No, the thing about “let that sink in” is… it’s condescending. Particularly when it’s deployed after the most straightforward, easy-to-grasp insight. Which it invariably is.

You know what I mean. It’s always something like:

“Politician X voted for unpopular Policy Y. But Politician X has shares in a company that would benefit from Policy Y! Let that sink in”

The thing is though, mate, I don’t really need to ‘let it sink in’. This isn’t exactly a revelation I require several minutes to get my head around, what with having finished primary school decades ago. But bless your generosity for granting me the extra time I need to cognitively process this complex distillation of your superior wisdom, oh great sage.

…granted, this is probably more of a personal issue than a general one. But you spend many years working in a complex scientific field while still speaking with a pronounced Welsh valley’s accent, and I’m sure you’ll be sensitised to people assuming your intellectual inferiority too.

But the tacit assumption in “let that sink in” is still a thing. By deploying it, the poster is implying that their brief insight/point is one of such complexity and profundity, that the recipient will need some notable time to process the many implications of it.

And that’s if it’s original, and valid. Often times, it isn’t. “Let that sink in” often follows a point that’s objectively simple, mundane, or just flat out wrong. Which is even more infuriating!

Allow that descent through a liquid medium to cross the threshold.

Image by Polina Tankilevitch

You think you’re better than me?

Being given a command by someone, i.e. being told to “let that sink in”, logically means that they’ve assumed a higher social status than us, usually without justification.

On top of that, the implications of “let that sink in” discussed above, not only assume a higher status on the part of the poster, but also attempt to lower your status in turn. The whole “I’m clever, you’re slow, you must take time to comprehend my brilliance” elevates the intelligence of the poster and devalues the readers.

Again, we do not like that. We humans are very sensitive to our social status, and we reflexively object to it being challenged or lowered. Which is what being told to “let that sink in” does, however unintentionally.

This may overlap with studies exploring why people get legitimately angry at being told bad jokes. One explanation for this is that when someone tells you a joke, they’re effectively saying “I am going to manipulate you with my words, to induce a positive emotional reaction”.

This assumes two things; that the joke-teller is able to influence the recipient, i.e. they have higher status (in this narrow context), and that they have correctly assessed the recipients intelligence, meaning their joke will be effective.

And then they tell the joke, and it’s bad. But it’s not just that it’s unfunny; it’s that the teller assumed higher status and didn’t deserve it, and that they underestimated the recipients intellect, thus assuming they were lower status.

People subconsciously object to such things, and so we get angry.

A case could be made that being told to “let that sink in”, especially about an insight or observation that clearly does not require any sinking-in time, does exactly the same thing.

That’s the case I’m making, anyway.

Permit that ceramic fluid containing apparatus to leave the outdoor environment.

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The nuances of social status in the online world are covered at length in my latest book, Why Your Parents Are Hung-Up on Your Phone and What To Do About It

1. After all, I’m writing this in on a blogging platform, on a page I set up myself, so I could tell people things. It would be somehwat hypocritical to condemn others for doing the same.