Nowhere is safe from Slack — not even your dreams

Amber Bouman recently had her first Slack dream — or rather, nightmare.

"I don't remember the entire dream very clearly, but I believe there were missed notifications that my manager was referencing to explain why I was being let go," said Bouman, a community editor at Engadget, in a Twitter message.

Slack has engrained itself into U.S. workplaces in the past few years, changing everything from office operations to social dynamics. Thanks to its mobile app, most users aren't ever more than a few seconds away from their corporate hive mind.

Missed Slack notifications can haunt a person's every waking hour — and their sleeping hours too. Bouman said she doesn't dream about work that often, but the dreams do tend to occur during stressful periods.

"I definitely recall that I had neglected to respond to a coworker's [private message] for three hours, and that was the reason I was getting canned," she said.

There's nothing quite like Slack. It's not the first workplace chat program, but it is by far the most immersive — and engrossing. In just a few years, the app has accrued millions of users, with the company behind it amassing a valuation of several billion dollars. Amazon has reportedly explored an acquisition of Slack.

Its success is an indication of just how much Slack has embedded itself in the lives of its users. Originally billed as a way to reduce email, Slack is now closer to a neural net. Its notifications, which can be set off for any variety of reasons, are akin to a digital tap on the shoulder — several dozen times a day. In an age where phrases like "work/life balance" are common, Slack ensures that nobody is ever entirely away from work — thanks primarily to its smartphone app.

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Work dreams are nothing new, and Slack's ubiquity meant it was only a matter of time until it was sneaking into dreams.

Libby Nelson, a policy and politics reporter at Vox, said she's had a few dreams where Slack has been present, though they weren't stressful.

She does, however, find it weird to have Slack in her dreams.

"My Slack dreams are not stressful other than that I found it very alarming that I dream about being on Slack," Nelson said.

Nelson noted a correlation between Slack dreams and times where she's working long hours and on Slack consistently. She said she tries to put the app aside when she leaves the office, but added that's not always possible — particularly when reporting on politics in the past year.

She added that she generally likes Slack, but does have reservations.

"I have so many conflicted feelings about Slack and I would expect anybody who works on Slack does," Nelson said.

Salla Hänninen, communications manager for SpaceNation.org, similarly said her Slack dreams aren't very stressful.

They are, however, frequent even when she's not working.

"Once I remember dreaming about Slack during my holiday in Lapland [Finland], but then I realized quite quickly it was a dream since I deleted Slack from my phone for the duration of my holiday and hadn't touched my laptop in days," Hänninen said.

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Dreams remain a mostly misunderstood phenomenon, with popular dream interpreters sharing more with astrologers than astronomers. The few academics who do study dreams with rigorous, scientific methods can't necessarily explain what dreams mean, but there are some theories on why we dream what we dream.

Dylan Selterman, a lecturer at the University of Maryland's department of psychology, said that work dreams are common, as are dreams about particular computer programs that people often use.

He noted that there are two prevailing theories in the academic study of dreams that pertain to these kinds of dreams. The first is the continuity hypothesis in which people simply tend to dream about what they experienced during the day. Thus, people who use Slack a lot during the day tend to dream about it.

The second is a bit more involved. Rosalind Cartwright, who has been one of the leading sleep researchers for decades, found that dreams about particular people and topics could have an emotional impact — usually with a positive outcome.

Cartwright found that people who have gone through a divorce and are suffering depression can show an improvement in mental health after dreams about their former partners. Another study showed people who are trying to quit cigarettes have been more likely to have success if they dream about smoking.

"They suggest that dreams are helping people work through either emotionally significant ideas or problems or some ongoing, of what scientists call, chronic concerns," Selterman said.

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Selterman noted that the benefits of dreams — while still theoretical — aren't necessarily limited to happy dreams.

"It could be that even if you have a negative dream that your mind is kind of working through the problem," he said. "Even if it's unpleasant, there might be a long-term positive outcome."

This post has been amended to accurately reflect Libby Nelson's name.