But you still know they are there, and that your colleagues should perceive you as at least casually interested in what the others are up to. Even if muted, these channels inevitably become another liability.
I think everyone knows and silently understands that the people responding/emoji-ing in those channels all day every day are doing so at the cost of work output, and that there are a lot of people working that aren't typing away about the last audiobook they listened to. I think you've created a stressful situation out of something that isn't inherently stressing.
Generating business value is not your only responsibility, though. Most companies expect you to be a team player, to stay in touch, to communicate across departments, and so on.
So depending on your work environment, communicating and responding quickly may be implicitly expected and not conforming may lead to stagnation in your career.
Yeah. It's either channels that you actively engage with or you effectively block. For active communication purposes the "you might see it" in-between option isn't really very effective. It happens anyway to some degree. But isn't ideal.
