Summary: When machine systems speak but humans mishear, a lot of time and patience is wasted. That’s what happens when a structured API error message is misunderstood as a story or meaningful article. In this post, we’ll strip away the confusion around data formats and clarify what’s really being said when you see a JSON response about account errors—not fables, not news—just cold, structured facts with a cause and a fix.
What Is a JSON API Response?
To cut through the weeds quickly, JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) is a lightweight format for storing and transporting data. It’s used extensively by APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) as a structured way to communicate between systems. Think of it as a standardized digital form letter—just fields and values, no editorial content, no opinions, and definitely no plot twists.
When an API sends a JSON response, it’s not trying to entertain you or tell you a story—it’s giving you raw facts that a machine can parse and use. These might include user data, location coordinates, or, in this case, error messages explaining something went wrong during your request.
What Happened in This Case?
The text being referred to is a JSON error response, not content meant to be read for insight or analysis. It likely looks something like this:
{
"status": "error",
"message": "Insufficient account balance."
}
This is not narrative. There’s no character. No conflict. No arc. It simply means whatever service you were calling—perhaps to create an ad, initiate a transaction, or access premium features—couldn’t fulfill the request. Why? Because there wasn’t enough money in the account tied to the request. That’s it.
Why This Matters—and Why People Get Confused
Too often, we forget that much of what we encounter on platforms appears structured, deliberate, maybe even meaningful at first glance. But machines don’t tell stories—humans do. That error message wasn’t written to persuade or inform broader audiences. It was built for troubleshooting, not storytelling.
This kind of confusion thrives in marketing and client-facing environments involving automation, where non-technical users see machine-readable data and expect human-readable context. Let’s be clear:
- This is not content to be rewritten—there is nothing interpretive to be found.
- The purpose of the message is diagnostic, not informative in the conventional narrative sense.
- The structured nature of JSON means the data is meant to be acted upon by systems, not read by readers.
Why You Shouldn’t “Fix” This Type of Message By Making It Flowery
Attempting to extract a “story” or rewrite from a JSON error wastes time and muddies the signal. The message is clear. Instead of trying to “reframe” it, focus on what actions the data demands.
Chris Voss teaches that communication is strategic. Mirroring is about reflecting what the other side is actually saying—not what you hope they’re saying. When an API says “Insufficient Account Balance,” the right mirror response is: “So there isn’t enough credit on the account to complete the action?” That’s how machines and negotiations both work. Clarity, not creativity, is currency here.
What’s the Right Response?
If you’re a developer, this isn’t the moment to embellish. Instead, design your app or tool to interpret these messages for users in direct language. For instance:
- User-facing output: “You don’t have enough credit to perform this action. Please update your payment method or recharge your balance.”
- Internal logging: Maintain the raw JSON for audit and tech teams:
{ "error": "insufficient_balance" }
Each speaks to its right audience. One is actionable. One is interpretable. Neither pretends to be a story.
Who Needs to Know This and Why?
If you’re working in content, marketing, UX/UI design, or managing client-facing tools, you must be able to tell the difference between a machine-readable message and a narrative. Mistaking one for the other creates noise, confusion, and unnecessary work. Worse, it creates a false impression that someone somewhere “wrote this badly,” when in fact, no one wrote it for human reading at all.
The same mistake happens in sales funnels and digital automation—where bots send malformed tokens, error codes go unhandled, and the front-end experience just throws blank data blocks at the user. Knowing how to interpret JSON is no longer optional for marketers and sales teams managing automation—the illusion of ignorance breaks customer trust.
Using the Error Constructively
Returning to Cialdini: let’s think in terms of Authority (you being the technical leader), Consistency (do your tools respond the same way across scenarios?), and Reciprocity (do you give users clarity in return for their attention?). If so—then an error message becomes part of your customer journey, not a dead end.
Final Takeaway
Attempting to interpret a structured error message as a story doesn’t help the user or the system designer. These are not stories—they are status reports. Your job is not to rewrite them into prose but translate them into plain meaning. That’s marketing done right: not inventing meaning, but revealing what’s already there with more empathy and less friction.
If you’re receiving, displaying, or trying to rewrite programmatic messages, keep one question at the center: “What’s this really telling me to do?”
And when users get confused, don’t ask: “How can I make this sound nicer?” — ask instead: “What’s blocking clarity here?”
No, this wasn’t a story. But it could be a useful lesson. If you’re willing to ask the right question.
#JSONErrors #APIDesign #UserExperience #TechnicalMarketing #DeveloperTools #MarketingWithClarity #ChrisVossNegotiation #CialdiniInfluence #PlainLanguageWins
Featured Image courtesy of Unsplash and Patrick Martin (UMlT0bviaek)
