Always A Text Away!

Staying in contact with family and friends is an objectively good thing.  It’s nice to know a bit about what shenanigans your family is engaging in while trying to subsist without your lovely presence, and to receive advice on why you NEED to binge-watch Westworld right now, c/o your friend who stays up to date on Philo’s capabilities.  Occasional back and forths like these are informative and allow you to feign a bit of closeness, even if your family is thousands of miles away.  But group chats can spiral out of control (i.e. Britney circa shaved head phase).

Group chats in general have some irritating (to say the least) consequences.  They eliminate any possibility of ever leaving your ringer on again if you don’t want to consistently receive glares from everyone around you.  And leaving your phone on vibrate isn’t much of an option either, unless the prospect of having a vibrator in your pants at all times is something you’re into—in which case, to each their own.  Group chats also make it incredibly dicey to be a dodgy asshole.  You’re placed in a tough spot when someone from a group chat has individually texted you, you need to text something in the group chat (planning when you’re departing for chyken finger Friday obvi), and you also are attempting to ignore that individual text.  Now, you are faced with the horribly hard decision of either being a decent human being and texting the person back, or staying true to your asshole tendencies and clearly indicating you’re ignoring that text by texting in the group chat.  Tough stuff!  Sometimes group chats can even make you sad.  When nobody responds to your carefully crafted text in the group chat, it’s a tad disheartening :’-(

Group chats with your friends have their own particular set of issues.  Somehow, induction into one has come to symbolize some form of friendship—don’t you love the way us millennials do things??  I have heard horror stories about how in the middle school game these days, getting kicked out of a group chat is the ULTIMATE in petty girl drama.  And I thought the Google Buzz days were wild…  Perhaps an equally shitty experience would be catching your friends texting in a group chat without you out of the corner of your eye and having to act like you didn’t see it while actively fighting back the tears–stay strong.

Family group chats have niche problems as well.  You probably feel an obligation to be a good kid and laugh at the things your parents send in your group chat.  But you can only fake laugh so much at the Mr. Krabs meme your parent discovered approx. 4 months late in their quest to be ~hip~.   Maybe your best bet is to just mute all of your group chats.  But, let’s be real, inevitably you will cave and this will be you:

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