Courtney’s Thoughts:
Well, readers, it has finally happened. After 10 years we have received a reader question. Now that we have crossed this threshold, I imagine the floodgates will open. Please, floodgates, open. Barry and I spend most months trying to remember if we have already tackled the topic at hand. Some fresh ideas would be very welcome.
So, we received a group text from a mutual friend asking (ironically) that we discuss group text messages. Now why didn’t I think of that? I am vehemently opposed to all things group – chats, texts, projects, emails (and the dreaded “reply all” option), trips, et al.
The timing of the request was quite perfect, as I was currently six months deep in a group text chain whose sole purpose was to organize a group trip. My worst nightmare. Allow me to tackle the former, before I delve into how the latter panned out.
Not every text message necessitates or deserves a response; however, we have been trained to believe that they do. We have also been trained that via text message, even the most mundane of information can be shared. So now because of texting we are oversharing, because via text you do not actually need a captive audience. As a result, I am receiving dozens and dozens of messages and now I feel the pressure to respond. And do you know what I dislike more than dozens and dozens of messages? Pressure.
In a group text situation, I now must also keep up with the multitude of replies. If someone likes a message, now I feel inclined to also like or “haha” it. Maybe things get crazy, and I must give it a double exclamation mark. I do not like this.
Group texts are small talk. I dislike small talk. Anything of a group nature requires managing the personalities and communication styles of multiple people, which complicates everything and therefore why I personally have been firmly in the anti-group anything camp.
That is until … my husband and some friends bid on a villa in southwest France at a charity auction, unbeknownst to me. I thought we were bidding on a local wine tasting until I was told, “I have bad news and good news. The bad news is we did not get the wine tasting. The good news is … We’re going to France.”
That was, in fact, not good news. As the information unfurled, I learned we were now the proud owners of a seven-night stay in a villa with two other couples. And the hits just kept on coming. Because I was the known entity of the group, the charity put the “win” in my name and therefore all communicating and coordinating with the trip company became my responsibility. So now, in addition to “winning” a trip I did not want to go on, I was also the trip planner. More bad news.
Thus began the six-month group text about all things France. Travel dates. Flights. Excursions. Fridge stocking. Car rentals. Bedroom configuration. Does the villa have toilet paper? You name it. We discussed it.
And then, before we knew it, the trip was here. My anxiety was at an all-time high, driven primarily by the fact that I wanted to still be friends with these people when it was all over. But no one’s anxiety was higher than my husband, who was worried about my worries. Sounds fun, right?
Guess what? It was. We returned three days ago from nine spectacular days in France – five in a group setting – and we had a ball. Together we discovered French villages, chateaus, and centuries-old chapels, we toured vineyards and tasted (a lot of) wine, cooked together, enjoyed chef’s dinners, a spa day, and lounged by the pool.
I fully relaxed and unplugged and for the first time in the history of my life. I did not work on vacation. I was too busy having fun with the best travel companions who shared our curiosity and appetites. It was sublime.
But while I may consider another group trip, please do not include me in your group texts. I’m meme’d out.
Barry’s Thoughts:
Like so many people who couldn’t find anything relevant to study in college, I was a communications major. While this did make me essentially unemployable for any job that didn’t involve writing juvenile humor, it also provided me with an actual academic background for this month’s column.
Because group texts are a fascinating medium for communication, albeit one we’re still trying to figure out. And I’ve found that what really irritates people about group texts isn’t a fault in the medium. It’s a fault in the user. Or rather, users.
Believe me, I understand the hang-ups that people have about group texts. Here’s a great example: This column was suggested via group chat that I received at 9 a.m. on a Saturday. By the time the buzzing from my watch woke me up, I was already a dozen messages late to a party I hadn’t RSVP’d to and was by no means dressed for. This was irritating, if only mildly.
One time, as I turned off airplane mode during a tight layover, I found that I had been added to a group text of dozens of strangers and one person I knew. And they were all yakking back and forth, liking and reacting to each other’s messages, blocking out my itinerary and boarding pass with bubbles upon bubbles. That was far more irritating. So, I muted the conversation and politely texted my friend asking to remove me.
Yes, it can be irritating.
But look around you. Irritation is the price of admission for life in the modern world. Back when people talked to each other on the phone like cavemen, there was a certain tacit understanding that you don’t call someone early on a weekend – because we’d had the phone for a century or so and we’d established that protocol.
We haven’t really had a chance to establish those protocols for group texts. This has all come at us too fast. And to make matters worse, each of us has a strict set of do’s and don’ts for texting that exists entirely in our own head. And we kind of assume everyone else follows those same rules.
But they don’t. They’re following their own rules, blissfully unaware of how many of yours they’ve broken by letting the entire group know the urgent news that they have emphasized a message. (And as a quick aside to the iPhone users out there from one of those Android people you despise so much – what on earth does it mean to “emphasize” a message?)
But they’re only breaking your rules because, in an increasingly isolated and lonely world, they chose to reach out to you. And maybe to a few dozen other people. To communicate with greater ease than humans have enjoyed since we discovered language.
Text messaging, especially group messaging, has simply made it easier to chat with a group of friends as large or as small as you’d like to chat with at that time. That’s the new medium. But it comes with a price. You agree to be subjected to other people’s preferred ways of using the medium. If you can’t square that with your own rules, well, just hit the ignore button.
