On Thursday I texted my nephew to see if I could borrow his ladder this weekend. It is Tuesday and I still have not heard back from him. I remember seeing “Delivered” but I do not remember seeing “Read” – this wasn’t something I concerned myself with until recently.
Myxiety is ruining my life because of how these two symbols differ in the most agonizing ways.
Communication used to be so pure in 2005…. Wait, what?
Early 2020 too! You would literally call someone. They either answered or they didn’t.
If they didn’t, they’d listen to their voicemail and they’d get back to you when they had the time to call you back. No pressure to respond immediately and especially not a text blue check letting you know they were blatantly ignoring you. Since the dawn of the text message, I have morphed into a part-time CSI.
I am merely a forensic anthropologist over analyzer that took things too far. Now grey bubbles give me a full-time career diagnosing what they could possibly be hiding about their work life. In his situation he could be busy or his phone could be dead.
But what’s even scarier is that he could be purposely ignoring my text about a ladder because they symbolize some repressed trauma I’m unaware of. My buddy Mike once told me anytime you go over a minute without responding to a text you are “literally declaring war”. However, what Mike also is 46 and once spent $300 on some acne face moisturizer that was supposed to bring him back 10 years, so take that for what you will.
Suffice to say he has created an entire infrastructure built around timing of responses. Less than five minutes means they love you. Under thirty minutes means they care about you.
“If you’re going above two hours that they know you, but get past three and you might as well be deceased.” My brother was recently describing how his wife would “not want to talk” to him because he was waiting on her text to ask him what sounded good for dinner. He drove himself crazy thinking ‘just order a cheeseburger’ was關歐 so far down Satan’s toilet that he even began convincing himself she was trying to cheat with him (*threatens to pay child support in divorce) or look for some lazily unconventional robbers (“Crime scene: Voldemort”). The saddest part about Voldemort is how advanced technology has allowed for our expectations to be skewed.
Earlier this week I text my doctor to push back my appointment and they responded within 3 minutes. Fantastic service! Buuuuuuut that also means there was absolutely nothing else they could’ve been doing besides responding to my text.
Don’t they have patients that are sick? Emergencies? I’m about to panic about how quickly they responded just shows how high I’ve set the bar for myself.
Along with that, there’s also the psychological games these three little dots have me play. We all know when a person is clicking off the convo to type something else, but god forbid those dots aren’t moving. ONE BLEEP.
TWO BLEEP. THREE BLEEP. Your heart stops at the thought of not getting a response.
You’re sitting there astonished at what they could possibly take so long to say when the response you receive is: “k”. WAIT WTF DID WE HAVE LETTERS? !
Don’t make me tap out and get the newest Samsung. How pathetic are we that we have an option to “auto correct” to “Karen”? I’m pretty sure he meant to say, “k” because instead of “gonna”, I know “gonna have to omit the ‘d’ with you.
Don’t @ me.” The “d” was probably omitted for the second reply that then lead to copied drafts. My coworker likes to sit there and smile to herself knowing she “thrives off of making people confused.” Me waiting on a text to tell me she’s not ready to hang up on me also feels empowering and joyful as I listen to her explain her thought process: “It’s when someone takes exactly twice as long to text you back than you would take to respond to them.” She fake types as she’s shaking back and forth trying her best to switch between sending three texts at once. Her name is Sally, she’s 56, and we proceeded to laugh off the wall at each other.
Lets analyze her and you’ll have a clear mind picture of how imprisoned we have allowed this technological device to make us. The fact that we now know when someone reads our message shows our message was read and we still haven’t received a response. Turn your phone off after reading a text message.
There is no need to go back and forth. By Sally explaining that to me, I now understand that there is no going back and forth. We’ve already put so much energy into typing out that text, it’s only logical that they turn their phone off too to avoid being disappointed once again.
Last week I text my brother that I noticed a leak in his house when I was over and needed to get fixed ASAP. Boy was I mind blown when I saw his read receipt pop on like 2 seconds later. It has now been a week since I’ve sent that text and I have yet to hear anything back.
I’m actually concerned for my brothers well-being, because if he doesn’t care about water flooding his house than who knows what could be wrong with my brother. Or maybe he has just mastered typing words into his phone with zero emotion attached and not feeling the need to respond. Who knows, maybe I should take pointers from him because right now I’m still wondering why I should care either way.
The anxiety of waiting to hear back has created it’s own set of rules. Sometimes I’ll even type out the follow up text to say “Hey Did you get my text?” and then immediately delete it because I’m probably overthinking it. I’ve sent random texts that say “just wanted to check in”, like I’m doing him a favor by seeing if he’s okay instead of me wanting to hear back from him.
I’ve pretended to send texts to the wrong person just so we could start over. “Oh no ha ha I meant to send that to Karen!” Wait we haven’t had an initial text conversation and I don’t even know anyone named Karen. Slowly go back and change ‘said’ to something else.
There is no structure! We don’t even know how long it should take for someone to respond to us anymore because the spectrum ranges from too quick to not enough. Should you expect a reply within an hour?
A day? A Month? Someone please let me know because I think we’ve all forgotten what’s acceptable.
We’re stumbling around blind hoping and praying our phones that they don’t hate us as we sit waiting on the triple drip…drip..drip to either confirm we’ve been left on read or the person taking twice as long to text you back simply has a different phone life than you. My neighbors son gets off work at 5 and I’ll be damned if I didn’t hear that boy swear he spent more time on his phone today than he did working. “Instagram DMs are informal.
I’ll wait a day or even longer.” He explained to me when I stupidly asked him for advice. “Snapchats are different,” he continued —“ you have to respond within minutes. If they don’t reply to your snap back within 30 minutes, they might as well be dead to you.”
He was telling me this so matter of factly it made me feel as if he was describing the detonation codes to a nuclear bomb.
And while I nodded along, ya girl was thinking about how blessed I am to have grown up at a time where Ghosting someone didn’t exist. It was actually about staying Halloween spirits. What’s the most insane part about this whole story is how texting has changed me as a person.
I cannot remember the last time I went to the bathroom without my cell phone. I don’t think I’ve went all day without checking my emails over breakfast. More importantly, I can’t remember the last time I haven’t spent the last 10-20 minutes of my night staring at my phone only to wake up and be the first thing I see; or look at my phone before I even go to sleep at night.
Do this all with the consideration that we aren’t annoying our friends by not being quick enough responders. I was eating dinner one night and my phone suddenly died. I looked over at my notifications and saw three missed texts from the same person asking if I was alright.
Another friend of mine went as far as to send me a text saying he was going to call the police to do a welfare check on me. My phone was low on battery y’all. What’s funny is threatening my phone made me laugh so hard, but my sister-in-law also thought to herself how I was ignoring her when she asked about Christmas plans.
I hadn’t even been on there for 2 hours! News flash we literally have the perfect acceptable lie when it comes to excuses of not responding to someone. We say, “Oh Sorry, I wasn’t seeing your text” when we KNOW they read it that second they got the notification.
And if you ask me, if someone’s phone dies at 78% battery there needs to be a “my phone died” blacklist because I’m tired of that being another excuse as to why “I’ve been really busy”. My friend said that to me and chuckled because he literally watched YouTube all day about van conversions on the Seventeen channel. I repeat, we’ve mastered taking videos of ourselves and watching people shop… converting vans.
That are insane acceptable ways to justify instant responses. Technology is disgusting, it’s unfair, and instead of making communication simple like we thought it would, it’s polluted our minds with doubts and frustrations of wondering where the hell they are. Relating back to my nephew and my ladder, after staring at my phone reading my text I decided I would give him a call.
Low and behold he answered right away and even apologized for not responding.
He went on to explain that he was going to reply when he was driving but then forgot when he got into his destination. That excuse is understandable, but what about the other four days I spent questioning if he hated me?
Next time someone friend’s ask me for something I hope they hate me and respond within… four days. Instead of being rude, I’m going to teach people how to communicate. Or I can lead by example and reply to everyone ASAP showing them this is how it’s meant to be done.
I don’t want to sound better than anyone but…
I’M GOING TO WAIT A FEW MINUTES TO RESPOND TO THIS.
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