Two Blue Ticks
6 minute read
I loved writing letters. Long, drawn-out, elaborate, indulgent letters. Double-sided, often with drawings, sealed with perfume and stickers, and occasionally including other (very important) material: mixed tapes, pressed flowers, magazine cuttings, as you do when you’re 14. I would write for hours: passionate telling descriptions of my summer fling and the annoying French exchange who kept stealing my Sony Walkman. I miss those days, those personal, nuanced, unfolding moments you lingered over on paper. There were also less romantic letters: Blue Peter and Jim’ll Fix It (I wanted to meet Bucks Fizz… my 80s idols) and in school my letters morphed into humorous comic books that circulated the class under desks. I suppose the point is, I like storytelling, I miss storytelling. Writing those letters required time, dedication and patience which has ebbed from my life somehow along with paper and letters, replaced by the familiar ping of a text or WhatsApp message. Now we are encouraged to pour our thoughts into a moment of messaging – a stream-of-consciousness dump that we forget as soon as the next ping arrives as it drifts off, floating in the digital ether.
In an era of instant gratification, we are becoming reliant on the immediacy and intimacy that WhatsApp creates. Conversations are a jocular, short-hand, fast-paced stream of steadfastness that can often be overwhelming, those two little blue ticks synonymous with successful delivery and growing levels of anxiety when there’s no reply.
And when more than two people chime in with their views on whether almond butter constitutes a nut-free school lunch option considering it’s actually a ‘seed’ (bet you didn’t know that… WhatsApp is actually very educational) or whether the neighbourhood bin collection should change to Mondays, it can feel like a pestering toddler.
There’s no denying its strength, particularly in the last year when everyone has been locked away, it has provided a much-needed bridge, bringing people closer together, providing a platform that captures the nostalgic, the drama, delivering useful, top-line information and connecting families and friends otherwise miles apart. A new study by researchers at Edge Hill University found that spending time interacting with friends and family on WhatsApp is good for a person's psychological wellbeing. In fact, people who spent more time on the popular messaging app reported higher levels of self-esteem and less feelings of loneliness.
But at times riding the WhatsApp wave can be an emotional rollercoaster from which there’s no escape. Once you’re in a group it’s like digital quicksand with little chance of removing yourself, unless you’re my very-brave-who-shall-remain-nameless friend, who casually ‘stepped out’ of one particular group, weary of the relentless tide of Covid-theory chatter without so much as a one-liner explanation.
We’re a bawdy group of friends who trade on big laughs and personal woes. Poking each other with choice barbs is our currency and everyone is in on the ruse except when it took a dogleg towards conspiracy theory territory and fell somewhat silent. It took several days until someone commented and then… digital tumbleweed, everyone afraid to point to the obvious culprit. There was a splinter group in which (redacted) explained why she left the group and why (redacted)’s theories on Covid were ‘wrecking her head’. It would be important to note here that the first rule of a WhatsApp splinter group is that you don’t talk about the WhatsApp splinter group and in light of its fragility, it would be prudent to consider choosing a wildly alternative name, perhaps something like “DANGER, THIS IS A SPLINTER GROUP” with a hazardous warning sign as the icon and codenames.
I also have to pay kudos to my dear old dad who lasted just one week on an extended family WhatsApp group, removing himself after my cousin’s hour-by-hour account of a day weeding her garden. “I could be listening to the radio in the garden instead,” he chimed, quite rightly. And then there’s the neighbourhood group, which is as much entertainment as community spirit except when number 17 took exception to the new cycle lane and launched a ‘no cycle campaign’ with 24-hour running commentary on its progress and took to sharing ephemera about other neighbours (who were still on the group) and posting random photographs of pavements.
Don’t get me wrong: WhatsApp is wonderful, ground-breaking even. When it’s good it’s brilliant – that connection with people we love the most, those groups that deliver intimate, inane and often hilarious snippets of communication are gold, the school groups that remind you of playdate arrangements or when it’s class photo day are a Godsend.
After a year of not seeing my parents, our immediate family group has been a virtual lifeline in place of the tormented video calls that zeroed in on the inside of my mum’s ear because she couldn’t quite figure out the ‘video bit’.
My postgrad college group titled LSE Lambrini days – a nod to my blurry postgrad year in London – is a scattering of friends around the globe all of whom are on different time zones. This often results in a communication lapse with several very drunk messages at 6am Eastern time being met with “I’m going to work” or 68 tangles of thoughts to which you have no energy to respond to when you wake up. But its snarky repartee makes me laugh out loud which, let’s face it, is rare these days.
But what if WhatsApp was to disappear overnight, along with other social media, and we had to depend on letters once again? Sure, we would miss the low-rumbling roll of snappy conversation but I wonder if what we penned instead would matter more. Safe in the knowledge that the recipient couldn’t respond immediately we would have time to explore and reflect on our thoughts in a way that WhatsApp manages to hijack. But then again I’m not sure Berni Sanders, his mittens and the cast of Friends would have quite the same impact on paper.
Orla Neligan, June 2021
Tell us what you think in the comments below…
join the conversation
share and comment below, we’d love to hear your thoughts…