Do you ever lie awake at night contemplating your own existence, imagining your future and what it will bring, considering the poor choices you’ve made that may prevent that imagined future from becoming a reality when — *ding* — your phone goes off. And then again — *ding* — and again — *ding ding.* You rub your eyes and resurface here on planet earth, wondering what could be so important that would cause someone to send you multiple messages in a row? And then, you remember… THE GROUP TEXT. There is no first world problem more profound than the group text. It has become a seemingly necessary yet indubitably burdensome aspect of life. Yes, it allows you to address several of your friends in one place about that upcoming plan you’ve made or are trying to make. Indeed, it gives you a safe haven to sound off on The Walking Dead finale in unison. Sure thing, it provides you the platform to create a virtual hang sesh when a few of you are feeling particularly lonely on a Friday night. But at the end of the day, it’s just like the latest Justin Bieber hit song — we know we need it but we’re pretty fucking tired of hearing it after a while. What makes the load of the group text an even more difficult one to carry is that one or more of the people involved in it are pure garbage whose only intention is to make your life a living hell. Or maybe it just feels that way. That being said, here are the 5 worst people on your group text.
The Jokester. There’s always that one friend who thinks it’s their sole right and duty to prove their wit and hipness via group text. They have all of the latest gifs and memes on queue for when their moment is to arise and when that moment does inevitably come, they fire away. Those of us who are truly unlucky have another friend on the chat who likes to spar with the Jokester, thus creating a practically inescapable web of quirky images from which any one of us would be lucky to make it out alive. While the Jokester can sometimes be entertaining and delightful, you will never get anything accomplished as long as they’re on your group text, and you certainly better consider putting your phone on silent until their fingers tire or the subway tunnels cut off their connection.
The Incompetent. It’s safe to say we all have a friend we deeply love and cherish but simultaneously want to strangle, and I’m willing to bet much of that hostility stems from the group text. Because they just so happen to be the friend that wants to be involved in whatever’s happening, but does not want to follow along in order to know what’s happening. They’ll drop a line in every now and then, usually irrelevant to the conversation at hand, and a few hours, days or weeks later will ask for a recap of what they missed. You know, those words on that screen that they can just scroll up to and read themselves? I understand just as well as anyone else that group texts can turn into a hellish mishmash of shit that doesn’t seem worth reading along with, but when it becomes chronic behavior to ignore and ask for CliffsNotes, I simply cannot help your incompetent ass.
The Grumbler. The Incompetent sucks for sure, but equally if not more frustrating is the friend who doesn’t want to be involved so they bitch about being involved when they instead could just as easily leave the chat. You know ’em, you love ’em, the person who can’t just say no to doing something, they have to actually express the offense they feel for having even been asked to join. Why would they want to do that uncool thing you’re going to do? Why would anyone?? It’s the person who has something to say about everything and it’s just about always negative. You imagine them sitting unhappily at their desk eating Cheetos or on their couch swaddled in multiple Snuggies, wondering where life went wrong, unaware that their attitude is their biggest problem and then they remember text messages exist. And they pop open that text bar and go to town on your ass because it’s your fault their existence is meaningless and it’s definitely your fucking fault that you felt the need to include them in a casual conversation about live music. Haven’t you heard of the radio?! Now leave them alone, please, as they sit here and revel in misery instead of pressing two buttons to release them from this private text hell.
The Supersonic. This repeat offender doesn’t exist solely in the group text world, but it’s certainly the worst place for them to be. Don’t you miss the good old days of SMS? I like to think of it as vintage Twitter — you were given 160 characters to say everything you wanted to say, review what you’ve said and then… send! At that point, you would wait for a similarly thought-out response, followed by a rinse-and-repeat-type scenario. It’s too damn easy to text now! We can send so many messages in a row and they’re delivered instantly, and we can see that they’ve been delivered and move on to the next thing we so desperately need to say. As a result, you’re going to have the people that send 5-7 short, pointless messages instead of taking a fucking minute and collecting all of the information they want to share into one succinct paragraph before hitting the send button. I long for simpler times when it would have been more of a burden to the sender to create a new message for each meaningless thought they had than to prepare something complete and whole to say. Now we, the poor recipients, can only sit and wait as they rapid fire away their word vomit in our direction. What a life.
The Phantom. This is by far the most disconcerting of the bunch, but also the most tolerable. That is, because they never speak. It’s that friend who doesn’t want to be involved in whatever’s happening, so they stay on but straight up say nothing. Not a peep. The weird thing about this person is only that they haven’t made the mutually beneficial decision to get the hell out of the group text. They just allow their phone to act as some sort of text dumpster. Are they voyeuristically reading along? Are they just that fucking chill that they’re not bothered by the notifications? Are they not fluent in text functionality? DO THEY EVEN EXIST? It isn’t clear at this moment and by the time this went to press, we received no comment from any known Phantoms. We must now live in wonder.
Yeah, texting is great. It’s a magical land where lulls and awkward silences do not exist. You can pretend to laugh at or care about the futile shit your friends are talking about when in actual fact, you don’t care at all. Like, not even mildly. Your tone of voice would have been a dead giveaway; they’d be onto you. But here, all white liars live in harmony. Please don’t be mistaken, however — it is still a dangerous place. A place where your day can be ruined by the simple sound of a notification. A place where people can be the absolute worst versions of themselves because their idle hands must be busied. There will always be those who joke unnecessarily, who lack reading comprehension skills, who would rather grunt than giggle, who have rapid fire fingers and stagnant minds, who are mysterious in a bewildering way. I see no simple or immediate solution to this problem. But I hope with these tools, you can find some way to accept the darkness that waits behind your locked phone screen, ready to pounce and ruin your day. And I hope you choose to accept that anything, even this, is worth enduring in order to avoid holding a telephone to your ear and engaging in old-fashioned spoken conversation.
Better Off Bare 