If it’s important, they’ll call

Sorry I left you on read

Like every 16-year-old who replies to her instant BlackBerry Messenger¹ texts within 5 minutes, I was baffled when my dad would leave his messages unread for hours.

“Your phone is right there in your pocket, you could easily respond to the photos your friends sent you,” I said.

"If it's important, they'll call," he used to say, sipping on his second cup of coffee before tending back to his score of aquariums.

I never understood his point until I got to college, a place affectionately called the University of Stress and Tension. Being online on WhatsApp at 11PM meant getting messages from my business course group chat saying, "Hey @Becky I sent you a deck 15mins ago and you're online now, can you take a look at it?" or posting my workout on Snapchat and then getting a DM saying, "Wow you are online to post but you didn't reply to my texts?"

My classmates weren’t in my room but they might as well have been sitting behind me and looking over my shoulder. With my online status exposing my privacy, I lost agency over my time. Over the years, I would wrangle more of my privacy back. I turned off my "last seen" status on WhatsApp. My phone is perennially on “do not disturb” so I don't get notifications. When the banner notifications that lived on my lockscreen haunted me, I eliminated notifications for WhatsApp and Instagram entirely.

In my current phone state, I have no idea if anyone messages me. My unread chat count on WhatsApp has ballooned to 117. While I do feel bad for not responding, I just feel so constantly overwhelmed. I didn't think I'd be that person because 1) I'm still under 30 and would be considered the generation who grew up with tech? 2) people who don't reply to messages are Too Important and I'm clearly not that and 3) it's ignoring people and I feel guilty.

The avalanche of inbound messages feeds into the growing overwhelm. It slips through the cracks of my IRL activities: full-time job, working out, hanging out with friends, writing, cooking, painting, etc. While I am constantly occupied with something, these IRL activities don't overwhelm me because I can create physical barriers. I can go home right after work if I want a night alone. I can leave a birthday party early. Whereas I can’t go non-existent on WhatsApp and email and LinkedIn and Instagram.

With every incessant ping, I drown deeper and deeper into a heavy current of incoming messages. I respond, but mygosh that person is online and blueticks my message and responds right back! How do I make it stop? I'm desperately gasping for pockets of air where the messages stop. I’d like to breathe, to slow down, to just live.

How messages get sent

What was originally meant to be synchronous texting became asynchronous when messaging apps like BlackBerry Messenger, WhatsApp, LINE infiltrated smartphones. In the early 2000s, I could chat with my best friend in Singapore over AIM because we had agreed to be online at her 4PM (my 3PM in Jakarta) on Tuesday after school. After a two-decade blink, trading text messages probably became the most ubiquitous form of communication. Many prefer it over face-to-face conversation.

Messages are usually sent at a convenient time for them and received at an inconvenient time for me. Multiply this by however many people I am conversing with on WhatsApp and I’m trying to have 100+ conversations at once². This is unrealistic in face-to-face conversations, yet we tolerate it in the digital realm, believing that technology can bypass the limitations of space and attention span.

My limit is an asymptote

In geometry, a curve can seem to tangentially reach a straight line without ever touching it. The straight line is called an asymptote. My digital social max capacity a.k.a. my limit is something I will treat as an asymptote, not a threshold that I wiill surpass. Perhaps university!Becky, frustrated at her phone at 11PM while lying on her dorm top bunkbed was 80% away from the limit. Now, I feel like I'm at 95%. When I used to feel guilty for blue-ticking people — opening a message and leaving them on read without replying — I now just shut down my phone because I simply can’t anymore. It’s too much. I’m Icarus, flying dangerously close to the sun.

My dad got it right all along. I don’t have to reply to messages when I see it. If it's really important, they'll call. 

Last night, as I was drifting off to sleep, I was thinking of a university classmate whose dog I was following through Instagram stories. Then I remembered that he had introduced me to his friend, and I don’t think I replied to that message. That must have been three months ago.

Thank you to folks whose async feedback I appreciate:

Harrison Moore

,

Josh Ponelat

,

Kelly Davis

, and

Lucia Agnelli

.

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Looking back: People’s surnames are signifiers of their ancestors’ trades, e.g. Smith and Miller. This Reddit post has some interesting facts. Thanks

Harrison Moore

for bringing this up in a three-way chat with

Josh Ponelat

last week.

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Update log:

• 📖 Reading The Millionaire Fastlane by MJ DeMarco (17% completed).

• 🎥 Watched Inside Out 2. It’s more deep than emotional (ok fine it is at some bits). This movie is a good “theory” on how memories > beliefs > sense of self. My therapist had to explain that to me but this movie did a real swell job at illustrating it.

• 🏃‍♀️ I’m introducing more cardio to my workout. I guess this is the journey to Hyrox??? I’ve never had a strength goal before. It’s nice to have something to work towards.

• 🎮 Playing Paper Mario RPG (2 chapters in) and Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (3 cases in). Good news: I love chapters in games and it helps me break up the pace of a long game. Bad news: I need to play one chapter in one sitting.

• 🏛️ Went on a solo date to museum for a black/white photography exhibit. I happened to be there on the last day. One of the staff kindly approached me and offered to explain the exhibition layout. (I was going in the opposite of the intended direction. It was an open museum plan so I couldn't tell). She even told me where the videos are playing. It made the exhibition so much better.

• 💡 Blocked off one day of a long weekend to do nothing. Instead of making plans with people, I got to spend it doing what I want. I highly recommend doing this.

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1. BlackBerry Messenger took off in Indonesia way before WhatsApp did.

2. I’m guessing this is what Ernest Hemingway was referring to when he wrote “gradually and then suddenly”. It innocuously started with a text. And then a two-way chat becomes a group chat. Then more groups for different purposes. Then a group of groups become Communities—a new WhatsApp feature I refuse to learn.