There was a thread going around Twitter and Reddit the other day that asked “people who take days to respond to a text, why?”
A lot of the responses boiled down to some permutation of ‘I don’t want to stop what I’m doing and then I forget. By the time I remember it feels too late, so I don’t respond at all’.
This just blew my mind. I’m someone who strives to always respond as soon as possible. I can’t imagine just leaving someone on read. Them wondering if you were okay, if they had done something wrong, the confusion of it all, while you just blithely go about your day. Couldn’t be me.
I’ve speculated sometimes if this compulsion is a generational thing. But I grew up long before everyone had a communication device firmly attached to their person. When we left the house, unless you were at a friend’s place where your parents had their number - you were unreachable. We would make collect calls from payphones and our folks wouldn’t accept the charges - the universal message that it was time to be picked up.
Keeping in touch then took a lot of effort. If you wanted to talk to your out-of-town friends, you wrote letters. Like actual letters by hand that you put in an envelope, affixed with a stamp and dropped in a mailbox - having no clue when or even if they would receive it.
You had to phone people and speak to them to make plans. Conversely, if you accepted an invitation somewhere, you showed up. It wasn’t something subject to last-minute negotiations based on mood. You had to face the person when you cancelled. If these methods of communication made relationships more ephemeral, they were also somehow far more solid.
So, I don’t think it’s my age. I was a late adopter to cell phones. Even later to getting a smartphone - and that was only because someone gifted me a Blackberry. Before that, I took a while to start texting because you had to painstakingly spell out every word through the numeric keyboard, it was still just a lot easier to call someone.
But somewhere between the gift of a Blackberry and today, I became a compulsive responder. To not acknowledge a message felt extraordinarily rude. And played into one of my biggest anxieties - unintentionally upsetting someone. How could I not answer? I could never make someone feel - even accidentally - that they weren’t worth the 15 seconds it takes to reply.
Even in the last weeks of my father’s life, I dutifully responded to work emails at all hours of the day, sleeping and working out of my sister’s childhood bedroom. I’d send a heart emoji or an unconvincing ‘I’m okay’ to the friends who checked in, afraid to open the floodgates of all my real emotions, knowing I could never properly express them over text. So instead, I compartmentalized by focusing on the mundane while my dad lay dying two floors below me.
From the person who didn’t even text, I have become the person who maintains multiple text threads with someone. You might be in the group chat, and I will also be sending you a cute IG reel or a dumb tweet through DM. You might get all three within a five minute span.
I was out walking with a girlfriend a couple weekends ago, when I bumped into another friend who was also friends with the guy I was texting right then. I quickly snapped a pic to send to my WhatsApp chat.
With social media, particularly during the early parts of the pandemic expanding my circle so dramatically, I struggled sometimes with the overwhelming number of people I wanted to keep in touch with. To me, every single one of them deserved to feel important and receive the consideration of my attention. This is what I egotistically told myself anyway. What it really was my anxiety of inadvertently making someone feel like they weren’t worth my time, even when they very likely weren’t thinking much about me at all.
When text messages started adding a response emoji, it was a huge relief to me. A quick way to express “I see you and acknowledge you’ that I could easily fire off while doing something else.
I realized that my anxiety over not responding to someone was amplified by my father’s death. Even though we had time to make sure nothing went unsaid, his diagnosis to passing was so fast. It made me desperate that the last thing I said to someone I cared about would never be nothing at all.
I’m ashamed to admit that I have sent long text essays to someone who ghosted me during the height of my grief, begging them to talk to me - a real conversation - because ‘texting isn’t talking’ that have gone completely ignored. I just don’t get how you can completely cut out and cutoff someone without a word. Genuinely not seem to care if they live or die. Especially when you didn’t do anything wrong. Even though in my stronger moments, I tell myself that this is a reflection of that person and not me - I hate being unacknowledged, and the feelings of worthlessness it evokes.
To the people in these Reddit and Twitter threads who don’t respond, who forget - for them - there is nothing worse than a demand of their time. That someone would expect them to stop playing their game, or watching their show - or whatever was being interrupted, to reply. To them - that’s the height of rudeness.
These folks and people like me are diametrically opposed. I still don’t like how you can be in the middle of what passes for conversation now, and someone will stop answering. To me it’s akin to hanging up in the middle of a phone conversation, or getting up during dinner and walking out. To them - it’s just a pause in an ongoing conversation that has no defined end.
I want someone to say ‘I’m busy, I have to go’. Or ‘good night’ - something that signifies the conversation has been put on hold. I always do this. I’ve trained a few people to as well, but admittedly not many. And I love an unexpected phone call from someone to catch up. That they wanted to hear my voice. It means so much.
And of course, there are people who hate talking on the phone to the point that even ordering a pizza gives them anxiety. For someone social like me, it’s hard to fathom. Even when calling customer service, I genuinely ask the person on the other end how their day is going. They are almost always shocked, braced for anger and nothing else.
I grew up having hours long phone calls, twirling the cord around my hand and not wanting to be the first person to hang up - and I wonder if that’s where my reply compulsion originates. I still can’t be the first person to hang up, even now.
It’s difficult to imagine how we’ll be communicating 10 years from now. Mostly I don’t want to think about how old I will be then, how foreign everything will undoubtedly feel. Even now, I don’t ‘get’ Tik Tok. Why anyone likes to watch videos of people scolding/lecturing them about things they know nothing about, or making disgusting meals out of Kraft cheese slices.
I guess all I can do is to keep trying to understand that what works for me doesn’t for everyone, and also try not to take that so personally. The people who matter will always be there, even if they’re not right away. And if you didn’t respond to the video I sent you of a panda falling, I hope you still laughed.
One of my college students tried to compliment me by saying, "I'd totally love to watch your TikTok videos!" I was like, I don't have any TikTok videos, I am literally here RIGHT NOW IN FRONT OF YOU, how about that??? :-)
As always, a thoughtful and thought inducing Musing. With texts or emails, I'm generally a quick responder, even if it's just a "read receipt" type of response. In thinking about it, however, most delays involve situations where an acknowledgment doesn't seem sufficient and I get stuck trying to find the perfect, or at least most appropriate, thing to say. Unfortunately, wait too long and I'm likely to procrastinate more.
You make me realize I need to be better ESPECIALLY in those situations.
Finally, I'm reminded of a fragment of lyrics from the song Sister Golden Hair by America
"I've been one poor correspondent
And I've been too, too hard to find
But it doesn't mean you ain't been on my mind."