“I’ll be dead by the time you respond!”
Irritating WhatsApp habits abound: such as people blurting you a question asking how you are and then disappear for the rest of the day, not bothering to check their phone for your response. It’s almost like an obligatory pat of their dog on their way out of the house.
Or you painstakingly compose a message and WhatsApp it to someone only to have an emoji as a reply. Sometimes you receive a smiley or a thumbs up just seconds after you have WhatsApped the person, making you wonder if your message has actually been read at all.
However, that’s not the most annoying.
The most annoying are those who set their WhatsApp so that nobody can see when they were on it the last time or if they have read the messages people sent them, People who care about them don’t even know if they are dead or alive. (This way they are being selfish.)
That constitutes the most annoying of WhatsApp habits, concluded a recent poll.
My 90-year-old dad just armed himself with a smartphone a month or two ago and has learned how to use WhatsApp. By not hiding his activities, he enables me to check in on him on a daily basis to make sure that he has been active, meaning still alive. I mean, he’s 90, right? (Another positive outcome from my dad’s mastery of his smartphone is that through apps like WhatsApp, we are able to attain a level of heart-to-heart communication that we have never reached before. I believe our relationship has ascended to a new high.)
Yup, there is no need to be so secretive unless you need to hide your movements. (As if that’s even possible, nowadays.)
Even if I sleep late – for whatever reason and it’s none of your business anyway – and my “last seen” shows 3.30 am, I don’t mind others knowing it. Also, I reply to messages at a time that is convenient for me to reply. It doesn’t mean if some retard WhatsApps me at 3:30am, I will reply at 3:35am. This is not IBM, where some of the douche bags who work there time their emails to go out at USA time (meaning some unholy hours here) just to impress their masters in the US. I know because I was in that zoo for ten years.
There are times when I do not reply to WhatsApp messages, especially if the messages are from people who send crap, like stupid videos; hey, who the fuck needs to know that monkeys in Bulgaria can perform acrobatics, or a woman in China can stuff a whole roast bamboo rat into her piehole? Sorry, I don’t get turned on by streaming videos of retards trying to make up for their country’s years of famine. I also don’t reply to messages lambasting some non-local politician. Seriously what business is it of yours that Alexander Lukashenko is an asshole or that Kim Jong-un has hemorrhoids? Or how Trump is a “man-child”? (Everyone wants a bite of Trump’s ass these days.) Tell me some salacious scandals about our local public figures! Dig out more dirt on the diabolical Liews or the bullshitting Loh cousins and I might take a look. I also ignore quotes or passages from religious books. When you send me Bible verses, what the hell are you trying to tell me? I absolutely hate sanctimonious, holier-than-thou, self-righteous pricks !
Anyway, for those who have switched on WhatsApp to hide their “last seen” and all, do you have any reasons to hide? Do you really need to disable the the “last seen” or turn off “read receipt”?
I asked someone the reason why she has activated her “last seen” and she said “Because it’s easier to ignore someone when they can’t see you, unless you are both online at the same time. They can’t say you were online and didn’t respond.”
Clearly this person has issues.
It’s frustrating when I look at the messages I sent you on WhatsApp and not able to tell if you have read them or not. This can be prevented if I can see your “last seen.” If I see that your “last seen” is not too long ago, I can assume you are around and can WhatsApp you. If your “last seen” shows July 2017, I can assume you are probably dead. If I am not able to see your “last seen” at all, then I don’t know shit.
I know a CEO of a Fortune 500 company who has mandated that no staff of his uses the features to hide “last seen”/”read receipt” because WhatsApp is a useful tool for communications and when you use those features, you make the app rather pointless. Why call it instant messaging when you have rendered it non-instant. People might as well use a pigeon to send you a message.
If you are afraid that there will be consequences when people know when you were last on WhatsApp or when people know that their messages to you have been read, then, I suggest you enroll in a course on assertiveness instead of hiding behind a wall. (Translation: Grow a pair of balls.) Learn to push back, learn to say “no” to unreasonable requests in the nicest possible manner. Lots of people end up doing things they hate, because they don’t know how to say no. How difficult is it to say “I’m sorry, I’m unable to do this at this point in time”? There isn’t even a need to provide a reason.
And if you think you are being stalked, then make a police report. Or confront the stalker and break his nose.
And if you are afraid that money-lenders or insurance agents or freelance hookers will harass you, you can always block and report them.
By the way, when you use the settings to prevent others seeing your “last seen” or “read receipt” you are also not able yourself to see the activities of others or to know if they have read your messages.
That’s not a very smart thing to do if you have aged parents or ailing relatives living apart from you.
Unless you don’t care.
Let’s not wait until a foul smell emits from our rooms or we appear in the obituary pages before we know one of us have died.
Long story short, there’s always the phone. Phones are made for calls. If I can’t reach you, I’ll phone you.
Maybe you prefer that?
And at 3.30am, you’ll be in bed, and I’m sure to get you, right?
No, because you can switch off your phone.
If so, why carry a phone at all?
For centuries, people did fine without a cellphone.