Group Chats

September 7, 2024 3:11 PM

The LARB's "Group Chats" (08/26/2024) gathers thoughts like Daniel Lavery's: "My experience of being in group chats has largely been one of a resentful sense of being corralled and press-ganged into consensus. To clarify: Whenever I create a group chat, I am Danny Ocean assembling a crack team ... for a daring heist." Also: US Magazine's "Celebrity Group Chats"; Kurt Ostrow's essay on friendship linking to Safia Elhillo's poem "Self Portrait With No Flag" & Aaron Edwards on how "these spaces, particularly for people of color, aren't like social media"; Layla Kinjawi Faraj's essay (ungated) on "how for her Syrian family, scattered by war, a ... group chat ... is everything"; Hannah Sung's essay (ungated) on "The Last Place Left Online for Real Conversation"; and Sophie Haigney's essay (ungated) on "How Group Chats Rule the World."
posted by Wobbuffet (1 comment total)

I have read every article and it's interesting how disparate they are on some topics and similar in others. And also how much some of them hewed to the "This article about chats is in (kind of) the format of chats" thing and how much some of them didn't.

I'm in a few group chats which I differentiate from Slacks which seem to be a different beast because at least for me once I open Slack there is a nonzero chance I will also be "at work" whereas that's not true with my group chats.

- the one that is just me and my partner and my sister for holiday planning and grabassery
- the one that is like fifteen neighbors, mostly older, not all of whom I know who they are (lol that celebrity article not knowing which phone number was Vanessa Kirby and which one is Joseph Quinn) who mostly are arranging going to dinner and a movie
- the one that started out as a few friends, mostly younger, to make fun of people on our local mailing list which people kept getting added to and now it's a much larger group of people (maybe 20) and a little more for setting up less formal porch hangs and "Anyone know a good source for farm stand eggs" type of thing. Now it's too big and we're thinking of setting up a smaller one which is just for shitposting
- the one that rises and falls with election season which is mainly just for sharing election results (I work the polls and I get them first, my friends are often running for election)

I have been added to others but those are the only ones I really participate in. I've always loved how every season of Taskmaster UK seems to spawn its own group chat that endures well past the end of the series.
posted by jessamyn at 4:34 PM on September 7