If you have an iPhone – indeed any smartphone – chances are, you use WhatsApp. Ah, WhatsApp – the instant messaging service used to contact friends, call home, talk to whole groups of people at a time, all – for – free.
Cha-ching!
There are so many things to love about this app, it’s little wonder over a billion of us use it. (Even less of a wonder, perhaps, that it cost Facebook a hefty $19 billion to buy, back in 2014.)
That said, it is not entirely without fault. Indeed there are a number of reasons to kind of loathe it too. For is there anything else in our electronic lives that is more annoying and requires so much attention, like, NOW RIGHT NOW?
Whether you more love it or loathe it, here are some things you'll most probably have encountered with it:
1.) Wondering if anyone will notice if you leave the group.
2.) Deleting pictures from inside a group chat – to save on precious memory – and panicking they’ll be deleted from everyone else's chat too… and you’ll be outed as the person who didn’t care which outfit that girl wore to the party…
3.) That heavenly day you discovered ‘mute’…
4.) Staring for ages to make sure that one tick (sent) goes to two ticks (delivered). Then checking, minute-by-minute, to see if it's turned blue. Especially common when texting boys.
5.) What’s also common in any dating 'waiting game' scenario, is opening said chat to see the ‘last seen at [TIME]’ panel running underneath their name… and then trying to work out if they’ve been using the app all along and just ignoring your message. ☹
6.) When you get sent a hilarious picture/video that you can’t download so you just stare at it sadly in blur.
7.) When you spend ages writing a message and go to press 'send' only to realise you’re OUT OF RANGE.
8.) When you try to delete a group chat but it forces you to very obviously announce that you’re leaving it first.
9.) Having different WhatsApp personas for different WhatsApp groups. For instance, to your family and friends you’re the ‘read and reply when you get it’ girl. To that weird old school friends’ group you inadvertently ended up in, you’re the silent one who never responds. And to that person you fancy, you’re the one that replies roughly, sort of, approximately (exactly) one hour after the message's received.
10.) When you realised you could call your BFF abroad… for free.
11.) Knowing that were it not for WhatsApp you’d probably never use an emoji.
12.) That moment you discovered you could see 'all media'…
13.) Deliberating for ages on which profile picture to use; and hating yourself for choosing the ‘semi work appropriate’ one.
14.) When you see someone’s typing a response and then they just stop – and never reply again. WHAT WERE THEY GOING TO SAY?
15.) When someone randomly messages you and you get weirded out by their picture. (Because they must have spent actual time choosing that IN-YOUR-FACE number, right?)
16.) Having the same WhatsApp sound as everyone else in the world, thus living in a perpetual state of 'jumpiness'.
17.) When you FINALLY have a legitimate excuse to leave a group – ‘I’m upgrading my phone. Byeeee…’
18.) …and the only good thing about losing your phone, being: you are released from that BLOODY group chat.