Disgruntled third year aka pensioner
TRIGGER WARNING: MARK ZUCKERBERG
I was content once. I could dip into the group chat for my society, my halls, or my course, and affix any emoji I wanted to any message. When someone asked who wanted to attend an event but all the messages that followed were completely unrelated, I could gleefully thumbs up the original message. It did not even cross my mind that one day I would be forced to reply with a thumbs up in a separate message of its own, thus disrupting the new conversation. Alas, this is the sick world we live in now. The Messenger group chats of my glorious first year have been ousted by WhatsApp, a platform somehow so popular that it is used by every age group, from hip young freshers to Tory MPs and even your great-uncle who despises every other form of social media.
I could perhaps understand if everyone wanted to move away from a platform owned by Facebook/Meta/WhateverMarkZuckerbergHasRenamedItToWhenThisIsPublished to one owned by a less conniving corporation. But we’ve collectively swum out of one deadly fishing net into another one which is attached to the same trawler and riddled with privacy issues. Crucially, the second fishing net doesn’t have in-message reactions, and it’s this insanity that has made me lose my mind. Nevertheless, this change has inspired a new hobby. After joining all my favourite societies’ newly-formed WhatsApp groups, I have, so far, sold phone numbers of 620 people to the local hoodlums. While this has not fully mitigated the emotional cost of leaving Messenger behind, it was enlightening to experience the thrill of crime – a feeling these WhatsApp pushers know All Too Well™ (Taylor’s Version) (10 Minute Version).
