On WhatsApp and Netiquette

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I was thinking of taking a break from Whatsapp for three weeks. I have this desire, and need because I am tired of how people use Whatsapp. They create groups, where strangers are added. People with no deep knowledge of online communities delete posts that are sometimes not spam. Other people complain when people try to have conversations. The result is that WhatsApp is emotionally draining because it doesn't feel like a healthy, tight knit community.

Close Friends with Months of Meeting In Person

When WhatsApp was still independent, before it was bought by Facebook it was a community of communities. It was built around friends who wanted to stay in touch after an activity was over.

We knew each other as friends. We had driven hours to and from activities. We had hiked. We had scuba dived. We had climbed, and we had met as a group of 20 people on a regular basis. We were actual friends, rather than just people who met randomly.

Freedom of Familiarity

There is a freedom to familiariity. That freedom is that people know us, so we can be more transparent. We don't need to posture. We can be more three dimensional than in communities of strangers. The groups also stay active within a chat for weeks, months or even years.

With Fear of Missing Out (FOMO), due to a broken arm one winter, and unsociable shifts another year, I lost the freedom of such groups. I had to leave them, not because of a falling out, but because I felt sad that I was missing out. I wanted to participate.

I miss these groups and that sense of community. It's funny that in 2025, and despite writing that social networks are more ubiquitous than ever, that the sense of community is lacking.

Locked Groups and a Sea of Empty Rooms

With time things are getting worse rather than better. Groups are locked once an event is finished, and privacy settings are being made stricter. Trust in community is being undermined. I saw that they want to re-create recurring activity groups on a yearly basis, so noise will get more, rather than less.

By now I have over a hundred group chats on WhatsApp and many of them are dormant, or dead. If I remove and then reinstall Whatsapp as I did a few days ago, then I have over a hundred "You were added to this group" notifications and I need to go to each group, view it, for it to be marked as read, and this takes a long time.

Kicked Out of a Group

On a "coup de tête" recently I was kicked out of a group and this bugs me. It bugs me because it goes against the rules of conviviality and netiquette. It's rude, to put it another way. So is deleting a non-spam comment.

I was still thinking about whether to join into an activity, due to the long drive I have Sunday, and in the end the decision was taken away from me. Now I'm motivated not to bother. Now I'm tempted to rest before the long drive.

And Finally

It is the end of the year. The cycling season is over, and events on Meetup and Strava are less frequent. It is for this reason that I reverted to the WhatsApp based events community. I don't like WhatsApp, because it is part of Facebook, and I don't like when event chats are closed. I don't like being kicked out of chats, and I miss having a real sense of community.

As I have said for decades I hate Autumn and Winter because these are the seasons of Solitude. These are the seasons where I suffer from SAD. Solitude Affective Disorder. That's why I like to flee Switzerland and visible Christmas. I don't like being reminded that others are not lonely when I feel isolated. If WhatsApp was used, as intended, then I wouldn't feel SAD. I'd be happy. I'd be surrounded.

I'm looking forward to the social cycling season to start again next year.