A Quiet Whatsapp Experience

For a year or more I was part of GoSocial, because I’m curious. The experimental community is based on Whatsapp group chats. There is “one” chat per city, whether Nyon, Bale, Lausanne and others. I was part of Lausanne and Geneva. The first thing that struck me is that the community uses a chat client but that chats aren’t possible in the town groups, and they’re discouraged in event specific chats.

The rational is “Join the chat, discuss logistics, but nothing else, and don’t DM people unless you get permission first. That’s the first fallacy, in my eyes, a chat client being used instead of Meetup (expensive), Facebook(Facebook), Meet5 (expensive) and Strava (Sport centric).

I joined plenty of hikes and I enjoyed them. I enjoyed meeting groups to snowshoe hike, hike in Spring, and then in Summer. I enjoyed meeting new people. I was then distracted by cycling groups on Meetup.com and then Strava and then I didn’t really look back.

For me, Whatsapp is toxic, because it was bought and taken over by Facebook, and books like Mindf*ck show why Facebook owned apps should be avoided. The second reason is based around the netiquette that I grew up with, in contrast to the netiquette that mid to late adopters grew up with.

For me, once you join a chat it should remain alive, and be a place for people to socialise after an event. This community locks the chats, and prevents people from joining after the effect, and disabled photo downloading and sharing. To some this makes sense, since anyone can join a chat, but only 20 participate. That’s a lot of strangers with group photos, if you enable group downloading.

Participation to events is often list based, where you say Richard + 1, or you add your name to a Google Doc, or you’re added to the description and more. It’s only recently that I noticed that Whatsapp has “events” so this could very easily be used to keep track of events.

There was an experiment for winter, where Nyon had a group chat, and I really liked this concept. I liked the idea of having a town based chat, where we could actually chat, and propose things informally, rather than hierarchically.

Someone eventually said “This group has too much chatter” or something to that effect, and then three or four people went on for 20 or more messages to explain why we should stop chatter. In effect they became the noisiest people in the chat. When I saw this I suggested two options. We keed one chat for chatter, and we have another chat that is purely events. One verbose group and one lean group. Two liked it, two disliked the idea, and a third turned it into a joke.

A fourth shut down all chatter for the night and that’s when I decided to abandon the network. I am on a social network to be part of a social network where the rules of netiquette are followed. These rules weren’t being followed.

I understand and respect that we don’t all have the same values, and that’s why I chose to leave. For people that come home to family, or flat mates or other, then a Whatsapp chat, and community is a bonus feature so the quieter it is the happier they are.

I’m single, so for me that chatter is something to come home to, after activities, and on weekends, and on days off, such as today. If those that already have vibrant personal lives try to gatekeep, then the network goes from healthy, to toxic, for a person in my situation. I join such networks to fill the solitude between events. By disallowing chatter solitude is reinforced.

As a result of choosing to break away from GoSocial Whatsapp has become much, much, much quieter, to the point that I could uninstall the app, if only Whatsapp wasn’t the primary IM client normal people use.

Nothing negative happened. I simply applied the Marie Kondo “If it doesn’t bring joy, recycle it”. I use the term “recycle” because I prefer it to “throw it away”.

And Finally

It’s likely that I will change my mind and rejoin at some point, but for now I prefer not to be part of a “social network” that controls too much. It is worth me focusing on strengthening my links with the convenient groups for a change. They want to control things. I think they’re wrong. That’s why I need to quit, for a time.