Simpler Days

Sometimes, change is good. Other times...not so much. I for one would like Facebook to stop switching it up all the time. I don't like a bunch of new features and a confusing new interface being updated every six months or so; I kind of miss the old Facebook. Specifically the one that didn't have read receipts.

Read receipts on Facebook can be very helpful. You can see who has read a message you sent and when they read it, so now you know they have the information and that's great! But what if they don't respond? Well, for over-analytical people like me, this opens up a treasure trove of possibilities. Number one on the list, of course: they hate you. They don't think you're worth a response. And then you spend the rest of the day wondering what could be so wrong with you that you don't warrant a reply and that stupid read receipt is just burned into your brain.

I think now would probably be a good time to insert the movie "He's Just Not That Into You" into the post,  because read receipts have opened up a whole new way to reject someone without having to say anything--literally. Actually, my friend had a fight with her boyfriend the other day and intentionally turned on the read receipts on her phone so that he knew she was reading his texts and purposefully not responding just to torture him. Ah, the beauty of technology.

On the other hand, I feel like read receipts have forced us to be much more accountable for our responses. Before their invention, you could see a message and reply at your own pace (or not at all) without feeling the pressure of making sure it didn't look like you were blowing that person off. Maybe you just didn't see the message, right? Who would know!? Because it does leave a bitter taste in your mouth when you see that the other person just didn't feel the need to respond. As Andy from the Office would say:




Read receipts on iPhones are a little different, though, because to me our phones are a more intimate mode of communication than Facebook. It's a different kind of relationship. Think about it; you don't have thousands of contacts on your phone, but you may have that many friends on Facebook. Most of the time, I'd say that the people you are contacting on your phone you know better than the people you have on Facebook. Therefore, you should be held more accountable for responding to them.

So, although read receipts can be helpful to know that someone got a message and although they eliminate the need to send an "okay" text to confirm, for more personal conversations they only add more anxiety and self-doubt. I'd just like to go back to the simpler days.