Every group chat seems to die the moment I send 1-2 texts there. Every single one. Old, new, offline friends, online friends, everywhere. What’s going on? Are my jokes bad? Have you ever experienced this? If yes, what was the issue you found out?
Gotta get there earlier … before all those other thoughts get a chance to drown out your perfectly sensible thoughts.
This would have been hilarious if nobody had replied…
It’s all in your head dude. Don’t worry about it.
I was half expecting a ton of upvotes and no comments.
I actually wanted make a joke on that in the post itself lol.
If this was reddit this thread would have no replies.
Should we tell him, guys?..
Oh no…
Yes this right here officer.
Should we tell him, guys?..
this is not an appropriate time to make a cruel joke.
this person came here harmlessly asking for help.
punching down at someone’s insecurities right when they’re trying to address them is not ok.
Nah man it’s fine. The joke’s popular and I am sure they didn’t mean it. Thanks though.
I’m glad to hear you’re alright, then.
If you’re seeking mental help on the internet from random strangers, that might be a problem.
I disagree. It’s not the ideal place, but it’s fine
Yeah he’s just asking for advice.
You must be really fun at parties!
Holy shit, the sociology of group chats is complex as fuck judging from these comments. I hate them too much to ever have stopped and wondered why I hate them.
My suggestion would echo Bukowski: Don’t try. It’s perfectly fine to only respond in the group chat when something needs to be coordinated. Everything else one on one communication is better for. And if you do feel like interacting, don’t force it. Silence is never wrong. On the contrary.
I don’t even do group chats for party invitations. I just text everyone individually. It’s a little more work but it’s so much nicer, as far as I’m concerned.
Then again, I was born in the 90s. I’m a grumpy old man and without a doubt out of thouch.
+1 just for mentioning Bukowsky … he is WAY underrepresented on the Internet (which explains why it’s in this state)
I was born in the 90s. I’m a grumpy old man
I feel my bones turning to dust reading this.
Since when is 35-24 old lmao
When it comes to digital communication, I think I might be a dinosaur. I have never used Discord or TikTok. My group chat experience as a teenager was on IRC.
Culturally I am also out of touch - I come from a time when young people were reliably progressive, and where there did not seem to be a huge political gender divide. I feel weirdly removed from those born ten years after me, who are now around 20.
Sure, I’m in a few group chats on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, and I know these situations in the abstract. But if OP is a teenager they probably come from a completely different world than I do.
I’m just not with it any more, you know. I wear an onion in my belt.
That said, I of course agree completely that I am the embodiment of youth in most aspects of life!
I’m so with you on this. Only much moreso. WITF would I EVER want to use stupid little computer where you have to type with your THUMBS? And costs TWICE as much as a great desktop?
“Portability” they say. Hell I went out-of-house to AVOID phonecalls, to live in the material world, not to walk down the street looking in the direction of my toes, missing everything going on around me, talking to invisible people. Pathetic.
Upvotes for the sincerity.
I’m going to be honest and try not to be rude. This is only my observation from my perspective and may be wildly wrong. I looked through your comment history. You seem to be polite and communicative. That’s not a bad thing. However, your comments don’t seem very funny or interesting to me. I communicate through humor. I understand that it is subjective, but I’m not often in chats or conversations that awkwardly die out.
Show some more of your personality in what you say. Compliment others. Leave them with questions. Do you think maybe the answer to your question isn’t what you are saying, it’s how you are saying it?
Tough but honest advice. I can relate to needing this advice but I’ve come to accept who I am. People just like sincerity, too. Organic, not shoehorned comments. No compliment fishing, etc… The group you’re chatting with also just may not be your kind of people; you just may not have realized it yet.
Alternatively chat groups do spontaneously die and you may only be consciously aware when it’s you who commented last; but you may not be so aware of the chat groups that died with someone else’s comments.
Maybe your interjecting into a convo and not saying something worth responding to? I would imagine that making a joke in text isn’t that funny because its not spoken its read.
I think this - and the dozens of other reasons - is it.
I’m in a handful of reasonably active group chats, and if one of my absolute banger messages doesn’t get a response, welll… maybe it just wasn’t that good. Not awful in as much that people leave the group en maase, but just not nearly as funny or interesting to other folk as it was to me.
It may be that it was the group chat equivalent of clicking a Lemmy post, thinking “huh, cool”, and moving on.
It may be that the post was so balanced and well presented from most angles, that there isn’t really anything to add.
It could be that my post went against the grain of the flow of conversation or the tastes of the majority of the group, and people chose to ignore it rather than tell me to fuck off.
It could be that people’s lives have run away with them, nobody gave any serious mind to the post when they read it, and it would just be a bit weird replying twelve or 24 hours after the post.
Any which way - if the group is still active, and you’ve not been called out publically or privately, then people likely don’t give a toss and have moved on - no harm no foul.
I’ve noticed something similar to this, where I walk into a room and it goes silent enough that it’s like the stereotype of a cowboy walking into a saloon. There’s only one place where I can trust this to never happen.
I don’t do group chats anymore because whatever I say gets unanswered, or replied to and buried in the conversation.
With friends we do video chat. Also seems in large group chats, there are often like 10 different parallel conversations going on and it is hard to keep track of. No one waits or treats it like an actual group discussion.
Do you experience people becoming silent and staring at you with disgust when you make a joke in real life?
Nope I am not that open irl
You might be over thinking your jokes. Try not editing your reaction thoughts. The first thing you think is often wrong or absurd but it can also be very funny because its wrong or absurd.
For example, Louis CK has a joke about seeing a person walking with their dog, and also talking on the phone. The person is holding the leash and the phone in the same hand, so the thought that popped into Louie’s head was, “I wonder what the benefits are of hooking your phone up to your dogs leash?”.
Jokes need to be some version of something you really shouldnt say, for them to be funny. Reasons you shouldnt say something could be: its shocking, its silly or wrong on purpose, its taboo societally, its offensive, it punches down, its too personal, etc etc.
Do you fart in lifts with the same effect ? If not, it’s probably in your head :)
I lurk mostly, like 100-200 to 1 there aren’t enough people to get long engaging threads if thays what yoite after, , thank <insert deity of choice> for that
Lifts are the best way to fart, the acoustic canvas are enhanced by the echo heavy acoustic profile given by the enclosed space and it offers an easy “out” for a aroma connoisseur to linger in the space without judgment while at the same time allowing people to leave quickly if they choose to not partake in the sampling by stepping out
I’m not a joking person and I feel similar situations. Maybe I’m the extreme opposite, my (almost) complete lack of lightheartedness leads me to face echo chambers, both IRL and in the cyberspace. I do some memes and I say/post some funny things but my essence is imbued with non-conformist thoughts.
i used to struggle with this too, op.
the only reason i don’t struggle with it anymore is because i ran out of sufficient energy to struggle.
however, that was not what resolved it–not directly.
no longer agonizing over my conversations had other effects.
i decided that if all i can be is background noise, then i shall be background noise. and that … loosened my hesitation. i physically lost the ability to attach any kind of ulterior motive or emotional baggage to what i wanted to say, and so, my messaging became more open and honest as a result, in a way i never had the choice to implement at will. it took breaking down to no longer proverbially have a wall there.
and then, at another point after this had metaphorically cleaned my slate, i decided to start over by embodying what i felt was missing. i would be the warmth that no one was showing. i would greet, and encourage, and ask nonbinary question–but i don’t think this would have worked if i had not first shattered my own guard and begun engaging my social interactions with totally exposed vulnerability.
They can smell it on you like a dog.
In my experience every chat group has a person that’s the glue. What I mean is sometimes unintentionally that group chat only reacts when the glue person(s) are engaging. So if you work out who that is in your group and have them engage with you, it’ll become lively.