Last night, while scrolling through my Twitter timeline, I came across this tweet that really pissed me off:
Do I smell a toxic clinger? Seriously, imagine getting mad that someone didn’t text you back right away. Drew clearly thinks that every person he texts is either unemployed or not in school. As a shitty texter, I feel attacked by this tweet and the 106 thousand people who favorited it. My real friends know that if they need me, they should call me, FaceTime me, or show up at my house. I take 8 million years to respond to texts for the following reasons:
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I’m at work
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I’m in class or doing homework
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We’re having a deep conversation and I need time to think of a response
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You asked me to hang out tonight and I can’t decide if I want to or not
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You’re a boy that I’m playing games with* (nervous to be texting)
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I plan on never responding because this conversation is dying
But that’s not the point– there is a deeper issue we need to talk about. We should never feel obligated to tell someone why we cannot respond to a text right this second.
When you expect an immediate reply, you’re sending the message that you are more important than whoever or whatever that person is interacting with in real life. It’s 2019, shouldn’t we just assume that everyone is busy all the time? I never take it personally when someone doesn’t respond to a text because I don’t assume that person is staring at their phone, anxiously awaiting my message, thinking about what they’ll send back 10 seconds later. If I really need to reach someone, I’ll call them.
The defenders of this annoying-ass-tweet say that sending an “I’m busy I’ll text you later” helps communication in a relationship. I’ll counter that with: not making your friend or S/O feel obligated to tell you what they’re doing all hours of the day will build trust AND communication in your relationship.