![]() ![]() Turning on read receipts is a way for me to ensure I’m being a compassionate, thoughtful, and honest member of a conversation. If someone sends me something I can’t or don’t want to respond to right away, I just don't open it.ĭoesn’t that defeat the purpose of turning on read receipts in the first place? Aren’t you being just as shady by selectively ignoring texts, even just temporarily? I don’t think so. (I temporarily avoided the hell out of texts this weekend, for example.) That’s because I read texts as they pop up on my home screen one by one, rather than opening them in the messaging app. I turned on my read receipts in January 2016, and I haven’t had any trouble temporarily avoiding texts. We do ourselves a disservice when we shoot such a frank, honest messenger. The read receipt would've functioned more like a no-nonsense friend who swooped in to be like, "Heads up, this guy's not prioritizing your feelings." In either situation, the reality would've been the same-the read receipt would've just clued me in to that reality a little earlier. It was my then-boyfriend's choice to disappear on me for 18 hours. ![]() Plus, it's not like the read receipt is the issue. But when given the choice between a swift slap in the face delivered via read receipt and 18 hours of agonizing anxiety, I’d pick the read receipt every time. ![]() That you’re being ignored is not a fun thing to figure out. Whereas “delivered” leaves us in the dark, “read” offers clarity. ![]() In this example-and the two others I cited-people having read receipts on would have provided the comfort of certainty we as humans are apt to seek. He had read my text, and he wasn’t going to reply-either that, or something much worse had happened. But my comfort was short-lived that first hour only delayed the inevitable realization that something hadn’t come up. When my then-boyfriend didn't text me back, I spent an hour thinking the best: Something's come up, and he hasn't read my text yet. With “delivered,” we can imagine myriad obstacles that are preventing our well-intentioned loved ones from responding to us: They’ve lost service, their phones have died, they’re shopping for groceries-or otherwise occupied. Oh yeah, and he’d love to hang out.Ī popular argument among read receipt critics is that read receipts rob people of the ability to comfort themselves with best case scenarios. (For the record, she didn’t send any of them.) The next morning, he replied telling her his phone had died so he hadn’t seen her initial message. “When he didn’t reply, I drafted 13 different versions of texts telling him to go f*ck himself,” she says. Last weekend, a different friend of mine texted her partner to see if he wanted to hang out this weekend. That’s the kind of person a lot of us are, though. And when I don’t know something, my anxious brain jumps to the worst-case scenario, because that’s the kind of person I am. I humored the idea-and realized it was probably the most rational explanation for the lapse in communication-but I didn’t know for sure. But because he didn't have read receipts turned on, I didn't know that. He'd read my text right after I sent it and decided that ignoring me for 18 hours was the best course of action. Or whatever they call girlfriends whose boyfriends die. What if he's dead right now? What if that's why he's not responding to me? Are you f*cking kidding me? This motherf*cker isn't even gonna respond? He probably hasn't even read my text yet. ![]()
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