> "Use it or your social group will not want to interact with you"

Maybe your "social group". If your friends refuse to talk to you because of the cell phone brand you use, I have bad news for you: They might not really be great friends.

▲

etrautmann 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

That’s not what this is about. If you have a group chat with one android user, it used to make all aspects of the interactions clunkier. Green bubbles, sending a new text instead of reactions, etc. as such, people would get left off of a list. Those small interactions add up over time.

▲

DontForgetMe 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Man, if you seriously would exclude someone from social interactions because of the colour of their speech bubble in group messages, I dread to think how m stressful it would be to interact with people who's entire bodies were different colours.

Not even joking. 'Its legit stressful if someone's messages use a different colour background' is not logically compatible with being ok having different coloured people in view. I'm not actually calling you a racist, because it would also mean you get distressed if people wear different colour clothes and have avatars that look different, and I think a social group like that would have struggled enough to realise that the solution might not be 'get the Wrongly Coloured Group Text Guy to purchase a different phone rather than, idk, stop spending so much time staring at screens.

But it was amusing to imagine how wildly conformist one would have to be to actually dislike someone because their phone number doesn't have enough 7's or their name is longer than everyone else's so it looks untidy or whatever.

	▲	array_key_first 12 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		He's not saying HE is this way, he's saying the US culturally is this way. Which... uh, yeah, it is. The US is superficial, it's vain, it's racist. I thought everyone knew that.

▲

malfist 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If your "friends" care enough about small stuff like that to cut you out of their conversations, they're not your friends.

▲

lynndotpy 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

You're misunderstanding the situation and reading malice into teenagers who are living in a world of decisions that were made before they were even born.

It's not "small stuff", it's the entire medium through which the conversation happens. It's the entire thing.

Do you "cut" your mom out of your group chats with your coworkers? Do you "cut" your coworkers out of intimate chats with your partners? Of course you do, because people maintain multiple overlapping group chats.

In group chats with your blue-bubble friends, they will be easier to read (because of the shades of color), media quality will be better, you can add more people to the group chat after it's made, you can text people from your iPad or Macbook, you can text people over WiFi even when you don't have service. When each text used to cost money, it was also a huge deal that iMessage (on WiFi) was free. This is on top of all the other chat features like playing games, pins, etc.

A lot of these limitations are intentional so that Apple can make more money, some of them are just limitations of SMS / RCS. But the point is that this is not the kids faults, this isn't bullying.

▲

malfist 2 hours ago | parent [-]

I am not misunderstanding the situation. If you omit me from a group message with our circle of friends because of the color of my speech bubble, you are not a real friend. Full stop.

▲

lynndotpy an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I don't know you, of course we're not friends. I addressed this in my comment. There are group chats you are part of and ones you won't be part of. Most people maintain multiple different overlapping group chats.

▲

ryandrake an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

Just the phrase "blue bubble friends" strikes me as absolutely wild, foreign and ridiculous. But, I admit to being almost 50.

	▲	lynndotpy 40 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The "blue bubble" just signifies someone's using the iMessage platform, and we still have multiple messaging platforms nowadays. Think of it like "Usenet friends", "IRC friends", "ICQ friends", "AIM friends", etc.

▲

mingus88 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Seriously, sounds more like a local user group than anyone who cares about you

▲

rehevkor5 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My favorite part about this is how you blame it on your friend, not on Apple.

▲

cpuguy83 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This just isn't true anymore (besides the green).

▲

stockresearcher 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yes. Mean girls at school are mean. If everyone has the same color bubble they’ll just find something else to be mean about.

	▲	lynndotpy 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		This is really reductionist. This isn't a bullying or in-group / out-group thing. Someone who is not on iMessage will be excluded from iMessage group chats, just as someone who is not on Snapchat will be excluded from Snapchat group chats, just as someone who is not on Instagram will be excluded from Instagram group chats, someone who is not on WeChat will be excluded from WeChat group chats.
	▲	pmontra 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		This is correct. Everybody has green bubbles in Europe even on iOS, because everybody is using WhatsApp. But mean people are still mean.

▲

lynndotpy 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I'm not a highschooler, and you don't understand the point.

If you're not an American younger than 35, this is probably something you don't understand because you didn't experience first-hand.

It's not a scenario where "your friends refuse to talk to you", it's "there are so many people to talk to, and there is a lot of friction around talking to this one person". You don't get the chance to become their friends in the first place.

If you can't get on iMessage, you can't be in iMessage group chats.

Similarly, if you don't have a cell phone, you can't text. If you don't have a landline, people can't call you. If you don't have the internet, you can't get on chatrooms. You wouldn't expect a teenager in the 90s to give up a landline in favor of living exclusively by handwritten letter.

▲

creaturemachine 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This is the state of friendship in the social media age.