Group chats are dying off. But breaking up with the thread entirely is hard to do — angelinachapin reports
an op-ed calling these chats “a much-needed refuge from social media”). While some threads, like mine, simply withered, others became hotbeds of tension before flaming out. These chats amplify off-screen dynamics, and the pandemic turned them into friendship litmus tests. When I asked one friend in her mid-30s why hers died, she wrote, “Maybe my short answer is … We secretly can’t stand each other anymore?? Hahaha.” Tech companies have read the tea leaves.
Leaving and muting has actually strengthened my friendships — it’s been a way for me to maintain boundaries and take care of myself instead of letting resentment build up. The group-chat exit is as fraught as it is tempting. No matter a person’s intentions, a message reading “offline rejection. Many opt instead to mute, which signals mild disinterest rather than outright disdain. “Muting feels like the virtual equivalent of just mentally checking out,” says Alice*, a freelancer in her late 20s, “whilst exiting is like walking out of a room.”
Some managed to bail without much collateral damage. Derhally, the psychotherapist, has exited four chats over the past year and a half using a polite script so no one got offended. She would type some version of, “It’s not you, it’s me,” to her moms’ playdate group and her close circle of friends, explaining that she needed a break to preserve her sanity. “I really wanted to craft it in a way that wasn’t a rejection of anybody,” she says.
Without the need for virtual wine Wednesdays, Arner realized how different she’d become from these people she’d known for more than ten years. She left without a word in May and hasn’t had any contact with two of the women since. A few months ago, when she ran into a friend who brought up her exit from the thread, Arner blamed it on getting a new phone. “I didn’t even own up to it,” she says. She knows this was a passive-aggressive move, something her therapist “would have a lot to say about.
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