A friend messaged me the other day. I saw it. I didn’t reply. A week later, I finally responded with the classic: Sorry for the late reply, just got to this.
She called me out. You didn’t just get to this, she said. I saw the double ticks.
Damn. She was right. I’d opened it. I’d registered it. But I’d also shelved it. It needed a proper reply, and at that moment, I wasn’t equipped.
Maybe it got lost between revisiting pictures from 2016 and the reminder I set to cancel my Nibble app 7-day trial on day 6. Maybe I got a call? Perhaps I’d wanted to sink back into that Substack article about reclaiming attention, ironically while still on social media. Maybe I was working one of the four jobs I need to survive under capitalism’s boot heel. Maybe I was doing nothing?
Does free time now equal availability?
I get a ping from the family group chat, which doubles as an IT helpdesk for my mum. My best friend just FaceTimed me about a White Lotus episode, and another left a voice note crying about a possible diagnosis. All this, lodged between videos of cats and genocide.
The boundaries between reception and response have collapsed.
In general, I disable the ability of getting a ‘read receipt’ if at all possible. In the case of some rare platforms that don’t allow this; I also warn people that "Seeing a ‘read receipt’ indicator does not mean I was available to reply.
In general; people who hang on to this little indicator are also committing a larger social faux pas, and you should { [(yellow/red) flag] / address / handle } it accordingly based on your relationship to that person, your goals and the situation.
Whether that means ‘calling them out’ or kindly explaining what it actually means or explaining your approach to communications; the behavior of expecting something to happen on the receipt of a read receipt needs to be discouraged in my personal opinion.