I’m Sorry I Left The Group Chat. I Had To.

a love letter to group chats…and a breakup note

I love group chats. They feel like a little digital kitchen table. A place to drop thoughts, ask for advice, gossip, swap beauty tips, get help during fashion emergencies, make group plans, cancel said group plans in a single message, share juicy date debriefs, survey the crew and send blurry pics of an $18 salads like “we need to make this!"

The chaos! The camaraderie! The silly inside jokes that make zero sense unless you were there that one night in 2019. But somewhere along the way, some of them stopped being cozy and started feeling…like another inbox. Maybe it's because there are group chats for everything? Every work pod, every mom pod, every friendship group pod, every charity board, blah blah blah. The constant pings, the meme avalanche, the back-and-forth between five conversations at once, all layered over the quiet panic of “I need to read these and respond!”” It became too much. Another thing I was behind on. Another bubble of guilt I carried in my pocket. Another space where I saw the message and meant to reply, but forgot, and then it felt too late, and now I feel bad. The guilt of unread messages compounding text by text until somehow my unread texts are at 168 (how?!).

And perhaps we don’t talk about it enough: the way staying digitally connected can start to disconnect you from yourself, not to mention, the people you’re right in front of.