Tatum Hunter
Appearances
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
Also, the goal was a discussion. Imagine if you were with somebody and you were like, hey, I just saw a news story about these high-level government people leaking their signal chat and someone was like, heard it. You're like, no, I get that. It's news. I want to talk about it. I feel like memes are kind of the same.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
Oh, man. Oh, man. Okay. I have one more don't. I actually need to hate more than I thought I did, which is no scary mysteries. Don't send a text like, hey, can we talk? Oh, I hate that too. My parents do that. Oh, don't send a text. My mom does. Call me.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
Literally my same where the urgency is just not matched to the to the content. Yeah. No scary mysteries allowed. You should say why you're reaching out.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
Let's do a little do. Yes. Okay, one really nice thing to do when you're texting is to tell people what you want from them. Maybe one person wants to be in touch a lot and the other doesn't. Maybe one person wants to talk about more serious, heavy emotional stuff over the text and the other person is really uncomfortable with that.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
But exactly like your in-person relationships, people can't read your mind and you have to tell them what you want. So maybe that looks something like, I want to be in touch every day. I want to hear how your day was. Or, hey, on weekdays, this is exhausting for me. Can we just like have a big old phone call on Saturdays? Whatever.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
Absolutely. And again, just like any other thing in your friendships and relationships, it might require some compromise. So maybe for the person who's less texty, that means you're shooting an emoji, a thumbs up, a one sentence thing saying, saw it, care about you, I'll get back to this. Right? That's a nice compromise.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
Or maybe if you're the person who, you know, tends to get offended by this, you draw some boundary. You're like, hey, if you can't respond to me on time, maybe we should stick to phone calls. Right? Like, it's not embarrassing, I think, to talk about your texting life as if it matters, because it does.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
I would say do like stay grounded in reality. Remember the world we live in and remember that if you're in a, you know, encrypted signal chat, if you're in your private iMessage group with your best friends, that doesn't mean that you have carte blanche to say stuff that you would never want the world to see.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
We've seen again and again and again how screenshots of messages, it's not sacred, it can get out, it can get shared with the person you're talking about.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
Vance said the plan was a mistake and was inconsistent with Trump's message. There was some analysis and chattering after those screenshots leaked from the signal chat about, you know, how Vance had signaled that he might have a different opinion than Trump on a matter of foreign policy. Now he has to show up to work and be like, you know, hi, Donald.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
So it's important to remember that nothing is private, nothing is sacred once you have written it in a text.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
You know what? There's an optimist inside of me who likes to believe that this will be good for society, that we're all reflecting on the group chat. However, now I've lived too long, right? So like, you know, Bezos' text leak, we're like, oh man, we'll never forget this. Biden leaves his Venmo public.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
Vance leaves his blog public. And, you know, we're finding, we're looking at Venmo transactions from Matt Gaetz. And most recently we saw that Mike Waltz of Signal Chat fame left his Venmo friends list public.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
And, you know, people find it and they analyze it. And it happens again and again and again to politicians, to celebrities, to CEOs. So now I'm like starting to lose faith. It's like how many high profile, embarrassing instances of our digital footprints getting out of our own control will it take before everybody pumps the brakes? Because it's a hard learned lesson to just kind of remember that
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
Digital stuff is forever, even in the safest of places.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
I need to add another, you know, bullet point to this guide and say don't add the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic to your, you know, the group chats where you're gossiping. Because there was some gossip happening. They were gossiping about Europe. They hate her.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
I am Tatum Hunter, and I am an internet culture reporter at The Washington Post.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
Well, I think that our lives play out increasingly online. Today, when you say something like internet culture, that's just culture a lot of the time, right? You talk about texting etiquette. Like, yeah, that's just how we communicate. So I'm super into etiquette because I report on how the internet trickles down into our lives and changes our relationships.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
And this is contentious for people, how to behave in a group chat on a text thread.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
Let's start with the don'ts because I think that's spicier for people.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
I absolutely have a list. Okay, maybe like three big don'ts.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
One don't is don't use group texts for something that they weren't created for.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
What? Why am I in this group chat? If everybody has that group text from a bachelorette party in, like, 2018 that people will still pop into to, like, share photos of their kids or ask questions about, you know, those have to die once you're done with the reason that you created them. So if you have a group chat with your parents because you're related, that...
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
can keep going forever because you'll always be related. But if you have a group chat to plan a project or a trip or do introductions, that needs to be laid to rest once that planning is over. Another don't is don't get all offended when people have a different texting style than you.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
I see this come up all the time. I write for an audience that's a little bit older, and people get really ruffled when people don't use, for example, like, proper capitalization, punctuation. No way!
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
And then you can flip the script and you'll see younger folks getting frustrated and making fun of the way their bosses, their relatives text when they're spelling things out, using ridiculous acronyms, using the Gen Z, sorry, the Gen X ellipsis, where you're like not sure if they're mad at you because they are putting ellipses into text messages where they don't belong.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
Like every generation has its quirks with the way that it is typing out messages. And I think we're past the point where we're going to argue about like, should we be spelling everything right? You know, should this be should this be formal? Should this be informal? You have to let everyone live.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
Ooh, okay. Oh, my gosh. I have so many don'ts. I have more don'ts than I have dos, and I guess that's what etiquette is. If we all did everything right, we wouldn't need it. But don't be a wet blanket. Obviously, texting is going to be shorter, drier than sending a voice note, than having a phone call. But you want to be matching people's energy, especially if you use texting to stay in touch.
Today, Explained
Huge week for the group chat
to share something about your life, if you're using it like a conversation, don't be that guy who's sending okay or thumbs up.