Tatum Hunter
speaker
30 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Mar 2025
last heard Mar 2025
Tatum Hunter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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I am Tatum Hunter, and I am an internet culture reporter at The Washington Post.
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.
And this is contentious for people, how to behave in a group chat on a text thread.
Let's start with the don'ts because I think that's spicier for people.
I absolutely have a list. Okay, maybe like three big don'ts.
One don't is don't use group texts for something that they weren't created for.
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...
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
Yes.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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